I doubt in the final analysis (note: This is an “at the end of the day” free zone) even the three troglodytes on the Federal Election Commission who were pushing free speech restrictions on bloggers… the ones that have been bandied about the Internet yesterday and today… will go through with their bozo plans. But if they do… in the words of that great Cambodian John Kerry… I say “Bring it on!” I can’t imagine a greater publicity bonanza for the blogosphere. Everyone from the ACLU to Pat Buchanan will be on our side. Oops, maybe that’s the same thing these days, but you know what I mean. It would create one of those rare confluences of the sun and moon when the Daily Kos would lie down with Instapundit.
Just for the record, no matter what the FEC decrees, I will continue to link to campaign websites whenever I want. [I don't think you ever did that.-ed. So what? I'm trying to make a point.] If they put me into jail for it, so be it. You meet a better class of people there than you do on the Federal Election Commission.
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20 Comments
1. rastajenk:Ward Churchill’s free speech issues are about to be upstaged, big time.
Mar 4, 2005 - 6:36 am 2. Knucklehead:You are absolutely correct, Roger. Not only would it be the best possible publicity for the blogosphere but it would be completely unenforceable. Could you imagine the FEC, the gubmint, scurrying around trying to get blogs to stop blogging and/or to collect fines or impose “equal time”?
I put this sort of thing into the “round up and deport all the illegal immigrants” category. Even if, by some cataclysm of US political stupidity, such a thing were to come to pass, fifteen minutes into the effort to try and actually accomplish it we’d have civil disobedience and the Mother of ALl Hands across America putting a screeching, screaming halt to it and 90% of its original supporters scratching their heads wondering why it sounded like such a good idea.
Mar 4, 2005 - 6:43 am 3. richard mcenroe:Don’t forget, that moderate man of principle, John McCain is suing them to make them impose these restrictions.
Whatever else happens, ANYBODY who runs against John McCain is getting my donation, be they Republican, Democrat or red-assed baboon…
Oh, and I will not be doing business in Arizona while he is Senator there…
Mar 4, 2005 - 7:03 am 4. Knucklehead:With all due respect to Senator McCain’s service to my country, does he really believe the full extent of free speech should be a prison cell tapping system? Whassamatta wit dat man?
Mar 4, 2005 - 7:10 am 5. richard mcenroe:knucklehead รณ Dammit, you stole my next allusion. Well done!
Mar 4, 2005 - 7:14 am 6. TmjUtah:Way back when President Bush failed to veto this trash, I told the wife that I hoped he didn’t take a hit even after the Supremes (or even a lower federal court) threw the law out. Call me naive.
We all know how that worked out. All three branches screwed the pooch on this one. I wrote about it at length over on my digs; got my first trackback for my efforts. *chuckle*.
Mar 4, 2005 - 7:45 am 7. Hogarth:Hear, hear Roger. It’s high time for civil disobedience to make a come back in our country.
Between abuse of eminent domain, restrictions on business owners usage of their private property, and increased restrictions on Freedom of Speech (muzzling of blogs, not the hyped-up restrictions of the Tim Robbins ilk) it’s getting to the point where we have to make a stand.
Mar 4, 2005 - 7:51 am 8. photoncourier.blogspot.com:McCain is a man who *radiates* arrogance, almost to the level of a Teddy Kennedy. Do people in Arizona find this kind of individual appealing?
Mar 4, 2005 - 8:00 am 9. charlotte:Nice blogging, TmjUtah. Cogent, vigorous, and interesting use of lower case for a certain country!
Mar 4, 2005 - 8:01 am 10. jerry:I have never understood why people think so highly of John McCain the Senator. They have convoluted his heroism as a POW with his competency as a Senator. McCain is arrogant and a bully who does not want to be contradicted by us lesser forms. McCain-Feingold was always meant to be the MSM Protection Act. This is nothing more then the “Empire” striking back.
Mar 4, 2005 - 8:06 am 11. Knucklehead:OT, but ChicagoBoyz is on a roll! The only way I can tie this in with this thread, however, is that their thread, How the Internet Saved History taps into a beneficial side-effect of the internet in addition to the free speech aspects.
Mar 4, 2005 - 8:19 am 12. Carol_Herman:Captain Ed wrote a letter; and asked everyone reading his blog to do the same. So, here’s my postcard, sent to Boxer and Feinstein. Yeah. I signed my name!
BRING IT ON!
Colleen Kaka Kolly Molly & the FEC can take their their ruling attacking bloggers, and smoke it! Ladies, I know you love your shovels. But it’s time. Stop digging. You’ve accomplished your goal. I stopped voting for democrats. CAROL HERMAN
Mar 4, 2005 - 11:47 am 13. Knucklehead:Just in case any of y’all have an inclination to write your legislators about this, you can find and write to your congressional representative here and discover your senators contact information here.
Mar 4, 2005 - 12:03 pm 14. Knucklehead:Ooh! Carol, I like your style! I wish I’d waited a few minutes before I sent off my comments to my legislators.
Mar 4, 2005 - 12:05 pm 15. charlotte:I’m not so sure the blogosphere’s ire about what the FEC Dems are trying to do is as much about their farcical attempt to usurp free speech as it is about outlawing our addiction. Once one has been cyber turned-on to freely accessing real information and sharing commentary, taking that away would induce the cruelest of withdrawals. Nevermind abstract principles- this could become painfully physical if we can’t mainline the non-mainstream news and opinion we’ve become habituated to.
And, what irony. Just as Bush and our military are pressuring oppressors to fold and closed societies to open up, our very own Democrat People’s Party members would clamp down on free political expression at home in favor of licensed groups and commercial news to suit their partisan purposes. China, Iran and NoKo would approve. Oh, and the UN, too.
Mar 4, 2005 - 12:54 pm 16. Knucklehead:Charlotte,
I hadn’t considered the withdrawal aspects of this! Good point. If I don’t get blog jones satisfied there’s real potential for ugliness (well, more ugliness).
====================
Roger’s post above, Et tu, Apple doesn’t accept comments (or something’s funky on my side), and since Roger himself sees Apple as a threat similar to the FEC, I thought I’d comment here. I refuse to join those “registration required” sites like the San Jose Mercury regardless of whether or not their free. I just grew weary of registering and won’t do it anymore. Petty, I know.
So I can’t (alright, won’t) read the full article. Roger quoted
In a case with implications for the freedom to blog, a San Jose judge tentatively ruled Thursday that Apple Computer can force three online publishers to surrender the names of confidential sources who disclosed information about the company’s upcoming products.
Based upon that tiny snippet of information I’d say this is a very different animal than the FEC thing and does not represent a particular danger to bloggers in general. I have no idea what three electronic publishers were defendents or what product information was disclosed through the electronic publishing, but I don’t see how bloggers or the MSM has a right to publish information about a corporation’s intellectual property.
The courts have ruled that the MSM does not have blanket protection wrt to their sources where a crime may have been committed. See the recent rulings re: the Plame affair for just one example. The unauthorized disclosure of intellectual property is a crime. Apple really had no choice but to bring this to court. If one leaves one’s IP unprotected it ceases to be one’s IP.
Mar 4, 2005 - 1:27 pm 17. Terrye:I see a date with the Supreme Court in the future here. No way is this constitutional.
Mar 4, 2005 - 1:52 pm 18. WichitaBoy:Now, now, Terrye, now that the Supreme Court is using international standards rather than the Constitution itself to decide what is constitutional, it occurs to me that there are many many countries–including the UK, Canada, France, and Germany, not to mention Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela–which restrict free speech heavily and therefore we can reasonably conclude that new restrictions on free speech are very constitutional.
Mar 4, 2005 - 2:17 pm 19. Cicero:Be fair to Roger here. I read one of the original pieces on the Apple-affair and the big thing with that seemed to be that it threatened to establish through jurisprudence that bloggers are not legally considered journalists although they provide many of the same functions.
The judge, according to the original story which I have linked to (on my own blog of course), didn’t give a reason for prematurely drawing a dividing line between bloggers and journalists who work for established outlets such as the NY Times.
In a future court case this could potentially be used as ammunition against political bloggers. I agree with Apple’s vehement protection of their IP, they need to do it, except the way that they are doing it threatens some nasty unintended consequences.
Mar 4, 2005 - 4:00 pm 20. Carol_Herman:Do you know, more people have done a 180 on McCain, than Kerry promised to sign his own 180 form? McCain, in the future can only wound Hillary. Since I think the two of them are gonna march into lockstep into the democratic nomination in 2008.
You read that right! But ya know? Just because you’re ambitious and you race out onto the stage, doesn’t mean wiser handlers behind the curtain don’t have vaudiville’s old hook! When theatre was live entertainment … the show went on when the cabbages and the tomatoes brough the hook out … so we could laugh as the untalented fools were brought to a halt.
The dems have to do something. But enlightened change? I don’t think so! Nor is the MSM any smarter as they shed Rather-Blather and Eason Jordan. Those houses just have too many termites. Ain’t worth the bother to invest, no matter what the “fixer-upper” sign says.
Oh, on a personal note, I’m glad I can amuse Knucklehead. Thanks for writing to your legislators on the shinanigans they’re trying to pull. HA! Threatening us bloggers with jail. (I wanna be cuffed to Beldar.) Ya know, in Washington, they only count the numbers. You can never be too early, or too late, to the party of peppering them with paper. It ain’t like confetti. And, we’re better than a roomful of balloons.
Mar 6, 2005 - 12:06 pm