Barrel Strength

It may soon be morning again in America. And guess who will be knocking on the door at 4:30 AM? Even before entering the White House, The One is getting adept at crushing voices of dissent, according to Investor’s Business Daily, with lots more to come:

• When the National Rifle Association recently released television and radio ads in Pennsylvania targeting Obama’s history of anti-gun votes, the Obama campaign’s general counsel fired off bullying letters to stations that ran the spots, implying that they may have violated public-interest obligations.

• When the 527 group, the American Issues Project, came out with a commercial linking Obama to former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, the campaign (unsuccessfully) complained to the Department of Justice that AIP had broken campaign finance laws, and managed to spook some stations away from the ad.

• When two different conservative writers looking into Obama’s background appeared on Chicago’s WGN-AM Radio, the campaign’s “action wire” energized its activists to bombard the station with rage-filled phone calls and e-mails, making the program more difficult to conduct.

(The show, hosted by the eminently reasonable Milt Rosenberg, had on both occasions invited the Obama campaign to send a representative to respond; the campaign preferred to answer with digital brownshirts.)

From extending the Fairness Doctrine to eliminate and twisting Internet network neutrality into a similar application to the Web, the Obamistas will resort to any regulatory lever they can find to neutralize dissent.

Welcome to your Cheka years, America.