Barack Obama is trying to silence a group that is raising legitimate, unanswered questions about Obama's ties to the terrorist William Ayers. He is threatening to employ the Justice Department to pressure television stations that carry advertisements linking him to Ayers. And he is impliedly threatening to have the stations' broadcast licenses revoked, asserting that running the ads violates the stations' obligations to operate "in the public interest." That phrase is a term of art, the standard for determining which television stations get to broadcast and which ones do not.
I have not seen the ads. Perhaps they imply stronger inferences than the evidence will bear. However, Obama is a public figure, so the ads are almost certainly not defamatory. Cheaps shots? Perhaps. But in this country we happen to believe that tough questions in a political campaign are protected under the First Amendment. And we trust American citizens to distinguish between political ads that are legitimate and those that are over the line.
The bigger issue is this. If Candidate Obama is willing to go to such extremes to silence critics during a political campaign, imagine what a President Obama might do once he has actually obtained the reigns of power. The man obviously has little regard for the First Amendment. Add this to the list of things -- human life, marriage, free markets -- for which he has little regard, and one discerns a troubling pattern.
UPDATE: Police in Denver have arrested an ABC news producer for "trespass" on a public sidewalk, a physical impossibility. At the time of his arrest, the producer was attempting to photograph Democratic senators and DNC donors. How little do Obama's folks value free speech?
I am informed that Rush Limbaugh is covering this story on his radio show.
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