Thursday, March 22, 2007

Fed Judiciary...


isn't entirely devoid of judges who can think for themselves.

Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr., in particular, still believes that the First Amendment is more important than a misguided crusade to make every nook and cranny of our world "safe" for The Children. Judge Lowell has ruled key provisions of Child Online Protection Act unconstitutional.

Parents, please pay attention to your kids. Maybe talk to them now and then, find out what is important to them, try to use logic and reason to get them to share your same values. And try to understand that if your kid happens to see a picture of a naked person on the internet, it really and truly isn't the end of the world. Thank you.

By the way, this dumb law was signed by Clinton, which should remind us that neither he nor the Democrats were a heck of a lot better about defending our freedoms than the current administration.

3 comments:

Gleemonex said...

This is the part I love:

"It is not reasonable for the government to expect all parents to shoulder the burden to cut off every possible source of adult content for their children, rather than the government's addressing the problem at its source," a government attorney, Peter D. Keisler, argued in a post-trial brief.

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You know how conservatives are supposed to be about smaller government, and less gov't intrusion into people's lives? Yeaahhh ...

But hey, just wanted to point out that Clinton was hamstrung on a lot of this type of stuff -- from the outset, Republicans challenged his moral authority (in fact, challenged whether he or any Democrat or liberal HAD any morals), so he often kind of ended up going overboard on the slam-dunk issues like keeping porn away from children. And just to clarify: I agree with you on this post, completely -- I never agreed with this law (e.g. it blocks sexual health sites, etc.), and I've always thought parents should be in charge of what their kids can see (as opposed to the government).

HHL said...

I understand what you are saying, but I still fault Clinton for not standing up for what is right.

It isn't like he didn't know what was right. He went to freakin' Yale Law School.

AND, at the time this law was enacted, the previous version (1996) of this law had already been rejected into the third row by a court on similar grounds.

So my problem with him was that he knew it was probably unconstitutional, and he must have felt that it was a bad idea as a matter of policy, but he still signed it because of political expediency.

Yes, people (i.e., the "electorate") don't understand and/or will not pay attention to things that can't be explained in a headline ("Clinton vetoes anti-porn-for-kids law!") or in a 15 second CNN-byte.

But I want my representatives in government to stand up for what is right, even when it isn't easy. Or actually ESPECIALLY when it isn't easy.

Gleemonex said...

I agree -- I was just throwin out a thought on the why. ;-)