Democratic members of the Federal Election Commission voted last month to sanction Fox News for putting on the first “kiddie table” presidential debate.
Fox had planned just one debate last Aug. 6, among the top 10 candidates. After it belatedly added the undercard event, someone complained to the FEC that this constituted an illegal gift to the seven also-rans.
The charge was laughable — yet all three Democratic FEC appointees endorsed it, and two actually voted to penalize Fox for the “contribution.”
Thank Republican FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman for leaking news of the vote on Thursday, and for joining his two GOP colleagues in killing the complaint.
But it’s still grim news that Democratic election-law experts think Uncle Sam has the right to order the media around.
Then again, most Democrats in the US Senate have voted to amend the Constitution to allow just that: They want to overrule the Supreme Court’s finding in the Citizens United case — which turned on whether the FEC could ban an independent documentary critical of Hillary Clinton.
Team Obama’s lawyer in that case argued that the feds could even suppress books that criticize pols during campaign season.
That the First Amendment’s protection of a free press and free speech is now a foreign concept to the Democratic Party is one more reason to fear a Hillary Clinton presidency: Her Supreme Court picks could send core American rights to the junk heap.