Pat Allen: The View from Right Field

Obamacare Waivers – And More

The issuance of waivers from various requirements under Obamacare continues apace.  In April, in addition to waivers for drug or health companies (27), unions (31), 38 waivers were issued to restaurants, night clubs and hotels in Nancy Pelsoi’s House district. 

While these waivers may be entirely appropriate (I can certainly think of reasons why these businesses might need a waiver), the problem is that it is unclear whether there any standards for the granting of waivers.  It seems to be all at the government’s discretion.  And even though we know who gets a waiver, we don’t know why they got a waiver or why those who didn’t get a waiver were refused.

So here is an idea.  The Obama administration is already drafting rules to require companies who bid on federal contracts to disclose the political contributions that they make, including contributions to private groups that are not currently required to be disclosed.*  The Administration says this is for transparency – even though federal contracts are awarded to the low bidder and there is very little discretion involved. 

So let me suggest this:  If the Administration is so keen on transparency that they want companies that are bidding on contacts which are automatically awarded to the low bidder, to disclose political contributions, why not ask those who apply for an Obamacare waiver, where there really is a lot of discretion involved, to disclose their contributions?

Oh, I forgot.  The Obama administration doesn’t need to ask who the unions are contributing to and they probably know about those places in Nancy Pelosi’s district, too.  There’s no need to bother them.  Never mind.

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PS: I assume the sarcasm in the above was obvious, except, that is, for: (i) the fact that it would be good to understand what the basis is for waivers under Obamacare: and (ii) my very real concern as to why the Administration is pushing for disclosure by businesses who bid for federal contracts of all contributions in excess of $5,000 that they, or their executives, have made to political groups or to independent groups that spend money independently to influence elections.

* “The White House Wants a List,” The Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2011; Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger, “Executives fighting executive order,” Chicago Tribune, May 8, 2011.

Russ Feingold on McCain-Feingold’s Limitations on Free Speech

This is a little late, but it’s still relevant.  Consider this quote from Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, of McCain-Feingold fame (i.e., the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002).  The quotation is from late in Senator Feingold’s campaign for reelection, which he lost:

"I've always been a target in this stuff.  And this year, I'm getting the full dose: over $2 million in these ads [criticizing him] that used to not be legal."

In other words, if the Supreme Court had not, in its Citizens United decision of last January, cut back on some of the restrictions on free speech that were contained in the so-called campaign reform act that bears his name, Senator Feingold would have had $2,000,000 of fewer commercials against him in the fall election.

So why did Senator Feingold, and so many other senators and representatives, support things like McCain-Feingold:  for the good of the country or for the good of their reelection campaigns?  And can they tell the difference?

Update (12/8/10 10:55 pm):  Let me see if I can phrase this another way.  Senator Feingold tried to make it illegal for certain people and certain groups to campaign against him – because he thought they were being unfair.  And it wasn’t good for democracy.  (Or is it that it wasn’t good for “Democracy“?)  In any case, the U.S. Supreme Court said that Senator Feingold’s attempt to stop certain people from criticizing him in certain ways violated the Constitution.  (“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” and all that.)  So Senator Feingold lost in November because, in part, he could no longer stop certain people from saying mean things about him.

Was Juan Williams’ Problem What He Said Or the Fact He Was On Fox?

As everybody knows by now, National Public Radio fired Juan Williams for, inter alia, making the following comment on Fox News:

"‘I mean, look, Bill [O’Reilly], I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.’"

But instead of commenting on that, I wanted to comment on the reaction of some of those on the left to the firing.  For example, consider these excerpts from Michael Tomasky’s blog at Guardian.co.uk (while Tomasky writes for the Guardian, he is American, not British):

“Williams once had a distinguished career. He spent nearly a quarter-century at the Washington Post ….

He … wrote the companion book to the amazing early 90s PBS documentary series on the civil rights movement, Eyes on the Prize. He was a big deal. …

But maybe he changed, too. Because what sort of non-conservative – one perceives Williams to be some degree of liberal; he'd probably protest that he's just a reporter; in either case, he's not a conservative – agreed to be an in-house flunky at Fox? …

[I]f you're any kind of liberal at all, even in the softest and most non-political possible sense, it's basically an indefensible thing to do. Fox News wants liberalism to perish from the face of the earth. Going on their air on a regular basis and lending your name and reputation to their ideological razzle-dazzle is like agreeing to be the regular kulak guest columnist at Pravda in 1929. For ‘balance’. …

In a sense, Williams got what was coming to him. Sleep with dogs, get fleas.”

(The whole column is here.  Please read it to make sure I didn’t change the meaning in excerpting these parts.)

Look at Mr. Tomasky’s mindset.  I think it is safe to say that he is not a big fan of Fox News, though elsewhere in his column he says: "[B]ut then again, I don’t watch.”  You sort of wonder why he cares (or how he knows) if he doesn’t watch.

But, of course, he cares a lot.  His caring actually fits with the comments made by a number of people in the Obama administration in October of 2009 about Fox News.  It started with Communications Director Anita Dunn, but it soon escalated.  Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said it was the White House’s opinion that Fox News was not a “news organization.”  Then both David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel appeared on Sunday morning news shows making the same point.  Mr. Axelrod even encouraged ABC to join the Administration in treating Fox News as illegitimate.  You wondered if it might not be a precursor to an attempt by the Administration to exclude Fox News from the White House press pool, etc.  But it didn’t stick.  Other news organizations didn’t go along.  And the White House seemed to realize that this was not a battle it was going to win, so they quietly dropped it.

At the time, conspiracy theorists might have wondered whether, if the Obama administration could have made the charge stick that Fox News was not a legitimate news organization, they would have then argued that Fox News did not fit within the news media exemption in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (i.e., the McCain-Feingold Act).  Subject to one point that I will get to below (i.e., the Supreme Court decision last January in Citizens United v. FEC), that would have made all of Fox’s political reporting subject to the campaign finance laws, which would have put them, and the criticism of the President that they report, out of business.  More rational conspiracy theorists might have said that this was not the Administration’s original plan, but they would have worried about what the Administration, or another like-minded administration, might do at some point in the future.

One comment for those who think this could never have happened:  In 2006, the State of Washington increased its gas tax by 9.5 cents per gallon.  A group was organized to try to get the increase repealed in a referendum.  A couple of announcers on a Seattle radio station talked up the repeal effort.  Several of the local governments who were going to get money from the increased gas tax brought a lawsuit to stop the two announcers.  They argued that the announcers were not just supporting the repeal; they were agents of the repeal effort.  Therefore, their broadcasts constituted political advertising, and the radio station was making an in-kind contribution to the repeal effort by allowing them to talk about the repeal campaign on the air. 

After the trial court decided against them, the group opposing the increased tax did report the value of the broadcasts as a contribution.  The real problem, though, was going to come later.  Since Washington state limits the amount of contributions a person or company can give in the three-week period before an election, letting the announcers talk about the repeal campaign for more than just a few minutes during this three-week period, could have broken the law and subjected the station to fines.

Ultimately, the lawsuit was thrown out, but the fact that the local governments brought the lawsuit, and that they found a trial court judge who was willing to grant a preliminary injunction on their behalf, is scary enough.  Also, while the Washington State Supreme Court found in favor of the radio station, they did so on the grounds of a media exception in the statute.*  If for some reason, the station was held not be fit within the media exception, the law would have applied to them, and the announcers would have been silenced.  On a federal basis, if Fox News is not a legitimate news media organization, the same theory could be applied to them.

Fortunately, at this point, there are two things stopping this from happening.  First, the Obama administration and people who think like Mr. Tomasky have not been able to convince the rest of us that Fox News is illegitimate.  Second, the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United last January invalidated some of the free speech restrictions on groups organized as corporations.  (As I have mentioned before, President Obama was “somewhat upset” by that decision.) 

However, if the Citizens United decision is reversed by a future Supreme Court, and if the Obama administration or some future administration with similar views is able to convince enough people, or the right people, that Fox News is not a legitimate news organization (and it shouldn’t be too hard with people like Mr. Tomasky), then liberals will be able to rid themselves of this troublesome network.

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* For information on the Washington state case, see here, here and here.

Where’s Molly Norris? “Where’s Muhammad?”

This is two stories on the same point.  The first is about Molly Norris – or at least about the person who used to be called Molly Norris.  Molly Norris is – or was – a cartoonist for weekly newspaper in Seattle.  Because of all of the threats, and resulting self-censorship, that have happened since the Danish cartoons that included drawings of Mohammed, Ms. Norris had an idea.  In order to re-assert our freedoms, her idea was an “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” They couldn’t be mad at everybody.  There would be strength in unity in our defense of freedom.

This idea may not have been the world’s best idea.  Most ideas aren’t.  But that’s not the point.  It’s not the idea; it’s the freedom.

Unfortunately, things did not work out as Molly Norris hoped.  Not many people endorsed her idea. Then an American-born Muslim cleric, who is now hiding in Yemen, issued a fatwa calling for Ms. Norris to be killed.  Ms. Norris retracted her idea, but it was too late.  The fatwa was there. 

And so, Molly Norris has disappeared.  Following the advice of the FBI, she has moved, changed her name, and wiped out her past.  As Clifford May noted, it’s like “being put into a witness-protection program … without the government picking up the tab.”  When Ms. Norris was told that she should always watch to see if she was being followed, she responded, “Well, at least it’ll keep me from being so self-involved.”

You have all head about the mosque near Ground Zero and other things like it.  But how many of you have heard of the cartoonist-who-used-to-be-called-Molly?  Probably not many.  Which is too bad because Ms. Norris deserved better.

Which brings me to the second story.  I am a fan of a comic strip called “Non Sequitur.”  It is written/drawn by Wiley Miller.  Mr. Miller had a “Wendy Norris”-like moment a couple of weeks ago.  Mr. Miller drew a strip that read as follows: “Picture book title voted least likely to ever find a publisher … ‘Where’s Mohammad’”.  The cartoon showed a “Where’s Waldo”-like scene, with Mohammed nowhere to be found.  Mohammed wasn’t in the drawing at all.  But that didn’t stop lots of newspapers, including The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and, I believe, the Chicago Tribune, from not running the cartoon.

You can find some of the bohunkum reasons that editors came up with for not running the cartoon here and here.  I am not going to repeat them.  They are too pathetic.

So, Molly Norris is no more.  Cartoons mentioning the name “Mohammed,” without even drawing him, aren’t run in major newspapers for fear of insulting people (or whatever).  And our freedoms are a little bit less – because we are not willing to stand up for them.

For those of you who did not see “Where’s Mohammad?”, here it is.

 

[I got the cartoon from the GoComics.com website.  If I have violated any of Mr. Miller’s IP rights by repeating it here, I apologize.]

DISCLOSE Act Discloses Mostly Democrats

Sometimes when I am feeling especially naïve, I think how nice it would be if we could trust our representatives in Congress to play reasonably fair and not use the system for partisan advantage. But we can’t, of course. Here is the most recent example.

President Obama made his displeasure with the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case clear earlier this year. The Citizens United decision invalidated a law which had prohibited corporations from making certain types of political speech in the 30 days before a primary election and in the 60 days before a general election.

Now the first thing to note here is that the word "corporation" does not just mean businesses. "Corporation" as used here refers to a form of organization. Businesses are usually corporations, but so are labor unions and public interest groups. So the Supreme Court decision did not just free up businesses, it allowed unions and public interest groups to talk, too. (President Obama didn’t mention this point when he complained about the decision in his State of the Union address.)

Along with President Obama, the Democrats in Congress did not like this decision. So they have come up with something called the DISCLOSE Act. "DISCLOSE" is short for "Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections". (Truth in labeling laws do not apply to Congress.)

Of course, the real purpose of the Disclose Act is to help Democrats in the fall elections by limiting the right of businesses and others to say what they think about various candidates. The initial bill, which was sponsored by the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (you can’t make this stuff up; nobody would believe it), didn’t apply to unions – for some unknown reason. That wasn’t going to fly in the Senate so the limits now apply to businesses and unions, except for practical reasons, the effect will be more on businesses than unions.

There is also an exception for some interest groups, though not many. The original exception was tailored to exclude just the National Rifle Association. This was done in the House because otherwise Blue Dog Democrats would have voted against the bill. (As I said, you can’t make this stuff up.) That was so outrageous that a few other interest groups are now also excluded, but not many.

The bill is scheduled for a cloture vote in the Senate this week. There haven’t been any hearings, but Senator Reid doesn’t have time for that. He has elections to win (both personal and for his party).

The pure partisanship in all of this can be seen in the number of Republicans who voted for the bill in the House (two) and the number Senator Reid is hoping to pick up in the Senate (also about two). Whatever you think of McCain-Feingold (and I didn’t like it), it was bipartisan. This thing is about as bipartisan as the annual Cubs Convention.

The First Amendment should ultimately stop this. But that won’t happen immediately, and all the Democrats care about is getting past November. They can worry about the next election later.

Of course, the Democrats in Congress have the perfect role model for what they are doing here in President Obama. When he was just another candidate for the Democratic nomination for President, he agreed that, if John McCain was the Republican nominee and Senator McCain agreed to accept public financing for the presidential election, he would, too. After then-Senator Obama won the nomination and he realized he could raise more money than Senator McCain, he backed out, claiming that what he was doing was the equivalent of public financing because the public was giving him contributions.* (One more time: You can’t make this stuff up.)

All in all, about the only thing the DISCLOSE Act discloses is how far the Democrats will go to win in November.

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Sources re DISCLOSE Act: Debra Saunders, "In Washington, ‘Disclose’ Means Stifle," June 29, 2010; Russell Berman, "House approves campaign finance measure by 219-206," The Hill, June 24, 2010; "The Schumer for Majority Leader Act," The Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2010;

* See here, here and here.

Update (7/28/10 8:45/8:55 am):  While I was writing this yesterday and before I posted it this morning, the Senate defeated Senator Reid's cloture vote 57-41.  All Senate Republicans voted no (except John Ensign who was absent).  All Democrats voted yes.  Once again:  If you can't get Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins, it says something about the bill.

Chief Justice Roberts Responds to President Obama

During his first State of the Union address, President Obama roundly criticized the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This was the decision that invalidated the provision in McCain-Feingold which prohibited corporations (including groups like the NRA, the Sierra Club, and the ACLU) from making positive or negative comments about candidates for federal office in TV or radio ads during the 30 days before a primary election and the 60 days before a general election.,

In response to a question by a law student at the University of Alabama yesterday, Chief Justice Roberts said this:

"I have no problems with that [i.e., criticism of Supreme Court decisions]. On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum.

The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according to the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling."

Wow. Obviously, the left-leaning blogs will go crazy. It will be interesting to see what President Obama says.

The Health Care Debate, Government Intimidation and the First Amendment

Two amazing stories. The first is from last Monday:

"The government is investigating a major insurance company for allegedly trying to scare seniors with a mailer warning they could lose important benefits under health care legislation in Congress.

The Health and Human Services Department launched its investigation of Humana after getting a complaint from Sen. Max Baucus ….

The Senate committee that Baucus chairs — Finance — will vote this week on a sweeping health care plan that he's proposed to expand coverage and try to control costs. It would cut Medicare and Medicaid spending by about $500 billion over 10 years, but Baucus says that would lead to greater efficiency, not reduced benefits.

‘The health care reform bill we released ... strengthens Medicare and does not cut benefits,’ said Baucus. ‘From lower prescription drug costs, to free preventive care, to better treatment for chronic conditions, seniors have so much to gain from health reform — and I'm not going to let insurance company profits stand in the way of improving Medicare for seniors.’

Humana is one of the largest private carriers serving seniors under a program called Medicare Advantage. About one-fourth of the elderly and disabled people covered under Medicare participate in the Advantage program, which offers a choice of private plans that usually deliver added benefits. …

Government experts say the private plans are being paid too much — about 14 percent more than it costs to care for seniors in traditional Medicare. The Baucus plan — and other proposals — would reduce payments to the plans, and the health insurance industry is fighting back.

The Humana mailer focused squarely on the Medicare Advantage program.

‘While these programs need to be made more efficient, if the proposed funding cut levels become law, millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable,’ it said."

This attempt, which has apparently been successful, by Senator Baucus (and the Department of Health and Human Services) to prevent Humana from talking with its policy-holders about the health care plans being considered in Congress is mind-boggling. I understand that the Supreme Court provides less protection under the First Amendment for what it calls "commercial speech," but I find it hard to see how any exception should apply here. Humana was trying to tell people who had bought health care insurance from it what it thought the effect of the various plans being considered in Congress might be on the policies they had bought from Humana. This is the essence of what the First Amendment is all about. This is not about pornography or other side issues like that This is about public policy and matters being considered right now by Congress And yet, Senator Baucus has used his power as a committee chair in Congress and the power of the executive branch to stop a private person (or entity) from talking.

Senator Baucus justifies his action on the grounds that it is "unacceptable for insurance companies to mislead seniors" about health care reform. But this is not an acceptable defense or justification. And it doesn’t matter whether what Humana was saying was right or wrong. (See below.) The point is that the purpose of the First Amendment is to protect the right of people to talk and argue about public policy. The First Amendment is designed to prevent those in power, such as Senator Baucus and the Obama administration, from trying to silence critics who disagree with what they are doing or proposing.

Actually, this seems to be a bit of a tendency in the Obama administration and for Democrats in Congress in general. They really do not seem to like people disagreeing with them. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has attacked those who disagree with the President’s health care proposals. In the words of Debra Saunders, "a teary-eyed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she is worried that the language being used by the critics of Obama’s health care plan will lead to ‘violence’", a concern that I do not remember Ms. Pelosi having about protests against the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq.

The President does it, too. Back in August, he said this about some of his critics:

"I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to just get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them but don’t do a lot of talking."

A week ago, in his Sunday news show marathon, the President, during an extended exchange with George Stephanopoulos about whether the amount that people would have to pay if they did not buy health insurance should be considered a tax, said that "[n]obdy considers that a tax increase." Except that is just not true. There are people who consider it that. (See here.)

The President did the same thing back in January, when he was promoting his stimulus program. On January 9, he said, "[t]here is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy." Except it wasn’t true, either. The Cato Institute ran full page ads listing over two hundred economic professors who disagreed. (Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2009).

The President is great at giving speeches, and he talks about wanting to engage in discussions with people who disagree with him. But I am not sure he really means it, especially when people start to effectively disagree with his proposals. If people argue too persistently, the President seems to get upset.

I do not know how concerned we should be about this. Maybe the President and his party in Congress will, in due course, take a moment to reflect on their tactics. Maybe they will begin to understand that they need to pass their programs with the power of their arguments, as opposed to intimidating people into silence. But it is something that needs to be carefully watched because it has the potential to be dangerous.

One final point, a point that I did not want to raise earlier because it is not really relevant to my main concern. My main concern is the effort to silence debate, to stop certain people from talking and/or certain arguments from being made. It doesn’t matter whether arguments are right or wrong. People have the right to make them.

But in the case of Senator Baucus silencing Humana, the fact is that Humana was right. See this article, which appeared on Wednesday:

"Congress' chief budget officer is contradicting President Barack Obama's oft-stated claim that seniors wouldn't see their Medicare benefits cut under a health care overhaul.

The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, told senators Tuesday that seniors in Medicare's managed care plans would see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance Committee.

The bill would cut payments to the Medicare Advantage plans by more than $100 billion over 10 years.

Elmendorf said the changes would reduce the extra benefits that would be made available to beneficiaries."

In other words, Humana was right. It may be that Senator Baucus does not like the Medicare Advantage program. He might think that it is waste of government money, that it unfairly helps some seniors over others, and that we should get rid of it. But the fact is, Senator Baucus’s plan would reduce the amount of money of that the government pays to insurance companies on Medicare Advantage plans, which would probably result in a reduction in benefits under the plans. Maybe it is appropriate to reduce these payments; maybe it is fair; maybe the overall program Senator Baucus is proposing will help people. But what Humana was saying was right; passing his plan could reduce benefits for some seniors. And Senator Baucus used his power as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and he got the Obama administration to use its power, too, to silence Humana because he did not like this argument being made.

During the Clinton administration, it was jokingly said that, when the President visited town, you should protect your daughters. If this continues, it may be that, during the Obama administration, we need to worry about protecting the First Amendment.

Freedom of Speech – High School Style

According to an article in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune:

"After printing stories detailing the casual sexual encounters of students, the Stevenson High School [Lincolnshire, Illinois] newspaper must now submit to new restrictions that have drawn fire from parents and critics concerned about censorship. …

First amendment advocates are also angered.

‘Prior review is camouflaged censorship,’ said Randy Swikle, Illinois director of the Journalism Education Association."

Three comments on the censorship (and the First Amendment) argument:

First, we’re talking about a high school newspaper. This is not The Washington Post or CNN. It’s not even talk radio (which some Democrats are actually trying to effectively censor by re-imposing the "Fairness Doctrine"). It’s just high school.

Second, before you talk about freedom of the press and censorship, take a look at who owns the "press" in this case. It’s the high school. It’s the high school’s money that pays for it. If these kids want to write a newspaper without interference, they should start their own paper. They need to use their own money. They need to do it on their own time, away from school. Then they would have a freedom of the press case.

Third, if the school newspaper publishes anything that somebody considers libelous or thinks is an unfair invasion of their privacy, who is going to get sued? The school district. This being America, school districts get sued for things all the time. And lawsuits cost lots of money, even if you win them. It would be irresponsible for the school board and the school administration to subject the school to such a risk.

Bottom line, if these kids really want to run their own newspaper, let them do it on their own time, with their own money, and with their own insurance policy against lawsuits.

Campaign Spending and The Dog That Didn't Bark

An important clue in one of Sherlock Holmes’s mysteries was the dog that didn’t bark. Political campaigns have such things, too. One of the interesting ones this year is the absence of complaints by liberals and Democrats about campaign spending. By this time in most campaigns, Democrats are complaining that Republicans, and Republican-leaning groups, are spending way more money on political ads than the Democrats can. Liberals say this is unfair because it allows Republicans to, in effect, "buy" elections. Their theory is that the party with the most ads will get the most votes. This is one of the reasons Democrats pass laws to put caps on political contributions and would, if it hadn’t been held unconstitutional, like to put limits on how much money a candidate could spend. After all, if one party or one candidate can spend more money than their opponent, then the election isn’t fair, and the party or person with less money doesn’t have an equal chance to get their message across to the voters.

I have never believed these theories, for at least a couple of reasons. First, I don’t think Americans are so stupid that they just automatically vote for the candidate with the most commercials. I think issues, and the candidates’ positions on the issues, actually have a lot to do with how people vote.

Second, differences in the amount of money candidates have to buy commercials don’t bother me because I think it is less of a matter of the candidate with the most money getting the most votes and more a matter of the candidate with the most supporters (and therefore, on the election day, the most votes) getting the most contributions.

So, why isn’t the dog barking this year? Why aren’t the liberals and Democrats complaining about the differences in the amount of money available to the two presidential candidates? Is it because they have finally come round to my view on laws regulating campaign spending – or is it because, as Politico noted here, "Obama drowning out McCain in TV ads"?

I do not object to Senator Obama spending as much money as he can raise. I think that is what freedom and the First Amendment are all about. I just hope that Senator Obama’s supporters will remember their silence this year when, sometime in the future, the wallet is in the other pocket.

Oprah Says No to Sarah Palin

Oprah Winfrey has said that, because of her support for Barack Obama, she will not have Sarah Palin (or any other politician) on her show before the election. Three comments. First, I have no problem with her decision. It’s her show and it’s her money. She gets to decide what to do with it.

Second, I would hope that those who support Oprah’s decision to not have Governor Palin on her show, will give the same benefit to conservative talk radio hosts and let them do with their shows what they want to do. After all, if Oprah can decide not to have Governor Palin on her show because she supports Senator Obama, why should the federal government pass a new version of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," as many liberal Democrats have proposed, to require radio stations and radio shows to provide political "balance" (as defined by the federal government) on their shows.

Some will say Oprah’s situation is different because in her case it is not a question of balance since she is not having any politicians on her show. No, that’s not it. I think what Oprah is saying is that she wants to get Barack Obama elected, and therefore she is not going to let anybody appear on her show because that might help them beat Senator Obama. But as I said, I have no problem with that. It’s her show. She gets to decide what to do with it. I just think the same theory should apply to talk radio.

Third, if Oprah can decide to not have Governor Palin on her show, then I hope nobody objects if people who disagree with Oprah’s support of Senator Obama decide to not watch her show or to not buy the products that she sells or that are advertised on her show. After all, if Oprah wants to use her influence, the influence that comes from the number of people who watch her show, to support Senator Obama, then people who do not support Senator Obama have the right to not add to her influence by watching her show and buying her products. They have the right to not add to the influence she has, influence she is using to elect a candidate they disagree with.