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Manipulating the nation

In this political season we are seeing a wave of alarming tricks and lies being used that threaten the core of our democracy. From the national level to city campaigns we are being manipulated by politicians and their supporters all in the name of achieving a partisan victory. Are we paying too high of a price to let this go unopposed?

ABC News recently featured an interview of Sarah Palin that was edited in a way that deliberately misled the viewing audience and was then used by political opponents as evidence of her inexperience and shortcomings. By editing out entire paragraphs of thoughtful reply and just airing a cryptic sound bite, ABC manipulated the nation in a clearly partisan way. The purpose of the cuts cannot be disguised under the cover of broadcast time limitations. There is no more important topic for voters to hear discussed at length than a candidate's views about war and peace, foreign relations and prospective policies. Drop another topic from the broadcast rather than edit out a reply of this importance.

A breaking story concerns the apparent use of one of the world's largest PR firms by the Obama camp to use "astroturf" tactics to spread known lies through viral media tools. Astroturfing is the artificial creation by professional marketers of what is intended to appear as a grassroots effort to favor or oppose a candidate. In this case a subsidiary of Publicis Groupe is alleged to have created videos and posted them on YouTube and elsewhere to spread rumors and lies already discredited. By doing so, the Obama camp would be able to claim that it doesn't engage in dirty campaigning while doing just that. For more details start with http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/22/bloggers-sniff-out-anti-palin-astroturf-campaign-and-the-cover-up-begins/ and a fuller description of the search for the perpetrators at http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/194057.php .

Last week the Obama camp said that it and it's supporters would get more aggressive in the campaign and "take off the gloves". Within 24 hours Republican campaign offices had been vandalized, reminiscent of attacks nationwide in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Obama supporters were exhorted to "get in the face" of Republicans and independents and argue with them. This follows a troubling string of actions taken since Obama secured the nomination in June that are intended to silence any critics or opponents:

• Intimidating contributors to the McCain campaign or 527 groups supporting McCain through a mail campaign threatening to sic the IRS and FEC on the top 10,000 contributors though false claims of election law violations
• Demands from the Obama campaign to the Department of Justice to prevent radio stations from airing interviews with authors and researchers looking into Obama's past
• Deocrat lawyers sending intimidating letters to media outlets threatening them with loss of their broadcast license if they air content critical of Obama
• Efforts coordinated through Obama's campaign web site and digital outreach to overload the switchboards of any media outlet hosting any content critical of Obama - all with scripts helpfully provided by Obama
• Threatening the "Association of Presidents" of New York Jewish organizations that organized a protest against Iran that if they didn't cancel an invitation to Sarah Palin to appear in solidarity, lawyers from the Democrat party would file notices with the IRS that the groups violated tax law by hosting a partisan political event and should lose their tax exempt status. This threat was made after Hillary Clinton withdrew after previously accepting the group's invitation.

This follows a decade of the Clintons using the FBI and IRS to investigate, audit and harrass their critics. The repeated promises of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to reimpose the deceptively named "Fairness Doctrine" complete a chilling vision of what is happening to our freedom of speech.

No form of speech was more important to our Founding Fathers than that of political speech, yet we see one of major political parties using blunt implements to silence critics. The silence of the mainstream media is frightening in that it is de facto supporting the suppression of free speech when it should be raising the alarm.

The current political climate is moving this nation closer to the slippery slope where the media is left to parrot the views of the favored party or candidate and critics face censorship, physical, legal and financial intimidation. When a candidate that espouses a new domestic national security force equal in size and funding to the military, demands mandatory civil service, and tells his supporters to get aggressive with political opponants we are left to contemplate the fragile nature of our liberties and our freedom of speech.