Infinite Monkeys

It's a bit of a stretch to say Democrats hold the Supreme Court. Seven of the nine justices were appointed by Republican presidents (though, yes, some of those are pretty liberal).

Yeah, I guess that's true. I think I had just awakened from a nap when I wrote that. Somehow the Senate and the House don't really equal two thirds of the gub'mint, now do they?

All in all, I think it's still accurate to say that the very fact that the Dems are in a position to bring the fairnees doctrine back, testifies to the lack of a "need" for it.

Hey, liberals do have the (old) Fourth Branch, though, don't they?

That's true. Your central point still stands--it isn't hard to find voices across the political spectrum. The fairness doctrine is idiotic.

What makes the Fairness Doctrine idiotic is that it doesn't increase "the other side's" message getting out. It simply kills on-air political speech. I mean, who's going to listen to all the programming and decides how much of what kind of political speech has happened and must be compensated for? What do you counter a libertarain message with? A fascist one? The whole process would be driven entirely by listener complaints, and you can IMAGINE how much radio stations want to get into THAT.

My memory of how the Fairness Doctrine worked in practice was the station management was so terrified of the damn thing that, short of cut-and-dried election year debates, they simply refused to have talk programming on at all. Too risky.

So, really, it's the "You Shut Up" doctrine.