The Alex Jones Show(VIDEO Commercial Free) Monday September 8 2014: Lew Rockwell
Russians Practice Nuking America -- Date: 09/08/2014 -- --SUBSCRIBE TO PRISONPLANET.TV-- http://www.prisonplanet.tv/ -Today - Alex breaks down recent attacks on the First Amendment and the...
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The Alex Jones Show(VIDEO Commercial Free) Monday September 8 2014: Lew Rockwell - Video
Senators opened a historic debate Monday on whether to alter the First Amendment to give Congress the power to squelch free speech in the form of campaign spending, setting up a showdown vote later this week on the first alterations to the founding document in decades.
Democrats say the debate is a referendum on democracy and keeping the wealthy from distorting the system. Republicans counter its a debate about fundamental freedom of speech that all Americans should have.
For Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat driving the debate, its chiefly about two people Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who pour tens of millions of dollars into conservative and libertarian causes.
They are trying to buy America, at every level of government, Mr. Reid said.
Democrats are trying to undo several Supreme Court decisions that have ruled that spending money on issue ads is covered by free speech guarantees that neither Congress nor the states can ban.
Their legislation would give Congress or state legislatures the power to set reasonable limits on how much money political candidates could raise and spend in seeking election and power to prohibit outside groups from spending any money at all on ads.
That would apply particularly to corporations, whom Democrats say are increasingly being granted rights that should be reserved to individuals.
Their proposed amendment would specifically carve out an exemption for the corporations that own the press, which would be allowed to use its reporting to influence elections.
Republicans said Democrats were trying to silence political opponents rather than debate their ideas and accused Mr. Reid of forcing the issue to the floor in order to rally his political base ahead of Novembers elections.
This proposed amendment would be the biggest threat to free speech that Congress would have enacted since the Alien and Sedition Acts back in 1798, said Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican.
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Senate debates limiting campaign cash by altering First Amendment
Iowa State University submitted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against employees by two students who said their rights to free speech and due process were violated.
Paul Gerlich and Erin Furleigh, the president and vice president of ISU NORML an organization that advocates for the reform of marijuana laws filed a lawsuit against President Steven Leath and vice presidents Warren Madden and Tom Hill and Leesha Zimmerman, a program coordinator in the trademark office earlier this summer.
Furleigh and Gerlich said their First Amendment rights were violated when Iowa State did not allow them to use the mascot Cy on some T-shirt designs. According to the motion to dismiss, the two students said Iowa State created overbroad and vague trademark guidelines and then arbitrarily used them to reject some of NORMLs T-shirts.
The 13-page motion to dismiss from Iowa State, that was filed on Sept. 4, requested that the lawsuit against the four university employees be dropped for a number of reasons. According to the document, both Furleigh and Gerlich failed to provide facts that showed their First Amendment right to free speech was violated.
According to the document, the lawsuit should be dismissed because Furleigh and Gerlich did not allege sufficient facts to establish any constitutional right in the use of ISUs marks, that they lacked adequate alternative avenues for communicating their message without ISUs marks, that their proposed uses of the marks were fair uses, or that their proposed uses did not cause confusion.
According to the document, fair use allows others to use a trademark if it is used as something other than a trademark, in a descriptive nature or in good faith. The motion to dismiss said using the ISU trademark on the shirt was not claimed as fair use in the lawsuit.
Look for more coverage of this story on iowastatedaily.com.
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Iowa State asks court to dismiss First Amendment lawsuit
Several Senate Republicans joined Democrats on Monday to advance a constitutional amendment that would give Congress and the states greater power to regulate campaign finance.
But the bipartisanship ends there.
Many of the Republicans only voted for the bill to foul up Democrats pre-election messaging schedule, freezing precious Senate floor time for a measure that ultimately has no chance of securing the two-thirds support necessary in both the House and Senate to amend the Constitution.
The legislation needed 60 votes to advance and Democrats took a cynical view of the 79-18 tally. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the GOPs tactic was simply to stall because it would eat up limited floor time that Democrats are eyeing for votes aimed at encouraging gender pay equity and raising the minimum wage.
(McConnell for POLITICO Magazine: The Democrats' assault on free speech)
They know were getting out of here fairly shortly and they want to prevent discussion on other very important issues, said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). I would love to be proven wrong. But if the end of this week, we end up getting 67 votes, you can tell me I was too cynical.
But campaign finance is not a debate that Senate Republicans are shying away from and their argument is being led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who penned an op-ed for POLITICO on Monday that portrayed Democrats as fixated on repealing the free speech protections the First Amendment guarantees to all Americans.
Not surprisingly, a proposal as bad as the one Senate Democrats are pushing wont even come close to garnering the votes it would need to pass. But to many Democrats, thats just the point. They want this proposal to fail because they think that somehow would help them on Election Day, McConnell wrote.
Democrats see electoral benefits in their proposal, pointing to Democratic-commissioned polls in battleground states that show bipartisan majorities in support of limiting big donors influence in politics and in opposition to Super PACs. Party leaders and aides believe their campaign finance proposal is popular and places the GOP on the wrong side of public opinion so some Democratic aides said they were happy for the debate to consume the Senate this week and still plan to hold votes on raising the minimum wage and pay equity before breaking for campaign season.
Theyre volunteering to defend the Koch brothers and a campaign finance system voters hate, said one Senate aide.
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Constitutional amendment advances
All About - First Amendment to the United States Constitution
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