"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Democrats Trying all Angles to Impose Censorship

A "study" sounds innocuous but it is of course intended as a launching pad for more regulation:

"The heads of the House committee and subcommittee overseeing communications issues, respectively, have asked the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) to study the use of "telecommunications to commit hate crimes."

While NTIA, which is the Bush administration's telecommunications policy advisory arm, already produced a study on the topic under the first president Bush back in 1992, Reps. John Dingell and Ed Markey urged it to update the study given the rise in the Internet since them. But, according to a release from the commitee issued Monday, they also said they are also "particularly" interested in studying "uses by broadcast facilites licensed on behalf of the public by the FCC, and whether such uses convey messages of bigotry or hatred, creating a climate of fear and inciting individuals to commit hate crimes."

Source

If I said, for instance, that homosexuality is a sexual perversion (a view that was enshrined in law until fairly recently) Reps. Dingell and Markey would no doubt classify that as "bigotry or hatred, creating a climate of fear and inciting individuals to commit hate crimes." So it is a direct attack on free speech.

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