RUTHFULLY YOURS

Officials: Anita Dunn may be leaving with her little red book, but her husband enters as the next White House counsel, bringing experience in suppressing dissent, assaulting the First Amendment and limiting speech.

Dunn, whose favorite philosophers include mass murderer Mao Zedong, was expected to leave after a short stint. She rose to fame as chief strategist for former Senate majority leader, now national health care guru, Tom Daschle. While serving as White House communications director, she was the commanding general of the administration “war” on Fox News.

Like her philosophical mentor, Mao, and her colleague, FCC diversity czar Mark Lloyd, she feels that dissent and discourse in a democracy are an annoying and unnecessary distraction to our great leap forward. Dunn admired Mao. Lloyd admires Hugo Chavez and his treatment of the Venezuelan media.

Dunn’s husband, Bob Bauer, is a politically connected attorney who has gone from being general counsel of the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign to serving as general counsel of the Democratic National Committee. He is also the top lawyer at Organizing for America, the rechristened version of the president’s campaign vehicle.

He replaces Greg Craig, who was ousted because of frustration among senior White House aides over his handling of the plans to close the prison at Guantanamo. Not many people know Bob Bauer, but defenders of democracy and free speech know of his antipathy toward political opposition and desire to suppress it.

Bauer was an integral part of the attempt in the 2008 campaign to silence opposition groups and suppress their ads questioning his candidate’s past associations and positions on issues such as gun control.

When the National Rifle Association ran ads attacking his candidate’s position on gun rights, campaign general counsel Bauer wrote “cease and desist” letters to stations in Pennsylvania and Ohio, where bitter townsfolk clinging to their guns might see them.

In the letter, Bauer reminded station managers that “you have a duty ‘to protect the public from false, misleading or deceptive advertising.'” The inner quote is a clear reference to government regulations on the issuance of station licenses.

When the American Issues Project, a private group, ran ads bringing up a long and close association with Weatherman terrorist William Ayers, Bauer also warned station managers, suggesting their broadcast license might be at risk.

“Your station is committed to operating in the public interest, an objective that cannot be satisfied by accepting for compensation material of such malicious falsity,” he wrote.

Bauer also wrote twice to the Justice Department demanding it “take prompt action to investigate and to prosecute” the American Issues Project. In the second letter, Bauer directly attacked the Dallas billionaire funding the harsh attack ads, Harold Simmons.

“We reiterate our request that the Department of Justice fulfill its commitment to take prompt action to investigate and to prosecute the American Issues Project, and we further request that the Department of Justice investigate and prosecute Howard (sic) Simmons for a knowing and willful violation of the individual aggregate contribution limits,” Bauer wrote.

Ed Martin, the group’s president, responded: “These over-the-top bullying tactics are reminiscent of the kind of censorship one would see in a Stalinist dictatorship, with the only difference being that those guys generally had to wait until they were in power to throw people who disagreed with them into jail.”

This wasn’t the first time Bauer has called for criminal investigations and prosecutions into the donors to independent groups critical of his candidate, including one supporting John Edwards and another supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton.

This adds to a disturbing pattern of administration officials hostile to both a free press and the free expression of dissenting political opinion. They want to silence talk radio, reimpose the Fairness Doctrine by stealth, marginalize Fox News and use Hollywood and the arts as one big propaganda vehicle.

Just like Mao would do.