It causes me emotional distress to see this, because it makes me wonder why we are allowing some of the worst practices of the old Soviet Union to be followed in our own country.    It’s frightening, too.   Not only do we incarcerate our citizens on a large scale, as did the SU, and not only are our prisons abusive places, but cameras are not allowed around them, either.

So am I obligated to turn myself in for posting a photo that causes me such distress?    And what if I am arrested?   Prosecutors like to get their perp walks into the news.    But what if I saw a photo of my own perp walk for taking photos of our government in action?   That would cause me considerable emotional distress.  Do I get a double-sentence, then?  And do we then get to lock up the prosecutors for a year?    But what if they saw the photos of themselves being perp-walked to the courthouse?

I think this legislation needs work.

We can oppose either of these actions without disallowing them by law. To be consistent, we should allow both of them but strongly oppose them. Problem for the leftDemMedia is they got themselves into a box by the way they criticized criticism of the mosque at ground zero. Now they have no basis for criticizing the burning of the Korans. They do it anyway, but they end up looking really bad for it.

Yes, yes, I know. In one sense, the mosque is not really “at” ground zero. But earlier this week James Taranto explained why it needs to be 1.3 miles away to qualify as not being at ground zero. I go with that.

If there are such limits [on corporate campaign contributions], then congressional earmarks need to count as corporate campaign contributions. Not only that, but if a member of Congress gets to identify himself with a DOE grant or USDA grant in his state or district, e.g. by putting his name on press releases about it, then that needs to count as a corporate campaign contribution as well.

That will help even the playing field between incumbents and uppity upstarts. But even with that, we still need congressional term limits.

“Republicans should be reaching out to address the legitimate concerns of tea party advocates and publicly denouncing the incendiary language and demonstrations that may contribute to a climate that encourages one person on the fringe to commit an unspeakable act.”

I’m not a Republican, but I believe in addressing the legitimate concerns of tea party advocates. And I wish to publicly denounce the incendiary language that contributes to a climate that encourages those on the fringe to commit unspeakable acts. More particularly, I denounce Bill Clinton’s incendiary language linking tea partiers to the Oklahoma City bombing, which could encourage moonbats on the fringe to commit the unspeakable act of infringing on our First Amendment freedoms.

“By all means keep fighting, by all means, keep arguing,” he said. “But remember, words have consequences as much as actions do, and what we advocate, commensurate with our position and responsibility, we have to take responsibility for. We owe that to Oklahoma City.”

This, of course, is the president who exuded the aura of a B-movie gangster every time he spoke, and never more so than when he said this in 1995:

“The most important thing we can do to make your father [a member of the national police force] safer is to have everybody in this room, whatever their political party or their views, stand up and say it is wrong to condemn people who are out there doing their job and wrong to threaten them. When you hear somebody doing it, you ought to stand up and double up your fist and stick it in the sky and shout them down.”

Of course, if Clinton had read the Bill of Rights, he would have learned that it is NOT wrong to criticize federal employees who are doing their jobs. And if he was a man who was careful with his words, he would not have said that the response to people who threaten actual harm (as opposed to criticism) of national police officers is not to have a mob outshout them.

And if he was really, really careful of what he was saying, he would not try to do something so sleazy as to link dissent with the Oklahoma City bombing.

The AP article mentioned none of this, btw. I’m guessing it put out the article without bothering to get the response of other politicians to Clinton’s words.

Expand, then contract. Repeat as needed. I call it the blowfish technique.

Or maybe it’ll be more innocuous. Maybe they will stop future Fort Hood killers the way they protect us from terrorism by frisking white-haired grannies trying to make their way through airports with walkers and canes.

Well, everyone agrees that the government needs the power to do almost anything to ensure our existence as a country in the face of a grave threat, don’t we?

In other news, President Obama has declared swine flu a national emergency.

Oh, wait. That’s the same news. Because the example that the Homeland Security Department is giving is the case of a national epidemic where people have to stay home and telecommute:

But the Homeland Security Department accused the GAO of having unrealistic expectations of how the Internet could be managed if millions began to telework from home at the same time as bored or sick schoolchildren were playing online, sucking up valuable bandwidth.

Experts have for years pointed to the potential problem of Internet access during a severe pandemic, which would be a unique kind of emergency. It would be global, affecting many areas at once, and would last for weeks or months, unlike a disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake.

H1N1 swine flu has been declared a pandemic but is considered a moderate one. Health experts say a worse one — or a worsening of this one — could result in 40 percent absentee rates at work and school at any given time and closed offices, transportation links and other gathering places.

Many companies and government offices hope to keep operations going as much as possible with teleworking using the Internet. Among the many problems posed by this idea, however, is the issue of bandwidth — especially the “last mile” between a user’s home and central cable systems.

“Such network congestion could prevent staff from broker-dealers and other securities market participants from teleworking during a pandemic,” reads the GAO report, available here

“The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for ensuring that critical telecommunications infrastructure is protected.”

BLOCKING WEBSITES

Private Internet providers might need government authorization to block popular websites, it said, or to reduce residential transmission speeds to make way for commerce.

URL here.

Hmm. Popular websites? I wonder if Fox News is popular.

Obama: The time for bickering is over.

And it’s ironic that on the same NetworkWorld page with an article that tries to drum up support for Obama’s newest war is this item over in the “Most Read” sidebar: “20 years after Tiananmen, China containing dissent online.”

The “tea parties” being held today by groups of right-wing activists, and fueled by FOX News Channel, are an effort to mislead the public about the Obama economic plan that cuts taxes for 95 percent of Americans and creates 3.5 million jobs.”

It’s despicable that right-wing Republicans would attempt to cheapen a significant, honorable moment of American history with a shameful political stunt. Not a single American household or business will be taxed at a higher rate this year. Made to look like a grassroots uprising, this is an Obama bashing party promoted by corporate interests, as well as Republican lobbyists and politicians.”

Now I wish I had found a tea party to take part in myself.

Even if she doesn’t agree with the protestors, she should praise them for getting involved in the political process and for engaging in a national dialog. What’s despicable is for a national legislator to speak against the values enshrined in the First Amendment, which speaks of the right of citizens peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances.

And her statement that “not a single American household or business will be taxed at a higher rate this year” is hardly a rebutal to anything. I presume the protestors’ concern is over existing tax rates being an unsustainable way to support our government, and the fact that much of the stimulus package is intended to force state governments to continue higher rates of spending (and taxing) in exchange for receiving stimulus dollars. I would hope that the tax protesters are more forward-looking than Rep. Schakowsky with her one-year horizon.

As to the source of the protest, if she is going to make wild accusations about the source of the movement, maybe she should provide some evidence to back them up. Frankly, I don’t think she’s telling the truth.