first amendment

Or Free Republic, for that matter?  Well, Linda Sanchez (D) thinks it might be a good idea.

(a) Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

So, let me see if I understand this.  If I go onto Daily Kos and start accusing the posters of being godless communists bent on destroying the USA, using withering inflammatory insults ("severe" and "hostile"), and I do so in a "repeated" manner, then according to Sanchez I should be thrown in jail.

Of course the intention is to stop 'cyber-bullying' among kids.  But here is a pretty obvious case where the proposed action upon the intention will have significant unintended consequences that threaten everyone's liberty.

H/T: Corner, Volokh

I head about this case on the radio today and couldn't find any news stories on it in Google News. This story should be headline news, and among other things it demonstrates why the right needs to develop our own online news outlets (like Huffington Post) and not just opinion outlets.

http://www.alliancedefensefund.org/news/story.aspx?cid=4899

excerpts:

 DETROIT — Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom filed a lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University Thursday after school officials dismissed a student from the school’s counseling program for not affirming homosexual behavior as morally acceptable.  The school dismissed Julea Ward from the program because she would not agree prior to a counseling session to affirm a client’s homosexual behavior and would not retract her stance in subsequent disciplinary proceedings

..."When a public university has a prerequisite of affirming homosexual behavior as morally good in order to obtain a degree, the school is stepping over the legal line.  Julea did the responsible thing and followed her supervising professor’s advice to have the client referred to a counselor who did not have a conscience issue with the very matter to be discussed in counseling.  She would have gladly counseled the client if the subject had been nearly any other matter."

...EMU initiated its disciplinary process against Ward and informed her that the only way she could stay in the graduate school counseling program would be if she agreed to undergo a "remediation" program.  Its purpose would be to help Ward "see the error of her ways" and change her "belief system" as it relates to counseling about homosexual relationships, conforming her beliefs to be consistent with the university’s views.  When Ward did not agree with the conditions, she was given the options of either voluntarily leaving the program or asking for a formal review hearing.Ward chose the hearing, during which EMU faculty denigrated her Christian views and asked several inappropriate and intrusive questions about her religious beliefs.  The hearing committee dismissed her from the counseling program on March 12.  Ward appealed the decision to the dean of the College of Education, who upheld the dismissal on March 26.

You can tell when a liberal politician is in deep sushi by two things:

a) The MSM starts buying into the criticism that conservatives and libertarians made for months prior to their discovery

b) The wounded target's political allies "circle the wagons" and start returning fire against the officeholder's critics

We are witnessing this scenario today unfolding in Connecticut

Led by intrepid columnist Kevin Rennie, the Hartford Courant has raised the decible level of dissatisfaction with Dodd, culminating with calling his AIG bonus blunder a "flip-flop" in a front page headline and having a liberal writer urge Dodd not to see re-election.

Since the Courant's reversal of fortune on a CT political icon whom they have supported for decades, the CT Democratic establishment did what it does best. Circle the wagons around their wounded leader.  They've been doing a "dog and pony" show around the state where all the leading Democrats stand behind the embattled Dodd.

Including Attorney General Dick Blumenthal

Remember him. Once he was very upset with Countrywide Lending's predatory practices.

But when it came to Chris Dodd's deal with Countrywide, he gave the Senator a clean bill of health.

"We subpoena documents. We don't voluntarily necessarily accept representations made to us by companies like Countrywide," Blumenthal responded. "Chris Dodd has disclosed those documents, he has disclosed those facts and I believe the people of Connecticut will accept his explanation and elect him in 2010." 

Hmm, Dick, I know I went to some jock colleges unlike you and your  Harvard+ Yale pedigree. But, hmmm. a) you never subpoenaed Dodd's documents.  and b) Dodd didn;t really disclose them--unless one hour of letting handpicked reporters view documents constitutes "disclosure" (Hmm...I'll try that next time I have a discovery dispute with the AG's office).

Here's what the Wall Street Journal had to say about Blumenthal's defense of Dodd.  

Inappropriate doesn't begin to describe Mr. Blumenthal's appearance this week on Hartford's WFSB-TV. The AG compared Mr. Dodd, who was due to receive an estimated savings of $75,000 over the life of his two VIP mortgage loans, to borrowers allegedly duped by unscrupulous lenders. Mr. Blumenthal claimed that "there's no evidence of wrongdoing on [Mr. Dodd's] part any more than victims who were misled or deceived by Countrywide."

But I merely set the table here. What just happened really shows to what lengths the Democrats will use their levers of power to protect their own.

As we all well know, the Tribune Company is in bankruptcy.  The Tribune owns the Courant and the Fox TV affiliate in Hartford, Channel 61. To survive the recession, the Tribune proposes to combine the news staff of the Courant and Fox 61.  

And who's against this. Chris Dodd's loyal lackey Dick Blumenthal

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal wrote the owner of Tribune Wednesday saying that the merger of the Hartford Courant, WTIC-TV, and WTXX-TV may violate the Federal Communications Commissions ban on a company owning a television station and newspaper in the same market.

“I am concerned that allowing these entities to fully merge into one news and information operation goes well beyond what the FCC intended when it granted Tribune a two-year limited waiver,” Blumenthal wrote in this letter to Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell.

Hmm, Dick, in case you haven;t noticed the newspaper business is not. hmm, in the best of health these days. Maybe saving the Courant might be...a good thing.

So what to make of AG Blumenthal's sudden concern over media consolidation?   

Could this be an effort to suggest that fewer problems for Senator Dodd might mean fewer problems for the Courant's business plan?

We've never seen Democratic politicians manipulate the regulatory process to benefit their interests, now have we?

Perhaps Ivy League lawyer Blumenthal ought to reacquaint himself with this concept I learned at my non-elite law school

Think there's been a "chilling effect'" placed on the Courant's future coverage of Senator Dodd ?

I do.  We'll see how interested the Left is in the First Amendment once liberals decide to chill conservatives. My guess. Not a peep. 

 ====UPDATE====

A good night's sleep caused me to remember this prior incident when a media person got a little too hostile at Senator Dodd, and his corporate masters decided to "self-sanction" themselves --no doubt so as not to draw attention to folks who might bring in the FCC to scour their affairs.I wrote about it at the time.   Here's some FoxNews coverage at the time

Adam Theirer, a scholar at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, notes that the Fairness Doctrine was part of a regulatory paradigm being pushed by the left and, in particular, the group Free Press. This fight is not over. Adam's piece is worth reading:

Of course, the radicals at the (Un)Free Press weren’t about to let one of the Left’s old favorite regulations go so away without asking for something in return.  One of the reasons that Silver and Ammori are suddenly willing to give their blessing to the Doctrine’s burial is because they want to get on with the more far-reaching agenda of micro-managing media markets using a variety of less visible regulations.

Indeed, in their paper, Silver and Ammori go to great pains to try to show that the Fairness Doctrine supposedly has nothing to do with all the other regulations that they want Congress and the FCC to continue to enforce, or even expand.  These goals include media ownership restrictions, diversity mandates, local programming regulation, and so on.  Recognizing that the Fairness Doctrine was not only ineffective but also a useful tool for many on the political Right to whip their base into action, the Free Press moved to preemptively divorce their other pet projects from the Fairness Doctrine.

It’s a brilliant tactical move by Free Press; lull Limbaugh and other conservatives into a deep sleep by throwing them the bone of a Fairness Doctrine win, and then push a far more radical regulatory agenda through the back-door once they’ve stopped paying attention.  Of course, these things cannot be as easily divorced as the Free Press radicals want us to believe.  The Fairness Doctrine was just one part of a much grander regulatory paradigm that so-called progressives have pushed for under the banner of “public interest regulation.”