somedaybitch

McCain-Feingold seeks to regulate blogging

Q: Why wouldn't the news exemption cover bloggers and online media?

A: Because the statute refers to periodicals or broadcast, and it's not clear the Internet is either of those. Second, because there's no standard for being a blogger, anyone can claim to be one, and we're back to the deregulated Internet that the judge objected to. Also I think some of my colleagues on the commission would be uncomfortable with that kind of blanket exemption.

somebody tried that once here. i believe it was the British, in oh, the late 1700's? we kicked their asses back across the pond. and both of us were better for it. (hugs the Brits.)

i can't speak to how disappointed i am in John McCain. i thought he had more sense.

speech is unregulated for a reason, Senator. you're going after the Internet just proves to me that even you believe that the MSM is ineffective and you're targeting the 'net because it isn't, because we are using it to educate ourselves, think for ourselves, and we're coming to our own conclusions because the information is out there.

you sir, can kiss my ass.

hat tip to the Democracy Project.
Instapundit has blogosphere reactions linked here.

be sure to scroll all the way down and catch Democracy-Project's updates, especially this one by Tom West. it's worth reading all by itself.

to wit:

Applied to free speech, the liberal view leads to the conclusion that government must limit spending by those who can afford to publish or broadcast their views. As University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein writes, the traditional autonomy of newspapers "may itself be an abridgment of the free speech right." Government interference with broadcasting content through FCC licensing is from this standpoint a positive good for free speech. Without it, rich white males will dominate, and the poor, women and minorities will be marginalized and silenced. Therefore, in the liberal view, speech rights must be redistributed from the rich and privileged to the poor and excluded.

kinda makes ya'll hypocritical now, doesn't it?

University of Maryland professor Mark Graber endorses this view: "Affluent Americans," he writes, "have no First Amendment right that permits them to achieve political success through constant repetition of relatively unwanted ideas." In other words, if you publish or broadcast "too much," government has the right, and the duty, to silence you. Yale law professor Stephen Carter agrees: "Left unregulated, the modern media could present serious threats to democracy." Sunstein calls for a "New Deal for Speech," in which government will treat speech in exactly the same way as it already treats property, namely, as something that is really owned by government, and which citizens are only permitted to use or engage in when they meet conditions established by government to promote fairness and justice.

uhm, no.

Arguments like these are the deepest reason that liberals no longer follow the Constitution, and why Americans today no longer know what the free speech clause really means.

well, yeah. in the case of the far left, why would a socialist follow the Constitution?