What we have to look forward to under an Obama/Pelosi/Reid administration:

A Democrat-controlled Washington will use sweeping new rules to shush conservative political speech. For starters, expect a real push to bring back the Fairness Doctrine.

True, Obama says he isn’t in favor of re-imposing this regulation, which, until Ronald Reagan’s FCC junked it in the ’80s, required broadcasters to give airtime to opposing viewpoints or face fines or even loss of license. But most top Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, are revved up about the idea, and it’s hard to imagine Obama vetoing a new doctrine if Congress delivers him one.

Make no mistake: a new Fairness Doctrine would vaporize political talk radio, the one major medium dominated by the right. If a station ran a successful conservative program like, say, Mark Levin’s, it would also have to run a left-leaning alternative, even if — as with Air America and all other liberal efforts in the medium to date — it can’t find any listeners or sponsors.

There’s certainly nothing in Obama’s current behavior to indicate otherwise, as the editorial points out.

Even ignoring the First Amendment issues (which are sufficient reason in themselves to fight it), it would be a nightmare for broadcasters to enforce. What is “balance,” and who would decide? The model here is for the issue ad. If there’s a proposition on the ballot, and you run an editorial on it (say) in favor, then it’s fairly straightforward to say that it could be balanced by an editorial against it. But even there, who gets the opportunity? There might be multiple people or groups against it for different reasons, some more articulate than others. How would it be decided which of them got to “balance” it?

And once we get outside that narrow focus, into talk radio itself, it becomes a real nightmare, and a litigator’s delight. Consider Larry Elder, who is mostly a libertarian. Who “balances” him? A socialist who disagrees with his economics? A “conservative” who disagrees with his views on pornography and drugs?

What single blog is the antithesis of this one, or Instapundit? I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be the television or radio program director who had to decide. All of this, of course, is predicated on the simpleton’s assumption that political views and issues can be expressed on a unidimensional “left-right” scale. And even if that were the case, and political issues didn’t fall into a hypercube of multiple dimensions coming from all points on the hyperspherical compass, it wouldn’t be that simple, because the magnitude has to be calibrated as well. Is Rush Limbaugh as far “right” as Randi Rhodes is far “left”? Where is the pivot on the scale? Who determines what is “mainstream”? Ted Kennedy?

The First Amendment should have put a stake through the heart of this pernicious and anti-freedom nonsense years ago, but the fascist proponents of things like it have long abandoned principles like that.

[Afternoon update]

Treacher has some thoughts on the “Deathbed Media.”

Joe Biden stood next to Hillary Clinton in Scranton, PA today, and said with a perfectly straight face that she never abused her power.

Tell it to Billy Dale. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

…and Molotov cocktails. Will this get as much news coverage as the phantom cries of “kill him” at MCain/Palin rallies (of which there has only been one reported)?

[Update a couple minutes later]

Michelle Malkin has more leftist rage and hatred. Feel the love of the left.

As the first commenter notes, this is typical projection. They accuse others of doing what they are actually doing (lying, racemongering, hating).

Is Obama sweating?

Probably not. Whatever happens won’t happen until after the election, and at that point, he’ll be untouchable, with the Dems in control of both houses. This is part of the point that I was making in my PJM piece yesterday. Because the media is covering for him, we’re about to unwittingly (at least to much of the electorate–much of the rest, sadly, doesn’t care) put another crooked but charismatic politician in the White House, just as we did in 1992.

And it goes without saying, of course, that if this were the Republican candidate, it would be headline news every day for the next three weeks. But it’s not.

If the potential economic disaster of a Democrat regime doesn’t concern you, consider the implications for free speech.

As Mark Steyn comments, don’t be surprised to see an effort to establish “human rights” commissions, a la Canada.

Part of the Kennedy myth that propelled him into the White House was that he wrote a Pulitzer-winning book. Only many years later was it revealed that the actual author, or at least ghost writer, was Ted Sorenson.

Well, now we have an interesting question.

Who wrote Dreams of My Father?

A 1990 New York Times profile on Obama’s election as Harvard’s first black president caught the eye of agent Jane Dystel. She persuaded Poseidon, a small imprint of Simon & Schuster, to authorize a roughly $125,000 advance for Obama’s proposed memoir.

With advance in hand, Obama repaired to Chicago where he dithered. At one point, in order to finish without interruption, he and wife Michelle decamped to Bali. Obama was supposed to have finished the book within a year. Bali or not, advance or no, he could not. He was surely in way over his head.

According to a surprisingly harsh 2006 article by liberal publisher Peter Osnos, which detailed the “ruthlessness” of Obama’s literary ascent, Simon & Schuster canceled the contract. Dystel did not give up. She solicited Times Book, the division of Random House at which Osnos was publisher. He met with Obama, took his word that he could finish the book, and authorized a new advance of $40,000.

Then suddenly, somehow, the muse descended on Obama and transformed him from a struggling, unschooled amateur, with no paper trail beyond an unremarkable legal note and a poem about fig-stomping apes, into a literary superstar.

…In 1997, Obama was an obscure state senator, a lawyer, and a law school instructor with one book under his belt that had debuted two years earlier to little acclaim and lesser sales. In terms of identity, he had more in common with mayor Sawyer than poet Brooks. The “writer” identification seems forced and purposefully so, a signal perhaps to those in the know of a persona in the making that Ayers had himself helped forge.

None of this, of course, proves Ayers’ authorship conclusively, but the evidence makes him a much more likely candidate than Obama to have written the best parts of Dreams.

The Obama camp could put all such speculation to rest by producing some intermediary sign of impending greatness — a school paper, an article, a notebook, his Columbia thesis, his LSAT scores — but Obama guards these more zealously than Saddam did his nuclear secrets. And I suspect, at the end of the day, we will pay an equally high price for Obama’s concealment as Saddam’s.

An interesting, and very plausible thesis. Much more so, in fact, than the official story. And if true, one more bit of evidence that Bill Ayers was more, much more, than “a guy in his neighborhood.” It is also one more bit of continually accumulating evidence that Barack Obama is a fraud.

And as Andy McCarthy notes, given that Chris Buckley’s insouciance about an Obama presidency is predicated on the intellectual brilliance evidenced by his books, he might want to reconsider, if his books are in fact those of someone else.

And no, don’t expect the press to cover this.

Chris Dodd should be the one on the stand, under oath.

I have a piece today at Pajamas media, on the lies and spin of the Obama campaign, and his enablers in the media.

[Update late morning]

I should note, of course (though shouldn’t it go without saying?) that because I wrote this piece, like Roger Simon, I am a racist.

[Afternoon update]

I have to confess that I’m perplexed by the foolish comments that I, or John McCain, should be “going after” Walter Annenberg, or the Annenberg Foundation, or “charging them” with…something. What does that mean?

There is nothing illegal about funding leftist activities with philanthropy. I don’t even think that it should be. But I do think that the voters are entitled to know when one of their presidential candidates is involved with it. If Walter Annenberg were running for president, and doing the same things that Barack Obama is, and has done, I’d be saying exactly the same things about him. But he’s not.

How widespread is the voter registration fraud that ACORN has been responsible for? How much has it artificially boosted Democrat registration numbers this year?

There are two factors that have increased Dem registration this year. One is the efforts by ACORN and similar groups. The other is the significant numbers of Republicans who switched to Democrat so that they could vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries. The first group isn’t going to vote for Obama because they don’t exist, to a large extent. The second group is going to vote for John McCain.

All of the likely (and even registered) voter polls are skewed to sample Dems more because of this perceived increase in Democrat voters. But if much of that increase is illusory, due to the factors described above, are the polls overstating support for Obama?

[Update late evening]

Iowahawk is on the case in defense of a truly defenseless minority: ACORN files suit on behalf of the voting rights of Imaginary-Americans:

“Whether we are obituary notices, hallucinatory giant rabbits, or strings of random keyboard strokes, it’s time for the chimera community to stand up and claim our rights as citizens,” said ASDFG. “We will no longer be silent and invisible. Okay, maybe invisible.”

In addition to $3.2 jubajillion in damages and free federal mortgages for homeless spectres, the suit also seeks enforcement of the Americans with Dimensional Disabilities Act. The Act requires voting places to make accommodations for existentially-challenged voters who have trouble completing ballots written in standard 3-dimensional reality. The accommodations include multiple site registration, time travel, and allowances for alcoholics to cast ballots for dependent D.T. phantasms.

“Many of our community inhabit the Tapioca subluster of the 11th Dimension, and it’s hard for them to find a convenient spacehole to make it to the local elementary school,” explained ASDFG.

Classic. And one that I wish that I’d thought of. Though as always, Burge does a much better job with the concept than I would have, anyway.