$335,906 Is The Price Of The Constitution

[futurebeachbum]

Interesting article at Eurasia Reveiw called "$335,906 Is The Price Of The Constitution". It discusses exactly how easy it is for large donors to get extremely favorable (and unconstitutional) legislation passed by the Congress.

When Senators give speeches, they will say that you can't put a price on freedom. But as it turns out you can. You can actually put an exact dollar amount on the Constitution. And that amount is $335,906.

That's the amount that Hollywood gave Senator Patrick Leahy. And in return, Leahy gave them COICA. That's not the same of some new disease, it's the abbreviation for Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, the biggest and more comprehensive internet censorship proposal in the history of this country. It would give Attorney General Eric Holder the power to create a blacklist of websites and force all companies that do business in the United States to comply with that blacklist.

Ever since the Clinton Administration's Communications Decency Act, Democrats have been obsessed with censoring the internet. And that drive has kicked into high gear again. COICA is the most ambitious plan to enact government control over freedom of expression on the internet since the days of the CDA.

I seem to recall that the Supreme Court shut down a lot of the CDA citing some quaint anachronisms from our past like the First Amendment.

COICA is just the beginning. It's the first step in transforming the internet into an environment completely controlled by the government.

Every politician in DC has wanted to do this since 1996. They're afraid that something like, well like wikileaks, will happen and its sooo much easier (and fun) to shut down free speech than to implement reasonable security protocols.

Liberals screeched for years about the Patriot Act, but very little attention is being paid to COICA, which is primarily co-sponsored by Democratic senators. The endless Hollywood movies bemoaning the oppression of the Patriot Act, won't give way to movies bemoaning COICA. But that's because COICA was written for Hollywood's benefit. And the forms of oppression that are practiced by the people who make movies about oppression, naturally don't make it into movies.

Some conservatives are defending COICA as a means of protecting private property, but it's not. It creates a privileged status for specific industries through government action, which those specific industries paid for. This is classic 'Rent Seeking Behavior' which uses government force to protect a bad business model

Hopefully SCOTUS will come thru again. Maybe they'll cite another quaint old custom we used to have called 'Due Process'.

 

[Matt J]

It's a shame we don't have a more liberal SCOTUS that would shoot this down.

 

[futurebeachbum]

It's a shame we don't have a more liberal SCOTUS that would shoot this down.

Funny I was thinking it was a shame we didn't have a more conservative, stick-as-closely-as-possible-to-the-Constitution court that would shoot it down.

 

[Andy A]

It is interesting. I wonder how the two of you think and see things so differently, and yet you both appear to get what you want and need in the country. Is this a great nation or what? (I'm beginning to feel the Christmas spirit but usually I'm "bah, humbug" this time of year.)

 

[Matt J]

Funny I was thinking it was a shame we didn't have a more conservative, stick-as-closely-as-possible-to-the-Constitution court that would shoot it down.

It's currently the most conservative court the US has had in history. They gave us unlimited corporate political donations and GW, I'm sure they'll be all about this.

 

[futurebeachbum]

It's currently the most conservative court the US has had in history. They gave us unlimited corporate political donations and GW, I'm sure they'll be all about this.

Of course, GW not withstanding, SCOTUS can't shoot down bad bills that are constitutional. That's what the separation of powers is all about (and what the Executive is supposed to do.)

What we really need is a Congress that passes bills that are both constitutional and good.

I can't think of bills any passed in the past 10 years that meet that stringent requirement.

Its hard to get good legislation out of an indentured Congress.

 

[Matt J]

It's also hard to get the SCOTUS to impose it's power when the majority of those bills don't really deal with constitutional issues.