Lawmaker defends imprisoning “hostile bloggers”
We read:
"Rep. Linda Sanchez responded Wednesday to Threat Level’s tirade against her proposed legislation outlawing hostile electronic speech. Her answer: ‘Congress has no interest in censoring.’ Sanchez, with the introduction of the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, clearly has a great interest in censoring.
Still, the Democrat from Los Angeles makes several valid points that cyberbullying has lasting consequences on our nation’s youth. The 13-year-old Meier’s suicide is clearly a tragedy. But how she characterizes the measure is simply untrue. ‘Put simply, this legislation would be used as a tool for a judge and jury to determine whether there is significant evidence to prove that a person ‘cyberbullied’ another,’ she wrote in the Huffington Post. ‘That is: did they have the required intent, did they use electronic means of communication, and was the communication severe, hostile, and repeated?
So — bloggers, e-mailers, texters, spiteful exes and those who have blogged against this bill have no fear — your words are still protected under the same American values.’
But that’s not what the proposal says. It goes way beyond youth cyberbullying. As we said the other day, the measure seemingly outlaws logging onto the internet.”
Source
The intent of a law, the wording of a law and the interpretation of a law handed down by the courts are three different things so utmost caution is needed before a law creating new offences is passed. This one seems wide open to misuse.
6 comments:
Sanchez's arguments in her Huffington post are disingenious at best. She starts off by posing the hypothetical question of "If you were walking down the street and saw someone harassing a child, would you just walk by and look the other way? If that person was telling the child the world would be better off if they just killed themselves, would you ignore it?Sanchez wants to equate what happens in her example with what happens on the internet. The only problem is that what happens in her hypothetical is not against the law. No one would be prosecuted or thrown in jail for her hypothetical incident.
Yet prosecute and incarcerate is exactly what she wants to happen.
The other problem is that Sanchez tries to make the argument that this gives prosecutors, judges, and juries more discretion as to whether a person "cyberbullied" another person. She seems to think that this discretion is a good thing.
It isn't.
If the law allows discretion, that also means it can be used without any discretion, and people can be prosecuted for free speech.
Sanchez keeps trying to say that her bill does say what it says and won't do what it says it will do.
Maybe we should enact a law that prevents politicians from lying to the people and if they do, let them spend time in jail.
A back-handed assault on the First Amendment here...
This would indeed be used as a political force. When Obama's economic policies begin to take hold, the administration will need to control the flow of information to keep the masses in place.
Obama's policies are well on their way to creating double digit unemployment, inflation and interest rates - just as these same policies did under Jimmy Carter. We have seen all this before but Obama is Jimmy Carter on steroids.
(for a list of similarities between Carter and Obama, you can hit:
http://firstconservative.com/blog/political-humor/political-humor-jimmy-carters-disastrous-legacy )
How could Ms. Sanchez, or anyone from the left-wing, get anything done without lying to the people. It's a basic tactic of Demoncrats and the Left. In fact, it's what got them control of the government.
What we are seeing here is simply the first round in the battle to control the internet, with the Left throwing the first punch. Why do they want control? Well, the short answer is, because the Left loves to control everything and everyone. But there's another aspect to this.
Most of us understand that the Left controls the overwhelming majority of the main stream media, both electronic (TV) and print. They haven't been able to conquer radio, (their Air America was a total flop) which is one of the reasons Limbaugh is their favorite target. It's also a fact that much of that media empire is crumbling, thanks to people going to the internet for their news and info. This means the Left's ability to control what the people see and hear is being threatened. And they know if that happens, they lose their power to manipulate the people. Look for more and stronger attacks on the internet disguised as many different things, such as, "it's for the children", one of their favorite lies.
The real question here is, are the American people really as weak and as dumb as the Left thinks they are, that they would allow this to happen? IMO, and judging from the results of the last election, YES!
Without doubt, the current proposed law is open to very profound abuse. If Sanchez’s goal is as limited as she pretends, then the proposed law could surely be limited.
The following suggestions, although totally incomplete, would help:
No “public figure” would be protected;
No communication whose primary goal was anything other than bullying would be covered. This would obviously have to be carefully defined to absolutely cover any sort of political or otherwise protected speech.
Any government employee who in any way attempted to use this law for intimidation or to shut down protected speech would be subject to a minimum 30 year jail sentence.
Any citizen who could establish that a government employee had violated the above rule would be entitled to a reward of not less than $50 million.
There will be no such additions to the proposed law because Sanchez’s goals are not what she claims.
While part of me is surprised that Ms. Sanchez's proposal is so extreme while at the same time she doesn't see anything wrong with it, the other part of me is not surprised at all. Fascism always comes from the Left, contrary to what all the Bu$h=Hitler yahoos would have you believe.
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