The First what? Freedom of what?

I know this is old news, and my busyness has left me remiss in my duties…Still, some of you may be unaware…

Last week, in the all-important swing state of Missouri, the Obama campaign took a pre-emptive strike aimed at silencing its critics in the Show-Me State when it announced that the campaign had recruited a number of the state’s Democratic prosecutors and sheriffs to head up its so-called “Truth Squad.”

…Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, a state where Obama and McCain are slugging it out, Obama has taken aim at television stations that are running an ad from the National Rifle Association, which takes Obama to task for his anti-Second Amendment record (O’Hara: R-rated blog title with that link, but good info and a great tagline).

Robert F. Bauer, the campaign’s general counsel, sent stations threatening letters asserting that “Failure to prevent the airing of ‘false and misleading advertising (O’Hara: not true!) may be probative of an underlying abdication of licensee responsibility.’” He argued that “for the sake of both FCC licensing requirements and the public interest, your station should refuse to continue to air this advertisement.”

Threat much? But…now…hm….Isn’t there some law protecting the freedom of political speech somewhere? Let’s see… *rummaging through purse* Oh yes:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Here is the news story that has rightly struck fear into the hearts and minds of civil liberties advocates and true American patriots everywhere: 

More, via Hot Air, former US Attorney Andy McCarthy points out:

I’ll be blunt: Sen. Obama and his supporters despise free expression, the bedrock of American self-determinism and hence American democracy. What’s more, like garden-variety despots, they see law not as a means of ensuring liberty but as a tool to intimidate and quell dissent.

…in St. Louis, local law-enforcement authorities, dominated by Democrat-party activists, were threatening libel prosecutions against Obama’s political opposition. County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, abetted by a local sheriff and encouraged by the Obama campaign, warned that members of the public who dared speak out against Obama during the campaign’s crucial final weeks would face criminal libel charges — if, in the judgment of these conflicted officials, such criticism of their champion was “false.”

…In the stretch run of an American election, there is to be no examination of a candidate for the world’s most powerful office — whether about his radical record, the fringe Leftism that lies beneath his thin, centrist veneer, his enabling of infanticide, his history of race-conscious politics, his proposals for unprecedented confiscation and distribution of private property (including a massive transfer of American wealth to third-world dictators through international bureaucrats), his ruinous economic policies that have helped leave Illinois a financial wreck, his place at the vortex of the credit market implosion that has put the U.S. economy on the brink of meltdown, his aggressive push for American withdrawal and defeat in Iraq, his easy gravitation to America-hating activists, be they preachers like Jeremiah Wright, terrorists like Bill Ayers, or Communists like Frank Marshall Davis. Comment on any of this and risk indictment or, at the very least, government harassment and exorbitant legal fees.

What many do not understand is that even if exonerated from such spurious charges, those so charged will probably have already have their lives destroyed by legal fees, public evisceration by the Obama campaign (and doubtless the media as well), and God knows what else. Furthermore, if you read the rest of McCarthy’s article, you’ll see that the BHO campaign has a long history of doing their best to shut down free speech they don’t like, particularly when it strays too closely to the truth. It is for this reason that we can’t believe rebuttals that claim the media is overblowing the situation. Prosecutions have been implied by the very fact that there are prosecutors and sheriffs working on this “Truth Squad”. Were it a bunch of our typical ACORN activists it would be disturbing, but not nearly so threatening and chilling as the use of actual law enforcement.

This is like Soviet Russia, for crying out loud, and the man isn’t even President! He smacks of Marx, KGB, and Woodrow Wilson (who was America’s first fascist President, as evidenced by any honest history book, but just in case, here, here, and oh, looky here for starters).

As Hans von Spakovsky reminds us,

John Adams lost the 1800 election in part due to the revulsion that many Americans felt towards the Alien and Sedition Acts, a law that restricted their ability to engage in fundamental political speech and activity and that enabled government prosecutors to persecute political opponents.

We seem to have forgotten too much about the dangers of government suppression and regulation of political speech and political liberties.

…Too bad there probably will not be a similar reaction by American voters as there was in the election of 1800 to a candidate’s support for government persecution of his political opponents.

Too bad indeed. How many Americans will end up destitute, impoverished, and perhaps even imprisoned because they ticked off the Dear Leader, the untouchable alpha and omega, Barack Obama? Why aren’t Americans horrified and enraged by this misuse of our legal system? This ignoring of the law of the land?

Oh, and for the heck of it, since firearms have been mentioned,

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

For those unsure, WE, the People, are the militia, something discussed here a few months ago (oh, look, and here, too). Our Founding Fathers believed in personal responsibility, and that included individuals being responsible for the protection of themselves, their neighbors, and their country.

Have you seen HBO’s (very good) John Adams? Why, the very first part of that miniseries shows the people of Boston, the aforementioned Mr. Adams included, trying to fill buckets of water because they think there is a fire in town. No one waited for the government-funded fire department, they did it themselves. Self-sufficiency. It’s to be the same across the board, from health care to eating to housing.

America, this man is not qualified to be our President. His actions throughout and prior to this campaign have proven that; his friendships, his damning associations with terrorists and murderous socialist monsters like Kenya’s President Odinga? (Kenya, by the way, is where the American author of an Obama expose has been detained by the Kenyan government, something I heard happen live this morning on Quinn & Rose).

Look. We are in enough trouble, based on what we see on Wall Street and the energy sector. The health sector is about to come crashing down. Barack Obama’s policies would only make things worse.

Do NOT elect this man! It could well be the death of the republic. Does freedom mean so little?