Unintended consequences: US government wants to force bloggers to register
I was browsing news tonight and noticed an article over at Digg with the headline: Bloggers Who Criticize Government May Face Prison. I found that to be a major attention grabber and wanted to take a look at the underlying information. As happens to often, the underlying information does NOT indicate a deliberate attempt to ‘censor’ or police the content of any blog. I tracked the story down through several intermediate websites, finally ending at a site called GrassrootsFreedom.com. To qoute it:
The Senate would make exercising your First Amendment rights a crime. The Senate voted 93 – 2 to amend S. 1 to include criminal penalties for knowing and willful reporting failures. That would include when the government thinks you should have known to report and civil disobedience.
That really doesn’t look like the wording of this bill intends to allow censorship does it? However, here we get to the whole point of this post, which is unintended consequences. When lawmakers write a bill regulating something, there are always ways to work around, twist, or pervert the intent of the regulation. The only way to prevent the government from messing something up is to prevent them from actually making a rule allowing them the power in the first place.
As if you couldn’t tell earlier, I am essentially completely against big government in any shape or form. I do not want anyone at all telling me what is proper or not, other than my own moral code, as long as I do not harm to another. Why can’t we have a government that allows this type of freedom?
