The American Guesser

From Reason Online, a look at whether or not the election of Barack Obama is bad news for freedom of speech on radio, television and the Internet:

First the good news: The fairness doctrine is still dead, and it probably will stay dead even if Barack Obama becomes president. The doctrine, a rule that gave the government the power to punish broadcasters for being insufficiently balanced, was killed off 21 years ago. It isn’t likely to return, despite persistent rumors that the regulation’s rotting corpse will crawl from its coffin and disembowel Rush Limbaugh.
Now the bad news. There’s a host of other broadcast regulations that Obama has not foresworn. In the worst-case scenario, they suggest a world where the FCC creates intrusive new rules by fiat, meddles more with the content of stations’ programs, and uses the pending extensions of broadband access as an opportunity to put its paws on the Internet. At a time when cultural production has been exploding, fueled by increasingly diverse and participatory new media, we would be stepping back toward the days when the broadcast media were a centralized and cozy public-private partnership.

[snip]

Now the bad news. There’s a host of other broadcast regulations that Obama has not foresworn. In the worst-case scenario, they suggest a world where the FCC creates intrusive new rules by fiat, meddles more with the content of stations’ programs, and uses the pending extensions of broadband access as an opportunity to put its paws on the Internet. At a time when cultural production has been exploding, fueled by increasingly diverse and participatory new media, we would be stepping back toward the days when the broadcast media were a centralized and cozy public-private partnership.

Via Ballot Access News:

On November 13, Alan Keyes and his vice-presidential running mate in California, Reverend Wiley Drake, and other members of the American Independent Party, filed a new lawsuit over Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president. Keyes v Bowen, Superior Court, Sacramento, 34-2008-80000096-cu-wm-gds.

Unlike other lawsuits about the eligibility of either John McCain or Obama to serve as president, this case has a presidential candidate plaintiff. All the other cases have been dismissed because the plaintiffs were said to lack standing. This is the first case with a presidential candidate-plaintiff.

It’s all about the rumors that Obama wasn’t born in the United States.Or that he’s not a citizen because his dad wasn’t an American. Whatever. His mother was an American. It’s nonsense, of course. And there’s no way that ANY court would rule against Obama at this point.

UPDATE: W. James Antle, III at American Spectator had this take on Keyes’ effort:

As Weigel points out, Keyes is actually the sanest person actively involved in pushing this conspiracy theory. Phil Berg is a 9/11 truther, Andy Martin once ran for Congress (as a Democrat) in order “exterminate Jew power.” More interesting is what has happened to Keyes. He was once an interesting conservative thinker, even if he lacked the people skills for electoral politics. But the Obama-Keyes Senate race seems to have been a sad turning point in the former Reagan administration official’s career.