Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Senate panel brings federal law one step closer to kneecapping bloggers
Advancing their quest for “common sense press control,” the Senate Judiciary Committee voted yesterday to define who the government will consider to be an “Authorized Journalist,” meaning if the measure becomes law, they will also be able to declare who is not.
Defining "covered journalists" as those who are “an employee, independent contractor or agent of an entity that disseminates news or information,” the bill would also “extend to student journalists,” the report continues, meaning it will also codify who is an “Authorized Student.”
That this particular triumvirate sees itself as the arbiters of not just government declaring who merits elite “more equal than others” recognition, but as vested with legitimate Constitutional powers to make such a determination backed by force of law in the first damn place, is hardly surprising. After all, the Second Amendment isn’t safe around them either, so why would people think other freedoms would be?
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This is another step in the erosion of First Amendment rights. If the people don't wake up it won't be long until there will be total governmental control of speech.
Of course, it's all for our benefit, to provide a respectful and harmonious society, one without disagreement and conflict. One which never questions our all-knowing benevolent dear leader.
Freedom of the press is essential to the freedom of the people. If they can regulate the press in any way, there is no longer any "freedom of the press"
I was wondering who the three actors were that the writer described as the triumvirate - it appears to be Sens Fienstein, Durbin and Shumer
"We are living in a world in which nobody is free, in which hardly anybody is secure, in which it is almost impossible to be honest and to remain alive.”
- George Orwell – 1937
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
C. S. Lewis
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.
- Robert Heinlein
With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied – chains us all, irrevocably.
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”
Patrick Henry
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” Declaration of Independence)
In other words, governments are instituted for one purpose … to secure rights. They are merely the vessel that contains and protects these God-given rights. Government is not the purpose unto itself. It is merely the carrying case for liberty, and when that carrying case becomes the object of our intent, rather than precious cargo of God-given rights being the object of our focus, we are in mired vexation. When our founders erected a new government to shelter their Creator endowed rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the object was not the institution, it was freedom. They did not create an idol for us to worship and call it government. Government was the shell that contained the egg. The shell has little value but to protect the contents.
Jefferson could not have made it any clearer. America’s founders desired a land in which men might live in liberty. By declaring independence from the government of England and instituting a new government on this continent, they did not erect that government for the purpose of having a government, but rather, it was built as a bulwark to house those principles that secured our freedoms. They created a mechanism designed to carry and shelter our precious freedom and liberty … government was an armored car to protect that, which they considered to be, irreplaceably precious …liberty. Even the independence they sought was not the object … the object was liberty. Even the formation of the constitution in 1787, while a brilliant work, was not the object … the object was freedom.
Now, look further at these words:
“That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.”
This is that time which is now upon us. It is time to abolish what has sprung up in the place of our government and institute new government, and laying again the foundation and purpose of our government … namely, the protection of liberty and freedom. That is the hard work that lies ahead … instituting a new government from within the hydra which has grown up in Washington D.C., state capitals around the country, the counties and cities from the hustings, to the monolithic metropolises coast to coast. We must build again, not a government that does for us what we don’t want to dirty our hands doing, but a government which meets its singular goal as described by the Founders … housing for liberty. Government is not the goal … the goal is liberty. And it will be only, when we rebuild the bulwark of freedom, a government placed solidly on the foundation of constitutional precept, limited in size, scope and reach, to the 17 powers granted it to protect our freedom and liberty, that we will once again breathe free as a people.
I haven't read the text of the bill, which always puts one at risk for getting out on the thin end of the limb when commenting, but . . . BUT
If the protections of publication of one's thoughts and opinions free from prior restraint is to be limited to those who hold an (official or unofficial) press license to speak/publish, would The American Crisis or Common Sense (author Thomas Paine) have seen the light of day under such a law? Would the Federalist Papers have been published, or would their authors have been incarcerated of fined into non-existence?
A general disrespect has developed among those who hold themselves to be our betters for the Second Amendment. Think not that the Second Amendment is the only aged, musty artifact of a bygone era that our betters would eliminate or severely restrict. The First Amendment can be a real pain to those who rule rather than govern. The Fourth Amendment has already been severely compromised, the Fifth Amendment weakened, and Ninth and Tenth Amendments largely ignored.
And all this has been with little resistance, and with a lot of cheerleading by those who are too stupid or too shortsighted to realize they are being used as "useful idiots" by those who will rule mercilessly over them also when central power is solidified.
We were given a constitutional "Republic, Madame, if you can keep it." - (Benjamin Franklin) We are not only not keeping it, we are throwing it away with both hands. But we are no longer a moral and religious people, and even our founders proclaimed our Constitution was unfit for the governance of any other people. It seems John Adams was right in that also.
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