Oh. My. God.
I can't even believe that I'm reading this. The fact that Newt Gingrich even feels comfortable suggesting something like this in public bodes ill for personal freedom and the rights of every human being within the borders of this nation.
posted by Q. at 12:57:00 PM
3 Comments:
Sir, I believe you have mis-taken this article.
The quotes from Mr. Gingrich do not at all support the assertions by Mr. Yates. In point of fact--and I quote from the article--he "sharply criticized campaign finance laws he charged were reducing free speech". I submit that Mr. Yates has over-stated and spun Mr. Gingrich's position, and Slashdot has taken his lead and continued in the same fashion.
Until text of the actual speech, it would be remiss of us to consider Mr. Yates correct in his assertions.
I may be jumping the gun. This could be a liberal slander-fest. Slashdot has displayed definitive liberal media bias. I probably shouldn't be allowing my self-righteous tendencies to drive the blog. We shall see.
I'll second what tepidpond has to say. The mention of new rules on freedom of speech regarding terrorist recruiting was only one very vague part of what Gingrich had to say, although it did come right at the beginning of the column. Most of what he appears to have said I agree with. I tend to follow the George Will line of reasoning on campain finance reform, that it has served to limit free speech in the form of contributions (I would add that an unintended result has been the proliferation of shrill attack ads like those of the swift boat veterans and moveon.org). Additionally I believe that something should be done about the primary system. You can see the way it failed in Connecticut where the extremely polarized primary failed to select the Democrat (Lieberman) who was ultimately elected after he chose to run as an "independant". I would say that while the Presidential primary system could use some attention as well, the bigger problem is the electoral college. I think that if it is indeed impossible to abolish it that California had the next best idea. The electoral votes from the state automatically go to the candidate who wins the popular vote. Any state that adopted such a rule whould then make itself an automatic "swing state" and the emphasis could be spread more evenly rather than the polarizing methods we saw in the last two presidential elections making individual states and sometimes individual districts of vital national importance.
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