The Obama--Ayers Controversy is not Going Away

Obama has to explain his association with terrorist Bill Ayers and he has to do it now. His protestations that he was "eight years old" at the time of Ayers violence rings hollow with me and I suspect many others as well (including liberals).

The Obama campaign instead has chosen the tack of intimidation to keep the story under wraps and it's now to the point that the God-given right of Freedom of Speech is under attack by the Democrat nominee. This from the AIP:

The Barack Obama campaign has now sent a second letter to the Department of Justice calling for the prosecution of one of American Issues Project’s donors for his role in funding a political advertisement in full compliance with all election laws.

“Having failed in its attempts to get our legal, factual and fully-supported ad off the air, Barack Obama’s campaign now wants to put our donors in prison for exercising their right to free speech,” said Ed Martin, American Issues Project’s president. “These over-the-top bullying tactics are reminiscent of the kind of censorship one would see in a Stalinist dictatorship, with the only difference being that those guys generally had to wait until they were in power to throw people who disagreed with them into jail.”

Please keep up on this important issue as it is an alarming vision of what we could expect in an Obama administration. Michelle Malkin is writing great pieces about this daily.

I for one will not let this crucial story go. A guy who is now the Democrat nominee was associated with a man who waged war against this country. He has never apologized for his actions and didn't go to jail for the crimes simply because charges were dropped on a technicality. Think if John McCain had been shown to have an association with Timothy McVeigh and you'll grasp the significance.

My Support For Lionheart Ends

I've written about Brit blogger Lionheart who is facing arrest for "inciting racism". You can read the posts at the links for background.

Anyway, Charles Johnson wrote a post supporting Lionheart and then as an update added this:

UPDATE at 1/7/08 10:43:47 am:

Konservo notes that Lionheart is a supporter of the neo-fascist British National Party, which leads me to state clearly that by posting about the case, I am not supporting what Lionheart says on his blog—just his right to say it.

As with my position on Vlaams Belang and other European neo-fascist parties, I want nothing to do with the BNP. But criminalizing speech is exactly the wrong way to handle them.

A disagreement on his ideology but Charles explained that he thinks what they are doing to him is wrong.

Well, Lionheart didn't like the update Charles added and posted the following:

Little Green Footballs you are a traitor, nothing less than the equivalent of a Second World War Nazi collaborator who would have been shot because of his treason - I am sure there are many who would have obliged!

Well I'll say right now in no uncertain words that you scare me Lionheart. Not scare as in I fear you but scare as in your ideology is no different than the Jihadi's and other Muslims you rail against. You want this to become a religious war akin to the Crusades and will do everything to stoke that. Your belief in God does not make you the Crusader you think it does, it makes you sound like a raging zealot. You say Charles is a "traitor", a traitor to whom or what? I'm assuming you mean a traitor to the white race by context used and that would make you a racist and would bolster Charles' rationale for updating that post the way he did.

I'm sorry for your problems with the law but I feel strongly that I can no longer support you individually or the words you write. There are two sides and they aren't Christian and non-Christian. Those two sides are right and wrong and you fall into the latter.

I hope things work out in the future for you and I hope you find it in your heart to let go of the hate.

Update: My thoughts spelled out in previous posts about the the actions of the British government stand. It is wrong that they are threatening arrest for a man because of the words he wrote. That's censorship and to an American is abhorrent. By saying I end my support, I mean that I will no longer post anything about the man with the possible exception of legal proceedings, etc. in the interest of pointing out the abuses of the UK legal system.

Update: More on this issue here and why I believe that Lionheart and his supporters are so venomous.

Embattled British Blogger Lionheart Interviewed by PJM

I talked of British blogger Lionheart previously. He's the blogger who is under threat of arrest from UK police for "inciting hatred", a not very well defined offense.

This story will not, can not die and all light must be shed on it. Regardless of how your views mesh with this guy, it's an issue that affects everyone by affecting just this one.

Phyllis Chesler of Pajama's Media has an interview with Lionheart and I recommend you take a few moments to read it. This can happen to any blogger because governments hate this medium and the freedom we now possess to write about anything. We have constitutional protections in America, they don't in Britain.

The Faux Conspiracy Against Springsteen

Down With Tyranny! has his thong in a bunch today because he suspects the evil radio conglomerate Clear Channel is not playing the new Springsteen album. The rationale is that Springsteen wrote an album critical of Bush, Clear Channel is a huge corporation and is chummy with the President (or at least doesn't want to piss him off) and as a result, you have no "Boss" on the air.

He's a bit exercised and cites as evidence that this is a trend the way that Clear Channel handled the Dixie Chicks incident in which the inane Natalie Maines went off on the President in London during a live show.

Here's an excerpt:

Republican radio network Clear Channel, a monopoly in many cities and a dominant player in most of the rest, isn't interested. Is it because Springsteen has been an outspoken campaigner for Democrats and progressives? Clear Channel has taken a political stand with its programming in the past. Just think back to their boycott of the Dixie Chicks. Oh, no... not way back, just back to when they released their most recent album. Despite being one of the top 10 best-selling American albums of the year-- across all genres and demographics-- radio studiously ignored it. There were maybe half a dozen country stations that even played it at all. What Clear Channel did to the Dixie Chicks is a watertight case for the need to break the media companies up into a thousand pieces. (John Sununu disagrees; he's pro-censorship.)

First, the links don't show that Clear Channel had any complicity in not playing the Dixie Chicks music. Both links refer to Cumulus and a concerted effort by them to not play the Dixie Chicks but says nothing of Clear Channel. So right off the bat, the theory of a pattern is shot out of the water. The Fox News coverage is a rumor and it is highly inconclusive as to whether or not there's any merit to it. In fact, DWT in an update conradicts himself:

The Fox News report I linked to isn't exactly right. Some Clear Channel stations are indeed playing it, although mostly Clear Channel stations with independent-minded programmers like KBCO in Denver. Overall, Clear Channel isn't giving it the kind of exposure a #1 record would normally get.

In the immortal words of Gilda Radner's Emily Litella: "never mind."

What liberals fail to realize and it is a huge issue is that companies cannot censor anyone, only government entities can. Clear Channel and Cumulus are private companies and have the right to play whatever they wish whenever they wish. They will suffer the economic consequences of their actions just as Maines did when she belittled Bush. It's quite simple, words have consequences and Maines moaned and whined because she spoke without a forethought of what those consequences would be. The words I'm writing today have consequences and that's why I choose my words carefully. It wasn't even so much what Maines said--it was actually pretty inoccuous stuff compared to what flows out of the left-wing gutters nowadays, it was the fact that she said it overseas during a time of war and it struck people who love America as unpatriotic. I imagine quite a few live in Texas.

Further evidence of the utter inanity of the post was in evidence a few years ago when both System of a Down and Green Day put out albums severely critical of Bush and the War on Terror and both were played incessantly on Clear Channel stations.

Lastly, radio stations like Clear Channel and others are not the behemoths they once were. I never listen to local radio, only Sirius and downloaded music on my MP3 player. The only people who buy CD's anymore are old farts who evidently listen to Springsteen. The money is made in downloads and live shows as has been shown by band after band. The record business is dead with respect to selling anything in stores, as Radiohead showed with their recent Internet-only release, if you can't get around the big radio stations and get your music heard, you're either an idiot or your music sucks. I think Springsteen is an excellent musician (and I was raised in New Jersey so to not think so is sacrilege) so the former is probably the case.

For my thoughts on the death of rock go here. Down With Tyranny gets a woody everytime an anti-Bush CD comes out and I guess I have the responsibility to smack some friggin sense back into him from time-to-time. Previous posts on this subject here.