The First Amendment: No License Necessary to Publish

Michael Moore is a journalist. He produces documentaries. The United States cannot demand that a journalist get a license before practicing journalism. That's what freedom of the press, guaranteed by the First Amendment, is all about: we don't need no stinking license. We're free to publish.

Historical context: One of the issues that America's founders dealt with under former British rule was licensing of printers. No one who wasn't licensed, by either the king or the official church, was permitted to publish. So, the First Amendment was meant to address this by guaranteeing freedom of the press and thereby, abolishing the need for press licenses.

It's a principle that's managed to withstand a couple of centuries.

Fast forward to today. Apparently, Michael Moore has been issued a subpoena for his taking his film crew to Cuba to film his latest documentary, Sicko. And what is the issue the government is raising? That he may not be licensed as a journalist to do so.

There is nothing more dangerous to our press freedom than giving the government control over who may or may not qualify for a license to report and publish. Demanding licenses, which must come through the federal government, means that the federal government can shut down the activities of "non-licensed" journalists. It's as unconstitutional as it gets, folks. Protest it to the rafters.

This is an especially important issue for freelancers (like me, for example), who, while journalists, aren't necessarily on staff with a particular news organization.

The letter the Bush administration sent Moore, and a link, is below:

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
WASHINGTON. D.C. 20220 May 2 2007

CERTIFIED MAIL - REQUIREMENT TO FURNISH INFORMATION No: CT-336858

Michael F. Moore
ADDRESS DELETED

Dear Mr. Moore:

The Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") administers a
comprehensive trade embargo against Cuba as set forth in the Cuban
Assets Control Regulations, 31 C.F.R. Part 515 (the "Regulations").
Section 515.201(b) of the Regulations prohibits all unauthorized
travel-related transactions with respect to Cuba by persons subject to
the jurisdiction of the United States. Travel-related transactions may
be authorized only through general or specific licenses issued by
OFAC. Violations of Regulations may result in civil and/or criminal
penalties.

OFAC has received information indicating that you traveled to Cuba
during March of 2007. This Office has no record that a specific
license was issued authorizing you to engage in travel-related
transactions involving Cuba. OFAC has information indicating that you
claimed to qualify under the provision for general license for
full-time journalists. An application dated October 12, 2006 was
submitted by Coldflat Productions, which included you, but no
determination had been made by OFAC. OFAC Enforcement is conducting a
civil investigation for possible unlicensed transactions under the
Regulations surrounding your alleged trip to Cuba. The information you
provide in response to this letter may serve as the basis of further
civil enforcement action by OFAC.

Pursuant to section 501.602 of the Reporting, Procedures and Penalties
Regulations, 31 CFR Part 501, you are hereby required to provide this
Office with a detailed written report concerning your alleged trip to
Cuba. Your report must specifically respond to all the items
enumerated below.

1. Provide your dates of travel (include date and point of departure
from the U.S., third country stopover points, date of arrival in and
departure from Cuba and date of return to the U.S.).

2. Provide the reason for your trip to Cuba and your itinerary within Cuba.

3. If you claim that your trip to Cuba qualifies for a general license
for journalistic activities, provide the following:

a. Evidence that you are regularly employed as a journalist by a news
reporting organization or;

b. Evidence that you are regularly employed as a supporting or
technical personnel by a news reporting organization.

4. State the cost of your airline or ocean vessel tickets and the name
of the individual or entity that paid for each ticket (provide a copy
of each ticket receipt).

5. Provide the name and address of any travel agency that you used to
arrange travel to Cuba, the service each agency provided to you and
the amount you paid to each agency (provide a copy o f receipts).

6. Provide the name and location of hotel(s) or other place(s) where
you stayed while in Cuba and the amount you paid (include method of
payment and receipts).

7. For each individual who was part of this trip, provide their name,
address and purpose for participation..

8. Provide any additional information which you may wish OFAC to
consider concerning your trip to Cuba.

Your report is due at OFAC within 20 business days from the reciept of
this letter and should be addressed as follows:

U.S. Department of the Treasury
Office of Foreign Assets Control
Attn: John Dickie
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. (Annex)
Washington, D.C. 20220

You should be aware that failure to respond to this letter may result
in the imposition of civil penalties by OFAC. If you have any
questions, please call Mr. Dickie at (202) 622-2430

Sincerely,
SIGNATURE
Dale Thompson, Chief
General Investigations & Field Operations
Office of Foreign Assets Control

After The Fireworks

I watched the colorful explosions last night from a relatively secluded spot at a small inlet on Sarasota Bay. The boom, boom of miniature bombs, the flags hung out all over town, and the commentary, earlier in the day, from media pundits about our founding fathers, all seemed to flow together but not in the way intended.

What Thomas Jefferson wrote in our Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, was as hypocritical, in its own way, as George W. Bush’s declaration of war against Iraq on March 19, 2003.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Jefferson intended that only some men should enjoy their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not all. He and other founders, indignantly declaring their independence, did their best to ensure that their slave population enjoyed no rights of any kind.

In building a nation independent of an unjust monarch, the founders poured this much graver injustice into the foundation of the newly declared United States. And, what has been built since then, sags from that defect.

Our constitution, a model document in other respects, created an electoral college to pick our president. The number of electors for each state was determined, not by the number of eligible voters in each of the states, but by population, whether free or slave. Each of the half-million slaves was counted as three-fifths of a person so that, in the south, where population was swelled by slaves, free men got more bang for each vote. The more slaves that slave states held in captivity, the more electoral votes it got.

Another of our revered founders, James Madison, proposed this system, instead of direct election. In an argument we’d easily see as essentially evil if suggested anywhere in the world today, this man we treat almost like a secular saint, demanded that slave owners get the right to use their slaves’ circumstances to perpetuate those circumstances.

Which brings us to today and George W. Bush. No matter how loyal Bushies had manipulated the situation in Florida in 2000, Bush wouldn’t be president if not for slavery. The electoral college vote, designed to create an inequitable system, did so again. It rendered moot Al Gore’s popular vote lead of about a half-million votes.

So, if not for slavery, we would not be in Iraq.

Of course, a great many other things would have been different throughout American history as well. Thomas Jefferson would never have been president, for example, if not Virginia's massive slave population — and the extra electoral college votes granted to Jefferson as a result. It’s impossible to guess what that alternate America and world would have looked like.

But if we finished, for another year, with the July 4th explosion of fireworks, the flag-waving and singing of “God Bless America,” that gets everyone all misty-eyed, we should look with clearer eyes at what we claim is so blessed.

Time

“If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I'd like to do…"

When a song insists on playing in my head for minutes or hours or days, there’s always something that one part of my brain is trying to tell another part, through the music. Sometimes I hear the message; sometimes, just the song.

I recognize the message of the above. Time in a Bottle, Jim Croce's love ballad, has always reminded me of something he didn't intend to say to those who listened. Croce died in a plane crash, not so long after writing it. So, when it gets stuck on "play" in my consciousness, I’m reminded of how little time we each have — and how little we know about when that time will end.

For me, the importance of all this is not so much to pack life with the most of everything I want to get out of it, because I can’t ever succeed at that. While there’s life, there will always be the far goal, along with the many little nearby ones. I can’t possibly do everything I think I might like to do — and what I think I might like to do often looks, from the other side, after having done it, less important.

So, for me, the key is to avoid doing what I know I'll otherwise feel guilty about having done; and to gather the will to do what, I know, I'll otherwise feel guilty about not having done.