Anything but Fair
Jon Kyl
It’s too soon to know for sure what issues the Majority party in the Senate will want to debate next year, but there already is one issue I am watching carefully. Some in Congress would like to reinstate the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," which, despite the name, is anything but fair. The Fairness Doctrine mandates that broadcast media outlets (ostensibly because they use the public airwaves) must balance their programming by offering equitable airtime to opposing viewpoints.

Kremlin "Soft Power" Keeping Internet In Check
Sergei Kuznetsov, who founded one of Russia's first blogs in the early 1990s, was recently approached with an offer from a company affiliated with the Kremlin. The company, whose name he did not reveal, presented a budget of millions of rubles to be used exclusively for public relations in the world of Russian blogs.

Watchdog Says Prosperity No Guarantee Of Press Freedoms
Advocacy group Reporters Without Borders has found that peace and "the spirit of democracy" -- and not simply prosperity -- are reliable guarantors of media freedom. In its 2008 Press Freedom Index, the group, known by its French initials RSF, saw little improvement in media freedoms this year compared with 2007, especially in some former Soviet countries.

Reporters Without Borders Founder Decries "Cowardice Of Democracies"
Robert Menard is the co-founder of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Paris-Based international media freedom watchdog. RFE/RL correspondent Claire Bigg spoke to Menard during Forum 2000, a conference held annually in Prague to promote democracy and tolerance.

Obama’s Henchmen and the Rise of Commufascism
Shawn D. Akers
The secret to selling bad ideas is to make sure they are the only ones available. This is how totalitarian regimes take power. Whether it was Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany or Vladimir Lenin in Communist Russia, the pattern is largely the same -- totalitarian dictators come to power by enshrining themselves as cults of personality and then creating political monopolies through often less than delicate campaigns of indoctrination and censorship.

Lewis, A Lazy Media, And Their Race Cards
Bob Parks
The only question I have for Congressman John Lewis is, "What took you so long?" The McCain campaign was apparently caught off guard by the the race card salvo, while many of us knew this day would officially come. Okay, let's take off the gloves. While Senator McCain and Governor Palin have to show some public civility, those of us often on the receiving end of liberal racist hate do not.

Ex-Israeli General, Mossad Chief Decry "Misleading" Pro-Obama Video
An American Jewish group is being accused by some of Israel's leading military and intelligence veterans of releasing an on-line video on Sunday in which their recent comments on the problems confronting Israel are twisted to appear as endorsements of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.

The Obama Youth
Selwyn Duke
It really does seem that the more evil a movement is, the more likely it is to enlist children in its cause.  (Well, they really do make beautiful little human shields.)  Most of us have now heard about the "Sing for Change" video, in which 22 young, impressionable victims of misguided parents are singing a song in homage to Barack Obama as if he's a god.

California Court Delivers A "Slapp" In The Face To Civil Public Discourse
Rachel Neuwirth
I frequently express my opinions on the Internet, and as a result I have as much of an interest as anyone in this country in preserving the right to freedom of speech. I am passionately committed to this right, which is enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution.

Palin Phenomenon Accelerates Downfall of Old Media
Christopher Adamo
The 2004 contest between President Bush and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry marked the beginning of the end for the old media monopoly. On the one hand, clumsy media attempts to fabricate a story, complete with phony documents hastily fabricated using modern word-processing software, clearly indicated that CBS bigwig Dan Rather and his minions were stumping for Kerry.

Obama Mocks McCain’s War Injuries
TruthNews Commentary
Just when it seems the Democrats can't sink any lower, they manage to surprise you. After a week in which Barack Obama defended himself from charges that he referred to Sarah Palin as a pig in lipstick, the Obama campaign has now unveiled an ad that mocks John McCain for his war injuries.

Press Watchdog: "Fantastic Lies" Dominate Russian Coverage Of War
Oleg Panfilov, the director of the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations in Moscow, is currently in Tbilisi. Panfilov spoke to Dmitry Volchek of RFE/RL's Russian Service about the difficulties of reporting the conflict both inside and outside Georgia.

Solzhenitsyn: One Book That Shook The World
How much impact can one book have? If that book is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago," quite a bit. When it was published in the West in 1973, Solzhenitsyn's most famous work reverberated loudly on both sides of the Atlantic. U.S. forces were withdrawing from Vietnam. Detente and peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union were in vogue.