Poor Guardians of Freedom of Speech

We'll get the bad news out of the way first. Senator Sensenbrenner (R-WI) wants to criminalize television indecency! Via Matt Drudge:

"I'd prefer using the criminal process rather than the regulatory process," Sensenbrenner told the executives.

The current system -- in which the FCC fines a licensee for violating the regulations -- casts too wide a net, he said, trapping those who are attempting to reign in smut on TV and those who are not.

"People who are in flagrant disregard should face a criminal process rather than a regulator process," Sensenbrenner said. "That is the way to go. Aim the cannon specifically at the people committing the offenses, rather than the blunderbuss approach that gets the good actors.

"The people who are trying to do the right thing end up being penalized the same way as the people who are doing the wrong thing."

How the hell is criminalizing indecency going to somehow result in fewer people getting caught in the "net," as if the government should be engaged in this kind of "fishing" at all? Sadly, this is not just some loose cannon out there: This is only the latest salvo in a drive to expand government censorship of television. For more on that, go here.

So that covers the filthy, groping left hand of the conservative movement. What's the right hand doing? Lamenting what the left hand did, and failing to note where the greatest blame lies. At American Thinker, we get what passes for good news in the freedom of speech department: a few faint stirrings of concern.

The evil done by the Pew Foundation’s secret maneuvers to stampede Congress into passing, and President Bush into signing, the free speech-regulating McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act continues to spread. The Supreme Court’s acquiescence to limitations on political speech has empowered those who do not want the ordinary folk to enjoy access to the megaphone of the internet.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering legislation to require bloggers to register and pay a registration fee if they run a website with more than 500 hits.

I'm not unhappy that some conservatives are alarmed at this trend towards regulation of Internet speech, but it disturbs me that the Republican Congress, who passed McCain-Feingold, and the Republican President, who signed it, are getting off Scott-free while the Pew Foundation serves as whipping-boy. (Not to say that they don't deserve plenty of good welts of their own.)

Interestingly enough, and possibly in line with other recent judiciary-bashing on the right, the majority Republican-appointed Supreme Court who upheld McCain-Feingold are assigned some of the blame here. Yes, they also deserve some lashes, but this reminds me of a saying from back in my days in the submarine force: Never trust an interlock. What do I mean by that? The Supreme Court was being counted upon by Congress and the President to strike this heinous law down after they did what they thought was the politically expedient thing: Make the bill into law. Compare the Supreme Court to a circuit breaker or a fuse box. Does the existence of a fuse box mean you should overload every circuit you can think of? Of course not. The circuit breaker might fail to trip or someone might have slipped a penny in for a fuse. Well, we just saw the circuit breaker fail and we know who plugged in all those appliances.

Like I said*, it's a little silly to merely call on Congress to investigate this. A grassroots campaign to oust every last congressman who voted for McCain-Feingold unless it gets repealed before the next election sounds like a far more sensible route to me. I'll feel much better about the better part of the conservative movement when I hear about such a proposal gaining steam. Until then, that space heater and the five other appliances we have plugged in to that one outlet are just waiting to cause trouble....

* Excuse the title: Humorous impulse plus (Dare I call it that?) brain fart equals lame-ass title.

-- CAV

Updates

4-6-05: Fixed two typos and supplied a link.