How Obama Contradicted his own Legislation
The relationship between avowed terrorist-cum-professor Bill Ayers and Barack Obama has been given paltry attention when compared with the recent whirlwind of examination and insinuation surrounding vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Obama most recently dismissed his relationship with Ayers again during the interview with Bill O’Reilly, calling the Ayers relationship another baseless “guilt-by-association” tactic by the right.
Should the Ayers relationship lead us to presume that Obama has terrorist sympathies? Some have suggested as much, but it is highly unlikely that Obama would publicly align himself with members of Weatherman today, much less espouse the actions committed by this 70’s terrorist group in 2008. Perhaps more interesting than the debate of whether Obama have ever been a radical leftist sympathizer is looking at his very current actions in response to Ayers-related investigations.
Malkin, Hewitt, and the like have condemned the response of Obama’s campaign to the appearance of conservative writer Stanley Kurtz on Chicago host Milt Rosenberg’s WGN radio program. Rather than accepting Rosenberg’s invitation to appear on the same show with Stanley Kurtz, the Obama campaign sent a mass email and urged supporters to phone into the program in protest of Professor Kurtz’s discussion of the Ayers-Obama relationship (see the Obama Action Wire email on Politico). Obama waged a successful phone campaign, and thousands of callers tied up phone lines to insist that “Rosenberg shut down the Kurtz interview.” Conservative commentators dubbed these “thuggish” attacks as one in a long string of attempts by Obama to silence his critics.
Ironically, either Obama can’t educate his own campaign on his own positions, or Obama has given his campaign free reign in combating conservative critiques – even if it means reneging on his own legislation. Obama introduced the “Election Jamming Prevention Act of 2006,” which would suggest that a tactic as the one employed on Stanley Kurtz & WGN’s Milt Rosenberg would be derided and denied.
The legislation, introduced just 20 months earlier than the attack on Stanley Kurtz, exposed these very same “telephone jamming techniques.” From the “Election Jamming Prevention Act of 2006”:
In recent elections, there have been allegations of political campaigns and committees using telephone jamming techniques to shut down the communication operations of groups supporting their political opponents. (Sec.2.4)
The use of telephones or other communication devices to jam election-related communications should be prohibited in order to protect qualified voters’ right to vote. (Sec.2.7)
Such techniques would include any with the “intent to”
- annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person at the called number or who receives the communications (Sec.3.a.1.i)
- prevent or obstruct the broadcast or exchange of election-related information (Sec.3.a.1.ii)
And just to be clear, “the term `election-related information’ means information related to– endorsement, support, promotion of, or opposition to any clearly identified candidate…” (Sec.2.5.A)
That Obama recognizes the effectiveness of phone-jamming techniques is spot-on; he introduced legislation that clearly identified and denounced them. What is not so clear is Obama’s apparent attitude toward his own legislation and, indeed, toward reform in general. Obama uses the very tactic that he actively denounces, with no qualms (note that he didn’t apologize for the “Obama Action Wire” during this episode). This attitude resembles more of Obama’s “Chicago-style” politics than the upright image his campaign is trying to put forward.
To turn the adage on its head, here is a case where the curse has its blessing. What a good thing for Obama that he hasn’t had much to show for his 143 days in the senate: his “Election Jamming Prevention Act of 2006” never got beyond Obama’s reading the bill (twice) to the Senate.
