Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 28, 2007)

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Mr. FEENEY. I too want to thank Congressman Flake and the cosponsors of this amendment. Our friends on the Democratic side have two arguments. Number 1, they say this is a superfluous, it's a red herring because nobody's talking about it. But we've already had two of our colleagues on the Democratic side say that they like talking about and maybe rehabilitating the fairness doctrine, which is a bad misnomer. In fact, this is the leftist censorship doctrine, and we ought to refer to it as such.

The second argument that they give us is that Republicans ought to like the fairness doctrine because we're always complaining about liberal bias in the media. And to that I would say this: The difference is that Rush Limbaugh knows and admits he's a conservative.

Dan Rather and Katie Couric don't know and they don't admit that they are liberal. That is the difference. Rush will get regulated; the others will not. And I would tell you that the first amendment, freedom of speech, means nothing if it means the government can tell you what you must say or what you must publish. The freedom of speech inherently means the freedom not to say certain thoughts or certain words.

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, no conservative, once said: ``Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.''

In China, North Korea, and elsewhere, they have their ``fairness doctrines.'' We don't need one.

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