Annoying Bloggers Equal Felons

Are you an anonymous blogger?

Are you "annoying?"

Well, you can now be charged with a felony.

This is no joke.

In January President Bush signed a bill into law that has the potential to make any anonymous blogger who "annoys" anyone (and the definition of "annoy" is slippery) a felon.

The law, originally intended to punish those who stalk others anonymously via phone calls has morphed into an entirely different beast that now has jurisdiction over Internet communications, blogs and websites.

Considering how this administration uses every means to attain its ends, it is only realistic to face that this legislation could be used to stifle liberal free speech and rant that "annoys" those who still support the Bush regime.

Couple this with Republicans killing Net Neutrality and I'd say that liberal blogs will go the way of India's blogs which were banned from the Internet by India's government.

While India's ban seems to have been reversed, don't count on that happening for U.S. bloggers. Yet, perhaps there is a way around bans. This from refWrite:

The ban on accessing blogspot blogs seems to have brought Pakistani and Indian bloggers a little closer. Help-Pakistan.com says “In light of the recent blogspot ban in India, the blogging community in Pakistan would like to present as a gift to the Indian blogging community a small script that can be inserted into their websites which converts all Blogspot links into a URL utilizing the proxy servers of pkblogs.com.

On another topic, I can't pass this up:

In her July 26th column, Maureen Dowd informs us that 300 garbage collectors have been killed in Iraq in the last six months and gives us this quote from President Bush:

"That's what leaders do..." "They see problems, they address problems, and they lay out a plan to solve the problems."

Ergo, by his own definition, he is not a leader. He doesn't see problems. He manufactures problems. He creates, instead of solves, problems.

Bush is the Unleader.

(And regarding those 300 dead garbage collectors: Can you imagine the hell Iraqis are living in? They live without clean water, food electricity, jobs or security. Bodies are being blown up every day and virtually everyone has lost someone. Yet, that's not enough. With garbage collectors being killed at such an astonishing rate the garbage must be piled high. How do we live with ourselves considering what we have allowed to happen to them in our name?)

BTW, did you notice that Israel stopped bombing Lebanon "in deference" to Condolezza Rice when she was in Beruit? I'm sure someone said: "Hey, if we kill Condi, Bush will be pissed so we better stop bombing and not risk it."

So: what does that mean?

It means that the most effective use of our Secretary of State would be to have her MOVE PERMANENTLY TO BERUIT.

Let her set up permanent residence there where her presence would actually be accomplishing something, for a change.

Another insult added to injury:

Remember the story about Bush using government resources and lawyers to block medical suits brought by persons harmed by pharmaceutical companies?

Just like firing half the IRS lawyers who dealt with the tax returns of the very wealthy in order to circumvent the Estate Tax, fighting the consumer in court is just part of an overall plan to maximize corporate profits and consolidate wealth and power in the hands of the ultra rich.

This from a story by Gardiner Harris:

A 15-month inquiry by a top House Democrat has found that enforcement of the nation's food and drug laws declined sharply during the first five years of the Bush administration.

For instance, the investigation found, the number of warning letters that the Food and Drug Administration issued to drug companies, medical device makers and others dropped 54 percent, to 535 in 2005 from 1,154 in 2000.

The seizure of mislabeled, defective or dangerous products dipped 44 percent, according to the inquiry, pursued by Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee.

The research found no evidence that such declines could be attributed to increased compliance with regulations. Investigators at the F.D.A. continued to uncover about the same number of problems at drug and device companies as before, Mr. Waxman's inquiry found, but top officials of the agency increasingly overruled the investigators' enforcement recommendations.

Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of the Health Research Group at the watchdog organization Public Citizen, noted that the agency now received about $380 million a year in fees from drug makers.

"The public," Dr. Wolfe said, "is getting the kind of F.D.A. that the industry is paying for them to get."

Want another little gem?

On February 17, 2005 U.S. Representative Steny Hoyer introduced legislation to appeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution which would lift limits and allow a President to serve more than two terms in office.

It hasn't gotten anywhere - yet - but can you imagine if Bush could be elected to a third term?

Steny is a democrat so I don't know what he's thinking - unless he's hoping to resurrect Bill Clinton and get him back in office. Still young, Clinton might be able to bail us out of the incredible mess Bush has created. But it would probably take him about twenty years.