Feinstein and Schumer are preparing to wage war on the alternative media

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
September 19, 2013

Matt Drudge was spot on last week. He called Senator Dianne Feinstein a fascist after she had the gall to define who is and who is not a journalist. Here’s Matt’s tweet, posted on Friday:

Comments from Sen. Feinstein yesterday on who's a reporter were disgusting. 17-year old 'blogger' is as important as Wolf Blitzer. Fascist!

— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) September 13, 2013

Feinstein and another Democrat, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, are pushing a bill that claims to “shield” journalists from the government. It received a thumbs up last Thursday in the Senate Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan vote.

Feinstein and Schumer like to pretend the proposed law “offers legal protections to journalists engaged in news-gathering activities,” protections already afforded by the First Amendment. If the government decides, however, it has “reasonable exceptions” under “national security,” it will “allow federal law enforcement to compel information that would mitigate terrorist threats.”

In other words, the government will decide who is protected under the First Amendment and who is not. It will use violence to force testimony.

This is normal behavior for government. It compels obedience at gun-point every day of the week. It hates the idea that you’re sovereign and have the right to not testify, to remain silent.

“Conscription of witnesses is no more justified than conscription into the armed forces or into any other service or occupation. Freedom and individual rights must extend to all institutions and all branches of life, even into the judiciary, the heart of State power,” said Murray Rothbard.

The terrorism ruse will give the government all the pretext it needs to force journalists to testify, so Chuckie Schumer’s law is basically meaningless. The real purpose of this law is to allow the government to define who is and who is not a journalist. Feinstein has made this abundantly clear.

“I can’t support it if everyone who has a blog has a special privilege … or if Edward Snowden were to sit down and write this stuff, he would have a privilege. I’m not going to go there,” she said.

In order to make unbridled state power somewhat palatable, Feinstein, Schumer and the Senate Judiciary said it will allow “freelancers, part-timers and student journalists” to practice the First Amendment. A government judge, they decided, would be permitted extend First Amendment protection to anybody engaged in “legitimate news-gathering activities.”

Keep in mind the government will decide what is a legitimate news-gathering activity. Feinstein said a 17-year old blogger is not a journalist. Neither is Edward Snowden, or we must assume, Glenn Greenwald, the newspaper journalist who reported on Snowden’s NSA revelations.

The Los Angeles Times underscored the government’s caveat:

But the bill also makes it clear that the legal protection is not absolute. Federal officials still may “compel disclosure” from a journalist who has information that could stop or prevent crimes such as murder, kidnapping or child abduction or prevent “acts of terrorism” or significant harm to national security.

It’s pretty obvious what’s going on here. Like the Soviet Union and Red China, or any other authoritarian dictatorship, the state reserves the absolute right to determine who is a journalist and who is a 17-year old blogger. That’s why Matt Drudge called Feinstein a fascist. Because she assumes the authority to officially declare who is a journalist covered by the First Amendment and who is a criminal revealing national security secrets.

Feinstein, Schumer and other minions and grocery clerks working for the state are determined to criminalize the alternative media and elevate the corporate media reading from government scripts. It’s a dangerous situation for state power when millions of citizens no longer trust the establishment and prefer to get their news on the web. It’s unacceptable that millions of people read Matt Drudge’s website instead of the New York Times and the Washington Post. It’s unacceptable that Infowars.com is more popular than MSNBC.

The government has to take out Matt Drudge and Alex Jones and anybody else who dares deviate from the official script. That’s what the Media Shield Law is all about. It’s an attempt by government to define what is journalism and what is not. Feinstein and Schumer are preparing to wage war on the alternative media.

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