Fox Wants to See the Shredded Scraps of Our Constitution
At least that’s what they said when Center for Constitutional Rights tried to place this ad on Fox.
CCR is one of the organizations that will go before the Supreme Court on Wednesday in hopes of restoring Habeas Corpus. At the same time, they’re trying to raise awareness of Bush’s attacks on our rights with ads like this and a cool campaign to send Bush a copy of the Constitution (what do you get the President who has everything??). But when they went to Fox to buy time for this ad, Fox asked for proof that Bush had shredded the Constitution.
Perhaps it’s time to launch a campaign to inundate Fox with your favorite proof that Bush trashed the Constitution. Copies of the Risen-Lichtblau scoop on warrantless wiretapping, pictures of the "free speech zones" at Bush appearances, a copy of the report proving NYC spied on citizens and detained many illegally leading up to the Republican convention in 2004. Anyone else have some good ideas?
Update: marksb has a very good question:
Does Fox require proof of erectile dysfunction to place Viagra ads?
Fitz!
(oops, sorry, feeling giddy at discovering this new section of FDL)
Marcy, it’s great that you’re going to be blogging here like this!
Signatures on signing statements?
Darth ‘Fourth Branch’ Cheney comes to mind.
Also all those wonderful theories about the President getting to decide which laws are constitutional without talking to anyone in Congress or the courts.
Signing statements, lying to start wars, leaking classified information, recess appointments when Congress has only left for the weekend, meetings to encourage the support of GOP candidates by government employees … what else?
Should we just send them Hugh’s list of scandals?
All kinds of State Secrets issuances we could toss in.
And how about the fourth branch? That could be fun to send…
Froomkin:
The White House is refusing to let special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald turn over to congressional investigators key documents from his investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity as a covert CIA operative, including reports of interviews with President Bush, Vice President Cheney and five top White House aides.
Yeah. Unbelievable! Does Fox require proof of erectile dysfunction to place Viagra ads? (Well, Mr. Dole, do you have proof it worked for you?) How ’bout proving that Miller tastes great? That ain’t gonna work either.
The conservative way: throw up a smoke screen full of lies and dare anyone to challenge—and if someone does challenge the smoke, throw up some more smoke as outraged victims of the evil lefties ready to terrorize our sacred country. But it would never occur to me that they’d do it when accepting advertising. Unbelievable!
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I love this new site Marcy, and the willingness of Jane/FDL to share the community.
Of course, you’re right. Fox’s challenge is an excuse because they know the ad would piss-off their viewers. I bet the CCR didn’t even ask for a discount.
EW, Do you think you could get Robert Greenwald and Bravenew interested?
I see they’re on it, having published a post on the original ad already. …I’m just wondering how one would present the opposing argument to pressure Fox.
This site has a lot of great pictures of the “free speech zones.”
It’s just unbelievable to me that they can lock people up in a pen, surround them with armed guards and razorwire and have the nerve to call it free speech.
I saw that Fox had no problem running the “Freedom Watch” ads.
Federal Judge Rules Warrantless Wiretaps Unconstitutional by mcjoan
I’m inclined to think that the CCR got exactly what they wanted here, i.e., one more data point to add to the mountain of data points in support of the hypothesis that Fox is biased (or, put another way, a new stick to beat Fox with). Fox would have been a, umm, curious choice for this ad — not likely to change the minds of any Fox viewers.
Not sure what anyone intends to do with all that data — 30 years ago you could have based a pretty good challenge to the renewal of the licenses of all of the Fox-owned TV stations on evidence like this, but I don’t think that’s still a viable option (any communications lawyers out there?). Continuing to say “Fox News is biased” is nice for the record, but we already know that, and the Fox News audience doesn’t care because it shares those biases. So who is this really aimed at? The FCC?
I wish for the day we have a Democrat as President, who would then appoint a Demoratic majority to the FCC.
Then the FCC could do its legal duty and take the broadcasting license away from Fox.
These are the public’s airwaves and it is illegal to broadcast purely partisan propaganda.
This is me, waving at MadDog as he (or she) disappears down a very slippery slope.
One person’s “purely partisan propaganda” is another person’s “fair and balanced.” You have a slight First Amendment problem taking away broadcast licenses for the licensee’s engaging in political speech of which you disapprove.
There are legitimate reasons for regulating broadcasters, but nearly all of them have to do with allocating spectrum (which is a public good) in ways that allow it to be used efficiently. Content-based regulations should be a big no-no. Unless, of course, you want to see every Air America outlet lose its license at the same time every Fox News outlet does.
Yeah, I did let my outrage overwhelm my First Amendment support, but…but…It’s so wrong what Fox does!
Perhaps one could instead use the FCC to at least fulfill the “equal time” provisions on Fox.
And I still find it very difficult to support the idea that one can use the public’s TV airwaves to be blatantly partisan. I’ve no problem with Radio. Limpdick can rant on radio all he wants.
I guess it is just that I grew up with TV, and always looked to them to strive for non-partisanship. It seemed like CBS, NBC, et al viewed that as a line they could never cross without putting their license in jeopardy. As a matter of fact, this very same credo was written and spoken about over and over, so that it somehow became reality.
I guess I was wrong, and romantic. *g* In any event, a pox on Fox!
How about General Lute declaring that it isn’t necessary for Congress to approve having the US military stay in Iraq ad infinitum?
I just thought of something—will Jodi still be around for comic relief?
The name “Jodi” has been hijacked over here in Firedoglake. It started over in TNH, but has continued over here.
So far the Hijacker has tried to give out posts similar to what I might give out, and maybe 60 percent of the total isn’t bad, but I fear that soon they will try to make their version of Jodi crazy or even mean.
Anyway for the pure unadulterated old sytle Jodi, you should look for the new name JodiDog.