A New Federal Felony On The Horizon

“No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.”

That famous quote from Judge Gideon J. Tucker comes to mind after reading this from the Cato Institute, as Congress moves to turn Internet trash talking into a federal felony.

It’s called the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, named for the Missouri girl who was driven to commit suicide by a cruel prank carried out by the mother of a classmate.

Tragic? yes. Deserving of a law banning potentially malicious speech on the Internet? No.

Several members of Congress have since jumped on the Named Victim Act bandwagon, sponsoring the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act. The Act goes far beyond the issue of unauthorized access, criminalizing any rude speech delivered via the internet, cell phone, or text message:

‘(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.

‘(b) As used in this section–

‘(1) the term ‘communication’ means the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user’s choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received; and

‘(2) the term ‘electronic means’ means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.’.

The scope of this law is breathtaking. Had a rough breakup with your significant other? Engaged in a flame war on a website’s comment section? We’ve got a law against that, you know.

Send someone a nasty e-mail? Leave a crude comment on a blog or website? Make rude, mean-spirited comments in an IM or an Internat chat room? You could find yourself facing federal felony charges.

What’s worse, it will be up to the subjective judgment of federal prosecutors as to who is persecuted prosecuted and who is not, since there is no objective standards for speech of any type.

On the surface, this shouldn’t pass a First Amendment challenge. Should it?

Notorious Child Killer Now Taking The Eternal Dirt Nap

Hell just got another resident.

The killer of Jessica Lunsford has assumed room temperature.

A convicted sex offender awaiting execution for kidnapping, raping and burying 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford alive in 2005, died of natural causes Wednesday in Florida.

John Evander Couey, 51, had been ill for some time and died in a Jacksonville hospital, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger.

Plessinger declined to provide any specifics, citing a federal law protecting the privacy of hospital patients.

“It was not a surprise,” she said.

Jessica’s grandmother, Ruth Lunsford, 77, said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press that she couldn’t feel bad about Couey’s death.

“He murdered my granddaughter. He didn’t show any mercy to my granddaughter,” she said. “God took control of it. He took him out of this world. … I’m not crying, honey. If my legs and feet would hold up, I’d go out and shout all over Citrus County.”

The only words that come to mind to note Couey’s passing? Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey, hey, hey, Good-Bye!

The Wood Spider

This is funny:

The Digital Download Tax

H/T to Charlie Sykes.

The MacIver Institute reminds us that the Jim Doyle Digital Download tax starts tomorrow.

Music downloads? Taxed. eBooks? Taxed. Ring tones? Taxed. Even digital clip art? Taxed.

Your government’s most recent gift to you: the iPod Tax. Or should we call it the Kindle Tax?  Better to call it what it really is: “Wisconsin’s We Found Yet Another Way to Take More of What You Have During the Worst Economy in Decades Because We Didn’t Want to Cut Spending-Tax.”

This doesn’t just inconvenience teens’ and young adults’ recreation. Attention any enterprising graphic artists, photographers and printers: the vast amount online media you purchase will be taxed in Wisconsin–beginning tomorrow.

This in a state that just can’t cut one dime of spending. Spend, spend, spend. Tax, tax, tax. Government just can’t do without one dime less of our money.

Then there was the rant of Sen. Fred Risser (S-PRM) earlier this week. That’s “Statist-People’s Republic of Madison.” Risser’s upset because revenue collections for the state are falling way short of projections (gee, what a shock). Risser says the Legislature needs to consider some sort of alternate funding source. Translated: either a new tax or a tax hike.

Uh, Fred. Revenue collections are down because the economy, state and national, is in the crapper thanks to the policies of your party and your leaders, Don Doyleone and Our Lord and Savior, Barack Hussein Obama, as well as the state Legislature and Congress, both run by Democrats Statists.

On the table would likely be at least two sources: either a new surtax on reported incomes of $1 million or more and/or raising the state sales tax and expanding it to cover items not currently taxed.

These bastards won’t stop until they’ve driven every single job other than government jobs out of the state and every taxpayer who can afford to leave out of here. What’ll be left? Government workers and anyone who cannot afford to leave the state.

L & O Jumps The Shark

The steady decline in what has been a stellar run for the longest running drama in TV history just hit the accelerator.

In its season premiere on Friday, Law & Order jumped the shark by having DA Jack McCoy attempt to put the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, on trial for “torture” of jihadists.

From NewsBusters:

Playing out a liberal dream of vengeance, the season premiere of NBC’s Law & Order delivered a plot in which the local Manhattan district attorney prosecuted a former Justice Department lawyer for “depraved indifference murder” based on the fact an Abu Ghraib prisoner died in the custody of soldiers who were following the lawyer’s memo on the techniques which could be used on suspected terrorists.

In the key scene in the show now relegated to the 8 PM EDT/PDT, 7 PM CDT Friday slot, District Attorney Jack McCoy, played by Sam Waterston, contends: “This memo he wrote for the Department of Justice laid out the legal architecture permitting the abuse of prisoners, abuse that led directly to this death in Iraq. You could argue this memo is an element in a conspiracy to commit assault and depraved indifference murder.”

Note: I’ve been a huge fan of Law & Order since its debut in 1990. Year in and year out, it was always worth the wait and usually well written. Same with its spin-offs, Law & Order: SVU, which features one of the best emsemble casts on TV, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, which features one of my favorite TV characters ever in Det. Robert Goren, played by Vincent D’Onofrio.

Lately, the show’s writers have taken a severe leftwing political bent, slipping in easy cartoon-like caricatures of conservatives and Christians and easy bashing of both targets. Many episodes carried the routine smears, as if it was too difficult to come up with actual villains to demonize.

This one went too far. Right over the shark.

Dem: ‘GOP Wants You To Die Quickly’

From Sean Hackbarth via Twitter:

This guy just cut his political throat.

Running in what’s described as a competitive district, heading into a year in which Democrats trail Republicans on the generic ballot for Congress, Rep. Alan Grayson (S-Fla.) described the Republicans’ health care plan as “Die quickly.”

[Grayson] warned Americans that “Republicans want you to die quickly” during an after-hours House floor speech Tuesday night.

His remarks, which drew angry and immediate calls for an apology from Republicans, were highlighted by a sign reading “The Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly.”

Veteran Tennessee Republican Jimmy Duncan abandoned customary reticence to chastise Grayson.

“That is about the most mean-spirited partisan statement that I’ve ever heard made on this floor, and I, for one, don’t appreciate it,” Duncan said.

Wonder when the resolution to censure Grayson will come from Bela Pelosi and Friends.

More Prayers To The Anointed One

This is really creepy. In a different way that the Hitler Obama Youth videos.

These are community organizers leftwing rabble-rousers actually praying to their Lord and Savior, Barack Hussein Obama, saying things like “Hear our cry, Obama” and “Deliver us Obama” to The Messiah.

From Breitbart TV via Gateway Pundit:

Right along the lines of this:

And this:

Which, of course, produced this:

Just sayin’ …

By the way, Jim Jones was a socialist. Again, just sayin’ …

Book Grandma, Dan-O

This is the type of absurdity that happens with idiotic nanny state legislation.

An Indiana grandmother is under arrest, charged with violating the state law limiting the amount of cold medicine that can be purchased by an individual in a seven-day period.

CLINTON — When Sally Harpold bought cold medicine for her family back in March, she never dreamed that four months later she would end up in handcuffs.

Now, Harpold is trying to clear her name of criminal charges, and she is speaking out in hopes that a law will change so others won’t endure the same embarrassment she still is facing.

“This is a very traumatic experience,” Harpold said.

Harpold is a grandmother of triplets who bought one box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband at a Rockville pharmacy. Less than seven days later, she bought a box of Mucinex-D cold medicine for her adult daughter at a Clinton pharmacy, thereby purchasing 3.6 grams total of pseudoephedrine in a week’s time.

Those two purchases put her in violation of Indiana law 35-48-4-14.7, which restricts the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or PSE, products to no more than 3.0 grams within any seven-day period.

When the police came knocking at the door of Harpold’s Parke County residence on July 30, she was arrested on a Vermillion County warrant for a class-C misdemeanor, which carries a sentence of up to 60 days in jail and up to a $500 fine. But through a deferral program offered by Vermillion County Prosecutor Nina Alexander, the charge could be wiped from Harpold’s record by mid-September.

It’s Kafkaesque.

Laws designed to curb the production of methamphetamine are now turning law-abiding citizens into criminals and forcing them to deal with crusading DAs and having them subjected to the humiliation of be escorted in handcuffs from their residences, booked, fingerprinted, photographed and tossed into a holding cell.

For what? Just what has been accomplished by this?

Nothing. We know it, and they know it.

The real heel in this was Alexander, the DA, who clearly was intending to send ordinary citizens a message that she intended on making no distinction between law-abiding citizens running afoul of an idiotic law and real criminals intending to manufacture meth for distribution.

While the law was written with the intent of stopping people from purchasing large quantities of drugs to make methamphetamine, the law does not say the purchase must be made with the intent to make meth.

“The law does not make this distinction,” Alexander said.

If the law said “with intent to manufacture methamphetamine,” no one could be arrested until it was proven that the drug actually was used to make meth, the prosecutor said.

And that certainly wasn’t the intent of the law, either. It was written to limit access to the key ingredient in meth — pseudoephedrine — and thereby to stop the clandestine “mom and pop” meth labs that were cooking drugs throughout the area.

Just as with any law, the public has the responsibility to know what is legal and what is not, and ignorance of the law is no excuse, the prosecutor said.

“I’m simply enforcing the law as it was written,” Alexander said.

No, you are being an idiot. And a first-class jerk to boot. As a prosecutor, you have prosecutorial discretion. The police were not sent to this woman’s door until you chose to have them sent there.

Here’s how the bust came down:

[Vermillion County Sheriff Bob Spence] explained that the process leading to Harpold’s arrest involved an officer checking area pharmacy purchase records, and coming up with about 40 purchases that violated the law.

That information was then taken to the prosecutor, whose staff drew up the probable cause affidavits to be filed in court. A judge then found probable cause and issued arrest warrants, and the sheriff’s department is required by statute to see that the warrants are served.

You see, at that point, Alexander had the discretion not to let this travesty proceed. She is the one who not only just allowed it to happen but actually greenlighted it with enthusiasm.

Alexander said she is working with Harpold about the charge, but the prosecutor asserts that Harpold did break the law with her purchases and is being held accountable.

“I do want people to know that we will check the pharmacy records and we will prosecute people who violate this law,” Alexander said.

Sieg Heil, Madam Prosecutor. You’re going after average everyday citizens going about their business and posing no threat to anyone. How many real criminals are you going to let escape justice in your crusade to throw Grandma in the slammer and leave her with an arrest record?

I know, I know. We heard all about the intentions of this law when it was passed that we needed this to fight the spread of meth. But we all knew what would happen eventually, didn’t we?

Folks, Nina Alexander is stuck on stupid.

Mr. Overexposure

Howard Fineman has some sound advice for Our Lord and Savior Barack Hussein Obama.

Enough of your desire to be on TV. Maybe try governing.

The president’s problem isn’t that he is too visible; it’s the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words “I” and “my.” (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story.

It’s hard for Him to do that, since He’s the Narcissist in Chief.

Our SpongeBob Foreign Policy

Brilliant piece by S. E. Cupp on Our Lord and Savior’s squishy-soft foreign policy approach.

Thus far, his approach to foreign policy in dealing with the world’s most insipid international dictators, has been more flower power, hug-a-thon and free love, than iron fist. Whether he’s yukking it up with Hugo Chavez, chewing the cud with Saudi King Abdulluh, suggesting a cozy fireside chat with Ahmadinejad, or pulling up a lawn chair to watch North Korea’s nuclear fireworks display, it’s clear President Obama is not interested in carrying on America’s great legacy as intimidating world super power. 

And thanks to the humiliating apologia he delivered at the UN last week, where he essentially asked the world’s all-time worst (and worst-dressed) cretins, “Why can’t we all just get along?” we are now officially just a kooky group of hippies, tree-huggers and peaceniks who prefer the naïve and lazy activism of a rec center sit-in to the courage of conviction and bold action. Walk softly and carry a big hug.

Cupp draws parallels between the foreign policy approach of Barack Hussein Obama with this:

The other day, in the New York Times Science section, Alfie Kohn wrote an essay criticizing parents who disciplined their children by way of a technique called “positive or negative conditional parenting.” Now, forget the psycho-babble for a minute – this simply describes parents who reward their kids for good behavior by acting, well, happy about it, and punish their kids for bad behavior by being, like, a little ticked off. In short, it’s the way most people parent – cheering on a successful potty attempt and booing a temper tantrum, rewarding a good report card with a trip to the mall and taking away the iPod for fighting at school. 

But for Kohn, who says this centuries-old and presumably instinctive reward-and-punishment system amounts to “withholding love,” conditional parenting is damaging and confusing to kids, and can leave lasting scars. Even positive reinforcement, which most people would consider pretty good parenting, is dangerous, because it “teaches children that they are loved, and lovable, only when they do whatever we decide is a ‘good job.’” 

So, in the interest of being the absolute best mommy possible, well-liked by all, and able to sleep at night satisfied with your own parental superiority over the Smiths down the street, Kohn implores you to instead “love unconditionally.” 

Befuddled? All that means a long list of don’ts. Don’t reward. Don’t praise. Don’t criticize. Don’t discipline. Don’t decide. “Give kids more say about their lives,” Kohn dreamily writes. “Children learn to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions. Our default response should be to let them choose — unless there’s a compelling reason to deny them that opportunity.” 

And what about that time-honored tradition of banishing a kid to the corner for a 10-minute time-out? Kohn warns it’s akin to “forcible isolation.”

We all know how well that parenting approach works. It doesn’t work any better in dealing with rogue nations around the world.

The Anointed One’s approach is going to get thousands if not tens and hundreds of thousands of Americans killed one day. And yes, we’ll be all too willing to say we told you so.