There is looming trouble in C-SPAN land

For the uneducated, the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, better known as C-SPAN is one of the last literate islands of mostly unadulterated quality, scholarly programing left for the common and casual viewer to both view and participate in on television.

Although it is geared toward the political realm of public service television, C-SPAN often lets us enter into the gilded halls of Federal power in a totally unfiltered way. C-SPAN airs gavel to gavel coverage of both the house and the senate. It offers a sophisticated look at judicial policy and arguments from the Supreme Court and gets us vicariously as close as possible to the executive branch.

One of the other superior aspects C-SPAN has endeavored to do, and up into this point I thought excellently, was to hold the panel discussions and forums on various topics that are national in scope.

This is where we seem to have run into a bit of trouble.

Let's not be too hasty in protecting The Westboro gang's angry hateful speech

I like many of you have been reading blogs and opinions adnauseum about protecting offensive speech (((not to mention the nooumerous news stories))) I am struck as to the overwhelming narrative on the need to protect  hateful, hurtful expression, and the paucity of thought on the fact that not ALL speech is protected.

 It is absolutely correct to protect the dissenting and angry expression, yet that anger and that dissent has to be based on whether it presents a “clear and present danger.”

There are two areas of unprotected speech that I think might come into play here, one is obscene language, the other is “fighting words.”

Ohhh the hypocrisy hypocrisy !!

“Elitist” and “Establishment.” those words will probably be bandied about, a million times, before this or any other given day is over.

They have become the words deguerre for many on the professional chattering right. . . . especially those firmly (((dare I say it,))) established at the elite level of the conservative media circus.

The Deal is Done!!

For all practical purposes the Georgia GOP had been DEALT a bad hand by their contestant in the gubernatorial race.

After battling ethical charges all throughout the primary campaign Nathan Deal squeaked through the victory door just a teeny weeny bit ahead of second place finisher Karen Handel. He won by about the width of a stack of bankruptcy forms.

Wouldn’t ya know it, just as he squares up against the smooth talking, well heeled, deep pocketed, former Guvnuh Roy Barnes, that stack o’ financial trouble, jumps clean over the ethical challenges, right to the top of deck.

Deal, it seems, has made some bad ones.