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Wednesday, April 28, 2004 |
Is Your Porn Safe?
The inimitable Mark Morford on Johnny Ashcroft and his sanctimonious. silly, unconstitutional, attack on your porn.
Can you feel John Ashcroft's hot,
predatory breath bearing down on your life and your box of vibrators
and your adult DVD collection and snatching away your copy of "Weapons
of A-- Destruction #2" and smacking you across the face with a Bible,
all before skipping off to the dungeon to feed the flying monkeys?
Because while 9/11 and the process of gleefully decimating your
civil liberties via the USA Patriot Act may have delayed him a few
years, Ashcroft & Co. is back on the anti-porn warpath, hell-bent
on slashing and burning its way through the porn industry like a priest
through an all-male boarding school -- oh wait, bad analogy -- like a
hot knife through butter -- nope, not that, either -- like a
Halliburton exec through Baghdad -- there, that's more like it -- as
the U.S. Justice Department sets its sights on punishing the sex
industry and eradicating porn and making the world safe for uptight
danceless ultra-pious nondrinking white men once and for all.
What a mess. Why, as they say, are we governed by such malicious idiots?
11:47:55 AM Permalink
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Bush to Press: "You're Assuming That You Represent the Public. I Don't Accept That." [BOPnews]
This Adminstration believes that the press serves no purpose, and is only interested in 'Gotchas.' That is why Bush feels comfortable saying the press does not reperesent the peoples' opinions. But just how close are the opinions of his advisors to what the people want? Not very. The press does not represent the people. What a wonderful tradition to leave the White House? I realize that some of the press does pander, does do gotchas but to feel that all of it can be ignored damages us. And , of course, this Administration has done more to hobble and disrupt the legitimate press than any other in my lifetime.
Compare and contrast with what one of the greats said about the press, why it is important and should not be ignored. The press is how the people can get educated about the government. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. - Jefferson
Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe. - Jefferson (I guess he is able to read, right.)
Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it. - Jefferson
No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions. - Jefferson (my emphasis)
And finally
The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood. - Jefferson
Too much of the press has abandoned itself to falsehood, to crass, incompetant journalism. This sort is rightly ignored by mos. But to demean the press (and by press I also mean its new surrogates, such as blogs) is to demean the important role it serves to educate us about our government. To forget this invites severe danger to any administration. We will find out eventually, if we remain free. Only tyranny will prevent us from finding out. Only tyranny believes the press only serves its purposes and not the purposes of the people. I am not surprised by this Administration's disregard for the press. If we are to reamin a free nation, this disregard will have to disappear. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]
11:31:08 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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