The American Spectator

* Questions to the Justice Department asked in the name of a reporter for that same newspaper.

* A newspaper story reporting unfavorable comments on judicial ethics from a law professor without identifying the professor as a consultant to the Soros-funded group.

* Oral and written questions asked of a judicial nominee in a Senate hearing by United States Senators.

* Legislation is introduced by two Democratic Senators based on Soros-funded research.

* The New York Times advertising discount was given to Move On.org, which has received, according to discoverthenetworks.org, $2.5 million from Soros personally as well as much more from Soros associates.

* Media Matters, the organization seeking to drive Limbaugh and others off the air, has received indirect Soros funding through other groups that receive direct funding from the billionaire such as MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress and Democracy Alliance.

* Forty-one Democratic Senators vote for a Senate resolution condemning Limbaugh, a resolution based on the Media Matters research.

Congressman Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has now denied he plans to launch a congressional investigation of radio talk show hosts designed to censor their speech or possibly even take them off the air completely. He has called the American Spectator report to the contrary “a fictitious story.”

But a few days before the Spectator ran its story I heard former Democratic presidential candidate and Soros fundee retired general Wesley Clark tell MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson that he supports a ratings system for free speech. “I don’t see why there can’t be standards for political discourse,” Clark said, going on to urge the establishment of speech rating system of “A-rated, B-rated and C-rated” and so on. And just by the sheerest of coincidences, a year ago this October 16 the New York Sun reported that Mr. Clark’s political action committee Wes-Pac had received $75,000 from Soros. Clark was quite up front about his objective with talk radio, which interestingly dovetailed with the sentiments attributed to Waxman. Said Clark: “There are standards for propriety in public broadcasting, are there not?…What we need to do is we need to be rating the whole standard of political discourse in America.” Why? When asked by Carlson if he, Clark, was “attempting to censor [Rush Limbaugh] by taking him off the air?” the Soros-funded ex-candidate bluntly replied: “Well, I think he’s [Rush] crossed the line.”

None of this is fictitious. One can only be curious if the powerful Waxman and his Democratic colleagues who have a penchant for passing House Resolutions will have the courage to clarify the issue by introducing a one-sentence House Resolution that reads: “Resolved: The House of Representatives supports the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

ALL OF THESE THINGS — newspaper stories, questions to a government agency from a reporter, questions asked of witnesses by Senators, legislation introduced by Senators, newspaper advertisements, talk radio, Senate resolutions and, most frighteningly, federal investigations powered by public tax dollars — all of these have traditionally been an independent part of the American democratic process. They are all now, Waxman’s denial not withstanding, very clearly and with easy documentation, under assault.

Conservatives need to be asking three questions:

1) What else is being done out of the public eye to undermine our democratic system?

2) Who is paying for it? For example, just as the pro-censorship Clark is a Soros-fundee, who else calling for repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in Congress receives Soros money? Who provides Henry Waxman’s staff with research? Who, for that matter, has provided his staff?

The third and last question is the most obvious: What are conservatives going to do about all of this?

Hopefully, Dr. Dobson, putting Hillary Clinton in charge of the Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA is not the answer to question three.