Obama threatens NRA ads

Saturday, September 27, 2008 8:10 PM By: Newsmax staff

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The Obama camp has been threatening television and radio stations to keep them from airing anti-Obama ads.

The latest target is the NRA and stations in Pennsylvania.

Earlier this week, the National Rifle Association’s Political Victory Fund released a series of radio and television spots to educate gun owners and sportsmen about Barack Obama’s longstanding anti-gun record. In response to the NRA-PVF ads, a clearly panicked Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are doing everything they can to hide Obama’s real record by mounting a coordinated assault on the First Amendment.

They have gone to desperate and outrageous lengths to try to silence your NRA by bullying media outlets with threats of lawsuits if they run NRA-PVF’s ads.

The Obama camp is particularly angry with an NRA ad entitled “Hunter” which lays out Obama’s record on gun control.

You can see the “Hunter” ad — Go Here Now.

Other NRA ads include “Way of Life” and another focusing on Joe Biden’s record, “Defend Freedom, Defeat Obama.”

This week, Obama’s campaign general counsel Bob Bauer wrote seeking to censor the ads at stations in Pennsylvania.

“Unlike federal candidates, independent political organizations do not have a ‘right to command the use of broadcast facilities,’” Bauer writes. “Moreover, you have a duty ‘to protect the public from false, misleading or deceptive advertising.’”

“This advertising is false, misleading, and deceptive,” Bauer continued. “We request that you immediately cease airing this advertising.”

The NRA says Obama’s camp are sending out these “intimidating cease and desist letters” to cable operators and television stations, threatening their FCC licenses if they run the ads.

The NRA charged that “Obama and the DNC have been using strong-arm tactics reminiscent of Chicago machine politics to try and cover up the truth and silence NRA by forcing the stations to assist them in hiding Obama’s radical anti-gun record.”

And now, Obama and the DNC have opened a new front in their assault on your First Amendment rights by calling on their followers to contact these station managers to demand that the stations not run NRA-PVF’s ads.

NRA stands behind the accuracy of these ads, and NRA attorneys have responded to the Obama campaign’s despicable and abusive attempt to trample on the First Amendment by sending a thorough rebuttal to station managers. This rebuttal clearly and conclusively refutes the Obama campaign’s fallacious claims that the ads are inaccurate.

The NRA has set up a Web site detailing its position on Obama at www.gunbanobama.com.

A copy of the NRA’s letter to station, written by its counsel Cleta Mitchell, follows below:

MEMORANDUM

CLIENT-MATTER NUMBER

999100-0130

TO: Station Managers

FROM: Cleta Mitchell, Esq.

Counsel to National Rifle Association