Mark Levin to Listeners: Defend Talk Radio

Yesterday we at NewsBusters noted how Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell is backing an effort to move an up-or-down vote on the Broadcasters Freedom Act (BFA), currently stalled in the House of Representatives. Later that evening on his June 11 radio program, conservative talk show host Mark Levin issued a warning- urge your congressman to support the Broadcasters Freedom Act, or you risk sitting idly by as liberals led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) annihilate free speech on America’s radio waves.

The BFA is a response to the expiration of last year’s one year moratorium of the Fairness Doctrine. That measure passed the House with a 309-vote majority. With so many members of Congress supporting free airwaves just one year ago, one might assume this year’s permanent defense of free speech would fly through the House. Yet the Democratic leadership is blocking the legislation from reaching the House floor for a fair vote because as Levin says "they know it will pass."

Below are Levin’s relevant remarks, audio available here:

Now, we have to salute the Republicans, in the House. Republicans in the house. By the way, the Senate you guys are holding up a little bit better, really. You took on the windfall profits tax, keep at it, keep at it, this is the way to do it and if you lose, you go down as fighters, ok. There will be another day. But in the House there is an act called the broadcasters freedom act. See, the Marxists don’t like free speech, they only like to hear themselves speak. They don’t like competition on the airwaves. We have more radio stations now than any time in American history. We have more broadcast formats than any time in American history. We have more competition on programing among the stations than anytime in American history. And thats what the left doesn’t like. Oh they don’t care about the Spanish station and the urban station, the hip-hop station and the oldies station and the rock ‘n’ roll station and. Talk radio, they hate talk radio. They all hate talk radio. Televison hates talk radio, newspapers hate talk radio, the other programs hate talk radio. And they want to be done with it. You want to know why they want to be done with it? Because they hate you.

This is a very effective forum. Where we can all get together and talk and listen, well mostly I talk and you listen but you get the drift. Its an extremely unique forum, it’s the most democratic forum of all, in the broadcast world. And so they want to eliminate talk radio by pretending to open the public airwaves to all kinds of opinions, which means destroying this program and my fellow talk show programs. Thats what they’re up to and its nefarious but its typical. Now, ah, Mike Pence and the Republican leader John Boehner and many other Republicans are trying to fight this. You know, there was a one year bill passed, preventing the FEC from re-instituting the Fairness Doctrine through the regulatory process. So Pence says, lets bring that up for a vote and permanently prohibit it. Now that first bill originally passed with 309 members of the House voting to support the one year moratorium.

The Pence Bill, that was June 2007. Today, Nancy Pelosi will not allow that bill to get to the floor, to have a permanent moratorium. Because she knows it would pass. And she has designs on talk radio, you better believe they do when they get their majorities in Congress, they’re coming for you. They’re coming for this audience. They’re coming for all the audiences, Rush’s, Sean’s, Boortz, so forth and so on. So its called the Broadcasters Freedom Act. So they’re trying to get one of these discharge petitions out. And you need 218 signatures. Thats a mere majority. They have 194 signatures. So they’re short, they’re short. In so, what they’re hoping is that, you folks will call your members of Congress, whether he be a Democrat or a Republican, whether he be a he or a she. Or a he up til 10 PM and a she after 10 PM, we don’t question. That you call your member of Congress regardless of party and ask them to sign the discharge petition. So you should do that.

Now the members of Congress who voted for the one year moratorium back a year ago, remember there are 309 members and only 194 who have signed this petition because Pelosi has put the screws to them. By the way, you talk about a despot, you talk about a demagogue, that Pelosi. They can cake on three inches of make- up on that face and dye that hair and put a eight thousand dress on her and 20,000 dollars worth of pearls but she is what she is underneath all that vainer. Layers and layers of vainer, hence her nickname stretch, for all the obvious face lifts that she’s had.

But I digress, you can find out which members of Congress of the 309 who voted originally for the one year moratorium, refused to sign the petition today by going to http://www.hypocrisycaucus.org/. Can we put that on the Marklevinshow.com website, Rich? http://www.hypocrisycaucus.org/. The members listed there are the hypocrites, ok. So call your member, I am not going to do one of these Levin surges right now but if you have the time and you should, this is important, you should call your member of Congress, member of the House and tell them, ah, sign the petition. Otherwise we know what you have in mind, we know what your up to.

Now its pretty scary that we have to do this, given the first amendment to the Constitution but the constitution means so little to the despots. And again they will, they will disguise their activities by lying with the language. Truth becomes falsity, up becomes down, round becomes square, out of the mouths of the left, anything is possible and everything is possible. So I wanted to remind or let some of you know and remind some of you about that.

Photo of Levin via WABCRadio.com.