Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Justice Sotomayor's First Test: The 'Hillary Movie' Case
2. Hugo Chavez Hobnobs at Venice Fest With Hollywood Elite
3. Keith Olbermann Sniffs for Dirt on Glenn Beck
4. Jane Fonda, Danny Glover Side With Palestinians
5. Michael Moore Calls Capitalism ‘Evil’
1. Justice Sotomayor's First Test: The ‘Hillary Movie' Case
If you’re concerned about free speech, particularly during election seasons, here’s a case you need to know about.
Newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is about to hear her first case in a special hearing set up by the Court last term.
It’s an unusual session in which the Court ordered a previously heard matter to be argued again, but more narrowly this time.
The case involves a feature film about Hillary Rodham Clinton, and it has resulted in the forming of an unusual coalition, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union, National Rifle Association, AFL-CIO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Each of these organizations is on the side of restoring free speech to corporations and unions.
I have filed a brief as an attorney of record in the case.
In March 2009, the Court in the case of “Citizens United v. FEC” heard oral arguments on whether “Hillary: The Movie,” which took a critical view of the then-presidential candidate, could be regulated as a campaign ad.
The justices will consider whether it is constitutional to limit pre-election speech by corporations, while at the same time allowing the media to comment freely on political issues.
In my personal legal assessment, the current campaign finance laws excessively restrict speech.
Look for the decision in the case to significantly impact next year's congressional elections.
2. Hugo Chavez Hobnobs at Venice Fest With Hollywood Elite
Director Oliver Stone and dictator Hugo Chavez go together like a hammer and sickle.
Chavez recently showed up at the Venice Film Festival for the world premiere of Stone's documentary about Venezuela’s presidente.
Stone, who’s seriously stuck in the '60s, calls his cinematic tyrant flatterer “South of the Border.” He portrays Chavez as a courageous advocate of the poor and a hero who has stood up to the big bad U.S.
As usual, journalists mindlessly clapped together in sync at Stone's press screening of the flick.
The filmmaker has a habit of presenting thugs as knights in shining armor. Stone did just that with his portraits of Fidel Castro, in the 2003 film “Comandante” and the 2004 movie “Looking for Fidel.”
Chavez, despite being endlessly air kissed by idolizing Tinseltowners, surrounded himself with bodyguards as he clutched Ollie’s hand, strutted the red carpet, mugged for the camera and bestowed to fans his bloodstained autograph.
Stone has suggested that media in this country have unfairly vilified Chavez. Railing to Variety, he complained about the “outrageous caricature they've drawn of him [Chavez] in the Western press.”
In a column written for the U.K. Guardian, Stone urged Americans to “question the role of our media in demonizing foreign leaders as our enemies."
"What's happening in Latin America is like a Renaissance," Chavez, who once compared our president to the devil, told reporters.
Most citizens of Venezuela see it differently.
Allow me to translate. The “Renaissance” in their country means sparse supplies, crushed companies, muzzled media, suppressed speech, and a persecuted population.
Watch for the Oscar noms to come rolling in.
3. Keith Olbermann Sniffs for Dirt on Glenn Beck
Apparently pooped from trying to pummel Bill O'Reilly and woozy from getting whacked in the ratings by Fox News’ No. 1 cable show, Keith Olbermann has decided to switch targets.
Who’s he going after? The latest in the Fox all-star lineup of hosts, Glenn Beck.
In addition to going after Beck, Olbermann also wants to find ways to attack Beck’s producer and a top Fox exec.
The MSNBC host has turned to his pals at the far-left Web site, DailyKos, asking readers to “find everything you can about Glenn Beck, Stu Burguiere, and Roger Ailes.”
Olbermann’s sleaze search was spurred on by the resignation of green jobs czar Van Jones, after Beck and Fox News reported what the mainstream media had failed to — that Jones had radical connections, espoused crude and creepy ideas, and even signed a 9/11 “Truther” petition.
Olbermann has instructed his muckrakers to “walk softly and carry a big popsicle, and most particularly to save this nation from the Oligarchy of The Stupid.”
The snarling MSNBC broadcaster plans to unleash his frozen treat on Fox foes this week.
4. Jane Fonda, Danny Glover Side With Palestinians
Jane Fonda and Danny Glover have said and done a lot of things in support of communist dictators.
But now the far-left leaning celebs have crossed yet another line. And their actions are generating condemnation from a prominent Jewish cleric.
Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center has said that the decision of Fonda and Glover to boycott the Toronto International Film Festival is “an attack on the heart and soul of Israel.”
The two actors joined in signing a letter that was sent to officials of the Toronto fest, which claimed that the city of Tel Aviv was built on “thousands of destroyed Palestinian villages.” Additional claims in the letter suggested that a festival program “ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants.”
There are a total of 50 protesters who, while claiming they are not anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli, nevertheless signed a protest letter against the Toronto Film Festival, which used phrases such as “this year’s brutal assault on Gaza.”
The letter was written in protest of the segment of the movie festival called “City to City,” which consists of a slate of Israeli films honoring the 100th anniversary of Tel Aviv. The segment garnered Hier’s praise.
“If every city in the Middle East would be as culturally diverse, as open to freedom of expression as Tel Aviv is, then peace would long have come to the Middle East,” the rabbi said.
However, he had the following words about the letter that Fonda and Glover endorsed: “Whoever would sign on to a campaign like this would support the complete destruction of Israel.”
Hier went on to analyze the foreign policy suggested by the Toronto boycott, saying, “People who support letters like this are people who do not support a two-state solution. By calling into question the legitimacy of Tel Aviv, they are supporting a one-state solution, which means the destruction of the state of Israel.”
5. Michael Moore Calls Capitalism ‘Evil’
Michael Moore solidified his position as one of the biggest phonies of our times while at a recent Venice Film Festival outing.
He debuted his latest sham documentary called “Capitalism: A Love Story.”
Thanks to the free enterprise system, Moore has become super wealthy himself, which makes the two-hour flick a case study in hypocrisy.
“Capitalism is an evil,” Moore proclaims, “and you cannot regulate evil.”
According to Moore, regulating capitalism doesn't work, so his prescription is, “You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy.”
Guess it all depends on what the meaning of “democracy” is.
Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Van Jones, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid might have a similar definition. Someday someone might ask the president what his is.
In any event, the flimflam filmmaker even stoops so low as to bring in some Liberation Theology clergy to endorse the idea that capitalism is actually anti-Christian.
Of course, reporters in attendance went gaga over the movie, applauding wildly at the press screening.
In Moore's capitalist slam, he implicitly blesses big government, apparently seeing it as benign.
But Big Gov is anything but benign. The unleashing of creative genius by the free market may not be perfect, but it beats out central planning by a Moscow mile.
A bloated government bureacracy eventually has at its helm a ruling class that is unaccountable and insatiable. It amasses more and more power by feasting on fear, gobbling up insecurity, and pigging out on dependency.
When matured beyond puberty, Big Gov is communism in a red tux.
Commie regimes have murdered about 100 million people in their truly evil rampages.
How many massacres of the human spirit? No one’s quite found a way to quantify that.
Not that Moore and his buds would understand or care. Or ever make a movie about it.
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