Army Concerns Over Palin Book Signing Trumps First Amendment!

The U.S. Army plans to prevent media from covering Sarah Palin's appearance at Fort Bragg on Monday, fearing the event will turn into political grandstanding against President Barack Obama, officials said Thursday.

Fort Bragg spokesman Tom McCollum told The Associated Press that the military post's garrison commander and other Army officials had decided to keep media away from Palin's book signing, which will not include a speech.

"The main reason is to stop this from turning into a political platform," he said. "There are Army regulations that basically prohibit military reservations from becoming political platforms by politicians."

Those Army regulations have never been bought to bear against any other politicians. Senators and Congressional representatives have made political speeches on military installations for decades, and now, suddenly, there is an enforcement of those regulations? How about this fact - Sarah Palin is not presently a "politician". She holds no political office, nor has she announced her candidacy for any political office. How is she a "politician"? She is, at this point in time, a private citizen.

Since when does the "Army's" concerns over what may be, at an otherwise open to the public event, allow the garrison commander to suspend the First Amendment rights of Sarah Palin and the press? Or, could it be that the Fort Bragg garrison commander is taking his directions from higher up the chain of command? And if that's the case, how high up did the order originate? The Pentagon? Or the Pentagon by direction of the White House? That's where the real politicians are. Generals are appointed, so Colonels (Captains in the US Navy) and above suck up to every Congressperson and Senator they can find, hoping that their name will be passed along to the President. The President nominates military and naval officers for the rank of Brigadier General (or Naval equivalents) and above, and that nomination is historically rubber-stamped by the Senate.

It's a sad state of affairs when our Constitution is so easily contravened by the government and/or the government's agents. Will this decision be upheld? We will just have to wait and see. The AP and The Fayetteville Observer are protesting the decision to ban media. Let's hope they are successful! It appears the Democrats and the liberal left fear Sarah Palin more than they fear Muslim terrorists - they are taking every opportunity to belittle, berate, denigrate and marginalize everything Sarah says or does. If they didn't fear her, they would ignore her.

BLOGGER'S NOTE: 24 HOURS AFTER THIS POSTING, THE ARMY APPARENTLY SAW THE ERROR OF THEIR WAYS AND DID WHAT WAS RIGHT.

It's All A Matter of Perception - We Tend to See What We Expect To See

Here are two web headlines from two different news organizations talking about the same situation. First, on the positive side we have the Associated Press with:
"Bank of America earns $2.4B, ahead of estimates" Good job AP, you've given a lot of people hope for an improving financial picture!

And then we have Reuters News Service with this negative take on the same bank:
"Bank of America credit losses soar, profit falls". What are you trying to do, Reuters?? Are you trying to scare people into a "run" on our already weakened banking system?

Is this simply a case of "the glass is half full" vs. "the glass is half empty" - optimist vs. pessimist? Or, is it a cultural matter... one of American perceptions vs. essentially European perceptions of the same events?

Reporters are no different from the rest of us, in that they tend to see what they expect to see.
The true difference is that reporters can only report an event in the manner which their publisher (owner) sees that event. And most publishers have strong political connections. Why? Simply because they do have the power to control the determination of that which is considered newsworthy, and that which is not. Our job is to then determine which of the reports is lying to us... the least. Chances are that neither of them is giving us an unbiased view of the situation.

I don't think that's what our founding fathers had in mind with the First Amendment's right to "freedom of the press". I'm sure their idea was to insure the press was free to report the truth, as opposed to some modified version of "the truth". But, that's what we get when we address things in a general sense, instead of being specific about our desires.

I could be wrong about this... and Barack Obama could be a "natural born U.S. citizen". What are the odds for either statement being true?