{"id":7309,"date":"2006-05-03T13:06:11","date_gmt":"2006-05-03T17:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7309"},"modified":"2006-05-03T13:06:11","modified_gmt":"2006-05-03T17:06:11","slug":"a-false-choice-between-free-speech-and-honest-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-false-choice-between-free-speech-and-honest-government\/","title":{"rendered":"A false choice between free speech and honest government"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This has been making its way around <a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/news?hl=en&#038;ned=us&#038;ie=UTF-8&#038;q=%22that+has+become+corrupt%22+%22I%E2%80%99d+rather+have+the+clean+government%22&#038;filter=0\">several conservative blogs<\/a> for a few days, but I think [tag]John McCain[\/tag]&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.townhall.com\/blogs\/capitolreport\/TimChapman\/story\/2006\/04\/29\/195599.html\">provocative comments<\/a> about campaign-finance reform should generate concerns on both sides of the aisle.<\/p>\n<p>On [tag]Imus[\/tag], [tag]McCain[\/tag] said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I work in Washington and I know that money [tag]corrupt[\/tag]s&#8230;. I would rather have a clean government than one where &#8216;[tag]First Amendment[\/tag] rights&#8217; are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I&#8217;d rather have the [tag]clean government[\/tag].&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now, I&#8217;ve long believed that the [tag]McCain-Feingold[\/tag] legislation raised serious constitutional issues, but McCain&#8217;s response isn&#8217;t that the law is sound and compatible with the First Amendment, but rather that <i>it doesn&#8217;t matter<\/i>. First Amendment, schmirst amendment; as long as we&#8217;re striving for a &#8220;cleaner&#8221; process, everything&#8217;s fine, McCain says.<\/p>\n<p>How, exactly, does McCain arrive at such a formulation? How &#8220;clean&#8221; must the government be before the First Amendment can be respected again? Which other constitutional principles is McCain willing to sacrifice in the name of good government?<\/p>\n<p>Maybe McCain can clarify some of this for us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This has been making its way around several conservative blogs for a few days, but I think [tag]John McCain[\/tag]&#8217;s provocative comments about campaign-finance reform should generate concerns on both sides of the aisle. On [tag]Imus[\/tag], [tag]McCain[\/tag] said: &#8220;I work in Washington and I know that money [tag]corrupt[\/tag]s&#8230;. I would rather have a clean government than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}