I’m not a big political blogger. I’ve made my views known at times, and I snuck a couple of lefty posts onto the Command Post editorial pages during the campaign, but I’m mostly a tapdancing monkey for your occasional gratification. The godawful noise that usually comes out of political blogs makes my head hurt.
I agree with the intent of campaign finance reform (try to level the playing field, take the money out of it, blah, blah, blah). However, this is just carrying things a leetle too far…
The coming crackdown on blogging | Newsmakers | CNET News.com
In just a few months, [Bradley Smith] warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign’s Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate’s press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.
What’s next? Bumper stickers (as JR points out)? Lawn signs? Are we going to fine everyone who stands around the water cooler and tries to convince folks that their candidate won the previous night’s debate?
Tell me, my Canadian friends, are people not as insane up there because they’re too busy trying to keep warm, or what?
Smith has an agenda. I was about to write about this yesterday, but almost immediately refutations began coming. Here’s one of the good ones (read the comments on both it and the previous post).
I’m willing to allow my site to challegene this bit of censorship.
i don’t know about the cold factor, Sol-o-nor-o. i live a mere 20 minutes from the New York/Ontario border and thusly consider myself “half Canadian, eh”, and really–the US is just as nuts up this way as it is anywhere else.
i think the key factors here are that in Canadia-land, the use of the metric system as opposed to the King’s Good measurements, and driving kilometers not miles, surely makes a difference. also, celsius, not farenheit–i think these things contribute to the overall stability of Canuckians, as opposed to British Tea-Dumping no-taxation-without-representation, but we’ll still use your outdated forms of measurements Yanks.
i could also be speaking from a megaphone in my arse.