"As exciting as these new developments are.... there are a number of serious issues without any kind of editing function or gate-keeping function. What does it mean to have the right to defend your reputation, or to respond to what someone says?
There used to be this old saying that the lie can be halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. Well, today, the lie can be twice around the world before the truth gets out of bed to find its boots. I mean, it is just beyond imagination what can be disseminated.
She was asked in the past if she favored control of the internet:
"Anytime an individual or an institution or an invention leaps so far out ahead of that balance [contemplated by the Founders] and throws a system, whatever it might be -- political, economic, technological -- out of balance, you've got a problem, because then it can lead to the oppression of people's rights, it can lead to the manipulation of information, it can lead to all kinds of bad outcomes which we have seen historically. So we're going to have to deal with that."
This is part of the fascinating anti-free speech logic that comes from liberals. As I remember it the argument goes, "since little people are powerless, they need big people to control the media, and sometimes with a strong hand, so the little people hear the real truth."
I'm convinced that our so-called elite class (media, political, and moneyed level liberals) see themselves as the "ubermensch." They are to national socialism what the "dictatorship of the proletariat was to communism.
Private profits/public expense. The few, the proud, the favored.
I certainly hope so. On the other side of the coin, blogs are a necessary means to restore and maintain our Republic.
Another possible nail in the coffin of free speech.
Democracy is a tyrannical system that deprives the individual of liberty and property. In that respect, I agree that freedom of speech and thought are direct threats to democracy. This should not concern Americans, as we are Republic.
If Congress moves in that direction next month, everybody here on FR will be motivated into direct political action.
My blog was started just before the U.S. invaded Iraq. Last year, January, 2004, I learned that my web site had:
[B]ecome a favorite of many readers who work for the United States and Canadian governments. Each day we get more and more visitors from government workers, and from the U.S. military. One week in January, over 2,700 visitors from the White House, NIPR Military, Naval Intel, CIA and the FBI and read reports on [my site]. Visitors from these government sites often spend in excess of 15 to 35 minutes reading news reports that are posted here.
Am I supposed to be shaking in my boots over a random comment by the FEC?
To quote Danny DeVito's character Sid Hudgens in the great film L.A. Confidential: "Think again, dear readers."
I'm not giving up. On the contrary, I'm just getting started.
Yeah right. Wed blogs are a threat to democracy. I can't imagine what they think McCain-Feingold is.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, about 45 BC:
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
Dumbass FEC won't win this.
Their idea that blogs are unregulated means to promote an official is laughable considering the fact that the CPUSA gets a pass on reporting donations. CPUSA backs the Democrats election after election yet they are allowed to hide just who their donors are due to fear of reprisal?
After Dubya signed the Campaign Finance Reform with the stated intention of passing the buck to the SCOTUS, all bets are off with regard to free speech and elections.
Thanks again, Mr. President. You're one helluva conservative.
Hillary gets in, FR gets banned, and all hell breaks loose.
But then I am an optimists/sarcasm
Do you believe this crap from Larry Noble? Center for Responsive Politics--my rear end.
The FEC is A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY.
Hillary knows that if she is to have any chance of being elected President she must first neutralize the inter net and talk radio.
Being true to the clinton m.o., hillary herself will do and say nothing. She will have her deciples working behind the scenes and below the radar on it.
This is not the first comment about the political effects of the inter net.
Stupid laws only create more outlaws. The American people take their right of free speech very seriously and no one will stop us from speaking our minds.
If by "democracy" they mean over-reaching bureaucracies bent on perpetuating their own worthless existence, I'd say, "You're damn straight."
"unregulated benefits" (?)
....I'll show you unregulated benefits!
Oh yeah. Too much truth telling."So we're going to have to deal with that."
When she talks about jumping ahead of the status quo, she means many of us on the Internet were wise to her and Bill from the first. Dealing with the Internet is just another facet of the Clintons' Arkancide policy, which was such a help to them in those rough years.