Thursday, December 09, 2004

Proposed Blogger Censorship

I just found this Jim Boulet post on the Corner:
FOX New's Bill O'Reilly and CBS chief political writer David Paul Kuhn both agree that bloggers enjoy too much freedom of speech and suffer insufficient federal regulation.
Kuhn complains that we pajamahadeen have "no code of ethics, or even an employer, to enforce any standard." But help is coming: "Beginning next year, the F.E.C. will institute new rules on the restricted uses of the Internet as it relates to political speech."

Time for the blogosphere to fight back, given that, unlike, say, CBS and FOX., the pajamahadeen also tend to lack attorneys on retainer to defend our First Amendment rights. I have no desire to see NRO's Kathryn Lopez in the defendant's chair because an article in NRO criticized some politician three months before an election. Neither should the Bush Administration.

This is pretty ridiculous. It's like saying I couldn't send coordinated emails to my friends 3 months before an election, post a flier in a public flier-posting place or buy a full page ad in a newspaper. Freedom of speech is freedom of speech and the fact that two "journalists" (or at the very least, people that work for news organizations) want to impair the free speech of the little guy is outrageous.

As the Ranger said: "I'm pretty convinced that Bill O'Reilly has lost his mind."
I agree.

UPDATE: The Kerry spot has commentary and notes from his interview with O'Reilly.