RINO Of The Day
Instead of looking at the whole picture, Illinois Republican Congressman Mark Kirk is a co-sponsor on a bill that may eventually criminalize sites like this and many more.
It was bad enough that a grandstanding U.S. attorney successfully prosecuted Lori Drew, a Missouri woman who participated in a cruel MySpace prank that apparently precipitated the 2006 suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier, under an anti-hacking law that clearly was not intended for this sort of situation.
Now Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and 14 of her colleagues want to make such prosecutions easier through a breathtakingly broad bill that would criminalize a wide range of speech protected by the First Amendment. The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act would make it a felony punishable by up to two years in prison to transmit an electronic communication (“including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages”) “with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person…to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.”
Off the top of his head, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh suggests half a dozen situations that could be covered by this law, all involving protected speech, including online criticism of politicians….
Contrary to popular opinion, progressives can be extremely mean and vindictive. With that, we also know just how thin their skins can be. Given the current makeup of the House, just who do you think will be targeted by this speech-stifling legislation?
Thanks alot, Congressman Kirk.
May 5th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I use to live next to IL for years, and so I’d hear about laws and crap they would pass there, and even as a young person with my head in the sand, I would think, “I’d never move to IL”. Look at all the crap that comes out of that place!!!
MI, IL, and CA…I hate it when I see people moving out of those failing States to other areas. They vote these bastards in, then they get all these stifling laws passed, taxes/fees/fines increase substantially, and they complain and move out…and start the process all over again in another state because they are too dumb to realize they did it to themselves.
It’s like watching a spreading cancer.
May 5th, 2009 at 11:06 am
“Hard cases make bad law.”
Anyone ever notice that when the politicians want to restrict our liberties they always reach for a case like that of Megan Meier’s suicide … even if they have to distort the facts of the case.
May 5th, 2009 at 11:10 am
“Contrary to popular opinion, progressives can be extremely mean and vindictive.”
They’re not really ‘progressives’. Let’s take back the lexicon and not use words as the Left wants them used. Teddy Roosevelt was one of the first progressives. Look at him and what he embrace: conservation, American identity, small government, level playing field for all, courage and willingness to take risks. These leftists are really regressives, clinging desperately to their failed socialism and statist utopian pipe dreams.
We are now witnessing in the Congress and the administration what happens when a major economic and military power is run with no adult supervision.
May 5th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
The law, no matter how well the intention, is obviously a violation of rights and should be protested by its noncompliance. I plan to do this myself when the time comes.