From The American Spectator:
There is no shortage of conspiracy theories that elicit a chuckle or the rolling of eyeballs. “September 11th was an inside job.” “The war on Iraq was launched to enrich Halliburton.” “AIDS was created to annihilate the black community.” But should we be alarmed when a theory appears plausible in an age when the previously unthinkable occurs on a regular basis?
“When the heavy hand of the State is imposed on the press, all of us lose,” Barack Obama told a group of Kenyan journalists during a 2006 trip to Africa. He continued, “The media does not have a formal role in the Government, but it serves a critical function in providing information to the public so that they can hold the Government accountable.”
That was then and this is now. Apparently, a present-day President Obama has a different view — a wild-eyed view — of a free press than did a Senator Obama now that some outlets hold him, his administration and his political allies accountable.
Instead of having the government decide which program merited “the other side” of the argument, what if there was a plan to shut down the free component of talk radio and broadcast TV?
More than 150 bureaucrats at the Federal Communications Commission are in the final stages of planning how to deliver broadband Internet to the estimated 3-6 million people who do not have access. A formal plan will be unveiled in early 2010 but one proposal being discussed is deeply alarming as it threatens First Amendment freedoms.
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) introduced a measure this year that would allow the president to disconnect private broadband users during an undefined national cyber emergency.
Another provision of the bill is to federally-license certain information technology professionals making it illegal for those not holding such a license to access any IT systems. Obviously, the most efficient way to control the nation’s broadband platforms is to control those who operate them.
Connecting the dots in this fashion would not have been contemplated as recently as one year ago. But today, no one is rolling their eyes.
