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RUSH: Human Events, a piece here by John Gizzi: ‘The speaker of the House made it clear to me and more than forty of my colleagues yesterday that a bill by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) to outlaw the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ would not see the light of day in Congress during ’08. In ruling out a vote on Pence’s proposed Broadcaster’s Freedom Act, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also signaled her strong support for revival of the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ — which would require radio station owners to provide equal time to radio commentary.’ The Fairness Doctrine is not equal time. Equal time is a totally different thing. Here’s how the Fairness Doctrine works, or used to. I’ll use myself. Let’s apply it as it does today. I talked about the leftists and their environmental wacko agenda. Okay, so how many leftist groups are there in this country that could call every one of my 600-plus radio stations and say, ‘We don’t like what Limbaugh said, and we need a chance to respond.’ So you’ve got 600 general managers at radio stations, ‘We have to, the law says I gotta put ’em on here.’

So you have to put on nonprofessionals, give them some time, they get a chance to answer this stuff, you end up with boring radio, and you end up with a nightmare of logistics. The way it would manifest itself over a passage of time is that a lot of management just wouldn’t put up with. ‘I can’t run a radio station this way where most of my day is spent answering the phone from a bunch of liberals demanding that they get some time on the radio to respond to whatever my conservative hosts are saying,’ and so they shut it down. They kill the format, and they go play Chinese opera or whatever. That’s the objective. So this guy John Gizzi was with 40 other journalists talking to Pelosi yesterday, and he asked her, ‘Do you personally support revival of the Fairness Doctrine?’ ‘Yes,’ she said, without hesitation. Yes, without hesitation. The whole Democrat Party does. If they get their way, if they have these swinging majorities, they’re going to do their best to re-impose the Fairness Doctrine. We’re not going to go down without a fight, and I’m not crying about this. I’m just trying to illustrate what’s at stake here. It’s a lot more than judges. These people are going to try to consolidate their power and just get rid of anybody that disagrees with them. All dissent is going to be squelched.

Pence has put out a statement: ‘US Congressman Mike Pence gave the following speech on the floor of the US House of Representatives today calling on Democrats to sign a discharge petition that would bring H.R. 2905, the Broadcaster Freedom Act, to the floor of the US House. The Broadcaster Freedom Act would ensure that no future president could bring back the Fairness Doctrine without an act of Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is quoted this morning saying she supports reviving the Fairness Doctrine. ‘One year ago, over 300 Democrats and Republicans stood together to oppose efforts to restore the so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine’ to the airwaves of this country for a single year — it was an encouraging vote. But following that vote, I introduced the Broadcaster Freedom Act which would permanently ban the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ from ever coming back. And so far, not one single House Democrat has signed our petition for an up-or-down vote on broadcast freedom…and now we know why. Asked yesterday if she supported reviving the ‘Fairness Doctrine,’ Speaker Nancy Pelosi replied ‘yes.’ She told a meeting at the Christian Science Monitor that the Broadcaster Freedom Act would not receive a vote because ‘the interest of my caucus is the reverse.’ I say to Speaker Pelosi with respect: ‘Defending freedom is the paramount interest of every Member of the American Congress. I urge my Democrat colleagues to take a stand for freedom. Oppose the Democrat leadership’s plan to censor the airwaves of American talk radio and American Christian radio. Sign the discharge petition for Broadcast Freedom, and help us send the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ to the ash heap of broadcast history, where it belongs.”’

Pelosi has sent the word out, no Democrat in the House is going to sign that discharge position. It needs 218 or 219 signatures, and she’s sent down the message from on high. So you see that wherever you look, whether it’s global warming, whether it’s the Fairness Doctrine, it doesn’t matter, there is an all-out attempt here to snuff out as much individual liberty as possible. It’s been going kind of slow, like a trickle effect so that people haven’t really noticed it. The people losing their liberty have. But it’s been very, very gradual over years. This is going to be a giant grab of federal power, if these people get everything they want in the upcoming election.

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