Posted on 04/20/2005 9:55:05 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Once again, the political right and the political left are united by one common objective: the suppression of unorthodox speech that threatens their two-party duopoly.
Sneaking in quietly, on little bureaucrat feet, lawyers and other agents of the Incumbent-ocracy are enacting rules that will threaten the economic livelihoods, and possibly even the personal freedoms, of those who express heterodox opinions.
On the right, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wants criminal penalties for "indecent" speech over the airwaves. Fines weren't good enough. Sensenbrenner & Co. think the likes of Howard Stern should go to jail.
Some say that Stern is just a pottymouth. Well, the authorities in ancient Athens said that Socrates was corrupting their youth, so they killed him. In fact, amid all his scatological humor, Stern communicates a distinct political worldview: anti-government and pro-personal freedom. Indeed, he has flirted in the past with running for office as a Libertarian candidate.
And the Libertarians, with their consistent message of personal freedom and limited government at home, combined with nonintervention abroad, have an attractive message to many Republican voters. Strong Libertarian candidates could jeopardize Republican power. No wonder Sensenbrenner & Co. want to see Stern snuffed.
As Republicans and rightists seek to stymie libertarians, Democrats and leftists seek to squash another outpost of personal freedom: the Internet. Bloggers, in particular, are an ornery and uppity bunch — who knows who or what they'll topple next? So any incumbent politician would be well advised, career-wise, to beat them back down.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
The campaign finance crusader-controllers, who will not rest until all campaigns are run by bureaucrats, sued the FEC, demanding the commission start regulating the Net. A judge, loyal to the power class, agreed with the crusader-controllers, and the FEC will start writing rules and hiring regulators to dragnet the Net.
The FCC needs to be abolished. Now!
Yes.
Here is the whole rest of the article. Freepers need to wake up on this one, or Free Republic, as we know it, will be gone.
"...As Republicans and rightists seek to stymie libertarians, Democrats and leftists seek to squash another outpost of personal freedom: the Internet. Bloggers, in particular, are an ornery and uppity bunch — who knows who or what they'll topple next? So any incumbent politician would be well advised, career-wise, to beat them back down.
Fortunately for Incumbent-ocrats, there's an anti-blogging law already on the books. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, better known as McCain-Feingold, established a regime that empowers the government to supervise all campaign spending, including "in kind" contributions, such as copying and circulating campaign materials. Which is to say, every American with a copying machine is potentially violating the law, because he or she might be seen as helping a candidate too much. That's the essence of McCain-Feingold: free political speech should not be free, after all.
Flukishly, the Federal Election Commission, conceived out of the marriage of Big Brother and the Nanny State, went against its power-grabbing parents' wishes and issued a strongly libertarian opinion, saying the Internet should be exempt from such regulation.
That stance didn't last long. The campaign finance crusader-controllers, who will not rest until all campaigns are run by bureaucrats, sued the FEC, demanding the commission start regulating the Net. A judge, loyal to the power class, agreed with the crusader-controllers, and the FEC will start writing rules and hiring regulators to dragnet the Net.
FEC Commissioner Brad Smith, who fought the good fight for freedom, laments, "The basic paradigm has shifted, from the presumption of no regulation of the Internet to the presumption of regulation." While Smith's commission is inclined to regulate lightly, it's easy to imagine an FEC piling on new regulations in the future.
Some day, some regulator will pile on the piece of bureaucratic straw that breaks freedom's back. That regulator will win a big reward from the ruling class."
Of course that can lead the USA to try and regulate the content of DNS servers to restrict access to offshore networks.
McCain & Co might find a lot of support in the UN for internet regulation.
China and Yahoo. France vs Google. A building body of successful censorship.
I question your idea. I believe the laws apply to any computer in the US. If offshore servers are targeting US PCs and conducting illegal campaign activities (formerly known as "free speech") that way, access to those servers would be blocked or international action taken.
We win the fight here, in the US.
Or start learning to live without freedom.
If we can't put up at least some kind of fight on this, we just don't deserve to be free, really. And I don't think it will take much of a fight ot win this.
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