Right Wing Nut House

Every couple of months I like to take a stroll down the blogroll and highlight some of the new additions who caught my eye with their great writing and attractive blogs. Since it’s Sunday and I don’t feel like working very hard, I present for your enjoyment, Newbies on Parade!

Kender at Kender’s Musings has a tag line that says it all:

“Don’t like what I have to say? Good…let me have it. Just don’t whine if you need therapy after I ream you a new one. Note:that I will not be held responsible for therapy bills…”

My kind of attack merchant…

Check out The Donegal Express where Tom has a perfect explanation of why so many Italians are Communists.

The Cranky Liberal (who really is a liberal although not generally cranky…much) has a post about the kinds of people who read various MSM publications. (Note to Crank: Do you have the first two entries mixed up? Maybe not…)

Simply the best new humor blog you’ve never heard of, The Cross-Eyed Bear links to a new “Blogby” poll showing that John Kerry actually won Ohio as the Republicans disenfranchised 9 million black voters alone giving Kerry a 12 million vote edge in the Buckeye state. It could happen…

Joust the Facts blogs about my favorite time of year, the NCAA playoffs. My poor Fighting Irish choked in the Big East Tournament so it looks like the NIT for them. But our Fighting Illini are still ranked number one (although the aura of invincibility was broken by Ohio State).

Mike at The Armageddon Project is photoblogging Lebanese hotties waving those beautiful red and white flags. MMMMM MMMMMMMM Good!

Blind Mind’s Eye has a post up about the Apple court decision involving the disclosure of trade secrets by a website. Even though there were good arguments made on both sides, I have to come down slightly in favor of the judge’s decision to require the site to name which employees supplied them with the trade secrets. Not only did the Apple employees sign a non-disclosure agreement, but their actions had potential negative ramifications for both shareholders and other employees. This is an issue which should be watched closely.

Finally, Stop the ACLU is a site dedicated to …well, stopping the ACLU! A mix of the funny and the serious, Jay exposes the ACLU’s leftist agenda and has links to all sorts of information you should be aware of. A great site to put on your blogroll…as are all the blogs I’ve highlighted on this post.

A favorite theme of moonbats is that the Patriot Act has destroyed the Bill of Rights and oppressed the masses. Maybe they should find another line of attack:

Of 1,943 complaints to the Justice Department last year regarding suspected civil rights abuses involving the USA Patriot Act, none accused department employees of misconduct because of the anti-terrorism law and only one unrelated case warranted a further criminal investigation, a report said yesterday.

The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General, which is required by Congress to review suspected Patriot Act abuses, said of the complaints received by the Justice Department between June 22 and Dec. 31, only 195 included accusations involving department employees or components.

Most of the accusations involved suspected mistreatment of Muslim inmates at various U.S. Bureau of Prisons correctional facilities. Some of the complaints were about the quality of prison food.

Then there were the usual charges made by the national Democratic Party:

Other accusations included complaints that government agents were broadcasting signals that interfered with a person’s thoughts or dreams or that correctional officers had laced the prison food with hallucinogenic drugs.

I guess the Bush Administration has found a way to circumvent the protections offered by the wearing of tin foil hats.

I’m so very glad that adults like Attorney General Gonzalez are in charge instead of the hysterical, self-centered nincompoops who’ve been running around the country for the last three plus years screaming that “The Sky is Falling!”

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales called on Congress earlier this month to renew the act, saying the threat from international terrorism — including al Qaeda — was “still very real” despite U.S. successes in capturing and killing global terrorists. He said while some of the act’s provisions expire this year, “the terrorist threat will not expire on that schedule.”

To be dead serious, there are provisions in the Patriot Act that should be examined, especially some of the more potentially troubling Fourth Amendment issues. But to call for the wholesale gutting of the Act as John Kerry and other liberals in Congress have been doing is irresponsible in a post 9/11 world.

This is just too weird:

INGLESIDE, N.C. (AP) -Larry Green stepped out of the darkness so suddenly that the car that hit him didn’t even leave skid marks. The impact sent his shoes, socks and the unopened beer in his hand flying.

Mr. Green came to rest on U.S. 401 alongside a trash-strewn ditch, where he was examined by paramedics and declared dead. Over the next 2 1/2 hours, the bloody body with a gaping head wound was zipped into a black vinyl bag, taken to the morgue and put into a stainless-steel refrigerated drawer.

There was just one problem: Mr. Green was alive.

Two weeks after that shocking discovery, the 29-year-old Mr. Green, who is paralyzed, clings to life in a hospital intensive care unit.

The poor unfortunate Mr. Green had the misfortune of being examined at the scene of the accident by a bunch of nitwits:

Randy Kearney, an off-duty paramedic, was on the scene at 8:54 p.m. and found no pulse or sign of breathing. Blood had formed a footwide corona around Mr. Green’s skull.

When county paramedics Paul Kilmer and Katherine Lamell arrived moments later, Mr. Kearney told them Mr. Green was dead, but asked Mr. Kilmer to double-check. Mr. Kilmer replied that his determination was “good enough for me,” according to Mr. Kearney and two firefighters.

Mr. Kilmer told officials he could not remember saying that, but doesn’t deny it.

Paramedic Pamela Hayes arrived at 9 p.m., and the medical examiner, Dr. J.B. Perdue, examined the body at the scene about half an hour later.

Paramedics put Mr. Green in a body bag and drove him to the morgue in nearby Louisburg. There, Dr. Perdue examined the body a second time. He took a blood sample, lifted Mr. Green’s eyelids and sniffed around the man’s mouth for alcohol.

Un. Be.Lievable.

Mr. Green probably would have remained in the stainless-steel container had state Trooper Tyrone Hunt not arrived around 11:20 p.m. and asked Dr. Perdue to help him determine the direction from which Mr. Green had been struck.

This time, Dr. Perdue observed slight movement. He could not find a pulse in Mr. Green’s neck, thigh or wrist, even with a stethoscope. Dr. Perdue summoned paramedics and an electrocardiogram, which was able to pick up a faint heart rhythm.

A hundred years ago, people used to put bells on the graves of their loved ones just in case the “deceased” woke up in a buried coffin. But you’d think in a modern industrialized society that a trained physician not to mention an experienced coroner would take the time to ascertain whether or not the body that they’re placing in refrigerated cabinet was, you know…dead?

The family has retained an attorney. (Ya think?)

UPDATE: FROM THE “DID I MISS SOMETHING” DEPARTMENT

Much to my chagrin, I find that this story is almost a month old!

I found it on Comcast via a video report by the AP. There was no date on the video so I don’t know when it was made. And as closely as I watch what’s happening on the web, I can’t believe that there wasn’t an explosion of posts about this when it was first reported.

Kind of makes me wonder what else I’ve missed. Did you hear that Dan Rather is retiring?

Main Entry: sa·ga
Pronunciation: ’sä-g& also ’sa-
Function: noun
Etymology: Old Norse -more at SAW
Date: 1709
1 : a prose narrative recorded in Iceland in the 12th and 13th centuries of historic or legendary figures and events of the heroic age of Norway and Iceland
2 : a modern heroic narrative resembling the Icelandic saga
3 : a long detailed account

Not even the heralds who sang the songs of the great Scandanavian sagas could have dreamed up the long and torturous account of the tragedy in Iraq that Italian Communist journalist Guiliana Sgrena has tried to foist upon an unsuspecting world.

Her slanderous story has now come full circle. Her effort to slime the American military with charges that she was the target of an assassination attempt has backfired to the point that the Italian police are now questioning her.

Meanwhile, Italian prosecutors conducting their own investigation on Thursday questioned former Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena again in the Rome military hospital where she is recovering from a shoulder wound sustained in the March 4 shooting.

And her ever evolving, ever changing chronicle of events that led to the accidental shooting of the Italian Secret Service agent Nicola Calipari has gone from denying that the incident was a deliberate attempt to kill her, to her speculation that she was a target because of the Italian practice of paying ransom to kidnappers, to the ludicrous assertion that they wanted to kill her because she was anit-war, till finally coming full circle in her story to where she now says that she never said the American military targeted her!

Only someone hugely self-absorbed could believe that the rest of us would somehow forget her blood-libels of the United States military and accept her explanation that what she really said was that “the mechanics of what happened were those of an attack.”

Lest we forget what Ms. Sgrena has been saying over the last fortnight about the intentions of the US military, here are some quotes from the numerous interviews this publicity hungry propagandist gave to further her political agenda and damge both Prime Minister Berlusconi politically and weaken the alliance between Italy and the US:

I can’t say it was deliberate because we can’t say if there was a lack of information. But also a lack of information in this case is [their] responsibility because you are in a war field and you have the responsibility to pass immediately any information.

“They told me to beware because ‘there are Americans who don’t want you to return’,”‘ Sgrena wrote in the article. When she was shot, her captors’ advice `”risked acquiring the taste of the most bitter of truths,” she wrote.

“The fact that the Americans don’t want negotiations to free the hostages is known,” the 56-year-old journalist told Sky TG24 television by telephone, her voice hoarse and shaky. “The fact that they do everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the lives of people held hostage, everybody knows that. So I don’t see why I should rule out that I could have been the target.”

Pier Scolari, Sgrena’s partner who flew to Baghdad to collect her, put an even more sinister construction on the events, suggesting in a television interview that Sgrena was the victim of a deliberate ambush. ‘Giuliana may have received information which led to the soldiers not wanting her to leave Iraq alive,’ he claimed.

And now, Sgrena would have us believe that she never meant to slime the military. This via Captains Quarters (who has been on top of this story since it broke):

The Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who was wounded by American fire last Friday soon after being released by kidnappers in Baghdad, has said that she does not think that the Americans were trying to kill her. “I never said that they wanted to kill me,” she said on a television talk show, “but the mechanics of what happened were those of an attack.”

In an interview with The Independent, her partner, Pier Scolari, said: “None of us is so stupid as to think the Americans did it on purpose. But the dynamic was that of an ambush and we want a convincing explanation of what happened, because the first American explanation was totally false.” …

Ms Sgrena was widely quoted as saying that the Americans may have wanted to kill her “because they dislike the Italian policy of negotiating with the hostage-takers”. But this week she rejected the idea.

And then we have this curious quote:

After the shooting, she said: “A soldier opened the door on the right-hand side. When he saw us, I had the impression that he was upset. I seem to remember him saying, ‘Oh shit!’ And when more turned up in an armoured car, I had the sensation that they were unhappy about what had happened.”

Riddle me this: If Sgrena had “the sensation” that the soldiers were unhappy (to put it mildly) about the accidental shooting, what other possible conclusion can you draw from her scandalous charges but that she was attempting to use her new-found public platform to stir up trouble for the Italian goverment and advance her anti war agenda?

Do you think that here attitude towards America expressed here had anything to do with her desire to damage this country, its military and by extension, the President?

It doesn’t sound very nice to be critical of a fellow reporter. But Sgrena’s attitude is a disgrace for journalism. Or didn’t she tell me back in the plane that ‘common journalists such as yourself’ simply do not support the Iraqi people? ‘The Americans are the biggest enemies of mankind,’ the three women behind me had told me, for Sgrena travelled to Iraq with two Italian colleagues who hated the Americans as well.

The fact that Italian police are questioning her again may or may not be significant. But what’s undeniable is that Guiliana Sgrena has used her notoriety as both a hostage and victim of a horrible tragedy to propagandize against the war, the United States, the US Military and by extension, the American people.

Cross Posted at The Wide Awakes and Blogger News Network

UPDATE:

Sgrena may be backtracking faster than a defensive back trying to cover Randy Moss from her charges of being targeted, but that hasn’t stopped her from casting aspersions on the Italian and American investigations into the tragedy:

Ms Sgrena has repeatedly suggested US soldiers shot her on purpose and said today she had little faith in a joint investigation by Italy and the United States into the “friendly fire” incident.

“She has created enormous problems for the Government and also caused grief that perhaps was better avoided,” Justice Minister Roberto Castelli told reporters in Bologna.

In the words of Rusty Shakleford “Bolagna? Yeah, that about sums it up.”

When pictures are worth more than a thousand words.

More over at GOP and the City.

Approximately 65 million years ago, (give or take 3 million years) a fairly large meteor (or possibly a smaller comet) hit the earth in the area of the Yucatan penninsula. Most scientists agree that this event was the proximate cause for the extinction of most dinosaurs.

Turns out that this was not an isolated incident in earth’s history.

With surprising and mysterious regularity, life on Earth has flourished and vanished in cycles of mass extinction every 62 million years, say two UC Berkeley scientists who discovered the pattern after a painstaking computer study of fossil records going back for more than 500 million years.

Their findings are certain to generate a renewed burst of speculation among scientists who study the history and evolution of life. Each period of abundant life and each mass extinction has itself covered at least a few million years — and the trend of biodiversity has been rising steadily ever since the last mass extinction, when dinosaurs and millions of other life forms went extinct about 65 million years ago.

There’s nothing really new as far as the theory goes. Scientists have noticed this before. What makes this study so compelling is that it’s so exhaustive.

The Berkeley researchers are physicists, not biologists or geologists or paleontologists, but they have analyzed the most exhaustive compendium of fossil records that exists — data that cover the first and last known appearances of no fewer than 36,380 separate marine genera, including millions of species that once thrived in the world’s seas, later virtually disappeared, and in many cases returned.

But the cycles are so clear that the evidence “simply jumps out of the data,” said James Kirchner, a professor of earth and planetary sciences on the Berkeley campus who was not involved in the research but who has written a commentary on the report that is also appearing in Nature today

The evidence of strange extinction cycles that first drew Rohde’s attention emerged from an elaborate computer database he developed from the largest compendium of fossil data ever created. It was a 560-page list of marine organisms developed 14 years ago by the late J. John Sepkoski Jr., a famed paleobiologist at the University of Chicago who died at the age of 50 nearly five years ago.

For more than 20 years there’s been some fantastic speculation as to what the heck is going on that would cause regular extinctions. For a while, some scientists were enamored of a theory involving a rouge planet dubbed “Nemisis” who every 65 million years swings into the Oort cloud out beyond Pluto where billions of comets slowly orbit the sun. As Nemisis passes through the Oort cloud, thousands of comets are disturbed and start dropping towards the inner solar system and the sun. Inevitably, several will hit the earth causing massive die-offs.

Then there’s this hypothesis from one of the authors of the study:

Muller’s favorite explanation, he said informally, is that the solar system passes through an exceptionally massive arm of our own spiral Milky Way galaxy every 62 million years, and that that increase in galactic gravity might set off a hugely destructive comet shower that would drive cycles of mass extinction on Earth.

Our Milky Way galaxy spins like a massive pinwheel in space so that passing through one of the arms of our own galaxy could be a possibilty.

Alas, not very likely…But wouldn’t you love to be alive and look up to see tens of thousands of stars rather than the measely 2000-3000 you can see with the naked eye today?

What this also does is raise some interesting questions for the SETI folks (Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence). One of the reasons it’s thought that advanced intelligent life is so rare is that earth may be exceptional for its very long, very stable geologic and cosmological eras. And we’ve been lucky so far in that no “planet killer” sized meteors have hit here probably since the moon was formed about 4 billion years ago. That means that the slow processes involved in the evolution of life has had a chance here.

Other planets capable of sustaining life may not be so lucky.

Here’s a link to an online petition and letter to be sent to FEC Chairman Scott E. Thompson requesting the following:

The letter includes three requests of the Commission:

1. Grant blogs and online publications the same consideration and protection as broadcast media, newspapers, or periodicals by clearly including them under the Federal Election Commission’s “media exemption” rule.

2.Promulgate a rule exempting unpaid political activity on the Internet from regulation, thereby insuring every American’s right to speak freely and participate in our democratic process.

3. Clarify the rules and definitions related to “coordinated activity” to protect bloggers and journalists from running afoul of Commission rules regarding the republication of campaign materials.

The letter was signed by a bi-partisan group of bloggers, journalists, and on line activists.

So click on, sign up, and keep your eyes and ears open.

UPDATE: HOWARD KURTZ GETS IT RIGHT

Howard Kurtz’s Media Notes reports on the FEC controvsy and the issues raised by the potential regulation of blogs. (HT: Captains Quarters)

Turns out Kurtz “gets it:”

I’m not one of these people who thinks you need a graduate degree, an ID card or an official stamp of approval to call yourself a journalist. Anyone with an idea and a computer can now play the role of reporter, commentator or social critic. People can tell the difference between a New York Times correspondent and BozoBlogger.com, and both have something to contribute.

Read the whole thing.

The Sgrena saga continues.

The AP reports that the Italian story of Giuliana Sgrena’s release and later wounding at an American checkpoint, which also resulted in the death of intelligence agent Nicola Calipari, continues to fall apart. Two Italian newspapers now say that the general in charge of the Sgrena operation did not inform the US that Calipari’s mission was to free Sgrena, and one of them reports that General Mario Maroli didn’t even know it himself:

Sgrena’s slandering, libelous story that the American military deliberately targeted her for assassination continues to fall apart as well:

In a statement released after the shooting, the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, which controls Baghdad, said the vehicle was speeding and refused to stop. The statement also said a U.S. patrol tried to warn a driver with hand and arm signals, by flashing white lights and firing shots in front of the car into the engine block.
In interviews published Friday, Sgrena said that no light was flashed at the vehicle and that the shots were not fired in front of the car.

“It’s not true that they shot into the engine,” she told Corriere della Sera, adding that the shooting came “from the right and from behind.”

Captain Ed points out the obvious:

That qualification changes the entire tenor of the story. Either one would have to believe that the checkpoint soldiers stopped the car and then shot it out — from behind! — or that the car never stopped at the checkpoint and traveled so fast that the soldiers could only catch up to it as it passed through. Think about the options for a moment. If a checkpoint successfully stops a suspicious vehicle, why would soldiers walk around behind it to open fire? They’d risk hitting their unit at the front of the car. Tactically, little gain would come from getting behind a potential VBIED in open space when one could get at least some partial protection from a potential explosion by the checkpoint barricades.

How can anyone believe what this woman says anymore? The Italian press-even the leftists-seem to be trying to get to the bottom of the ever changing, always shifting story of Guiliana Sgrena. I have no doubt that they would love to find evidence of something more than a tragic accident. So it’s to their credit that they are digging into the facts of the story and reporting things fairly straightforwardly.

That being said, where is this story leading? OC Chronicle has some thoughts on the Sgrena matter and how it might compare to the notorious Tawana Brawley affair:

After reading some details of conflicts in the story on Austin Bay’s blog, as well as some fishy foreshadowing fleshed out on LGF, I’m starting to sense a pattern.

The name of the terrorist group: “Mujahadien Without Borders”. Doesn’t that sound a lot like “Doctors Without Borders”? And doesn’t it sound a little too Euro? A little too touchy-feely to be a name of a terrorist group? (HT: Michelle Malkin)

Tawana Brawley was a young black girl who was found unconscious and beaten on a neighbor’s lawn. She told people that she had been raped and beaten by police. That’s when Reverend Al Sharpeton stepped in and led a campaign that accused so many people of the crime, he ended up charging the District Attorney himself with being part of the rape gang. Even after Brawley herself had recanted her story, Sharpeton kept at it. The DA sued Sharpeton and won a huge settlement.

Since the Italian media seems to be on this story like fleas on a dog, I feel pretty good about eventually getting to the bottom of Sgrena’s Saga.

UPDATE:

Rusty Shackleford blogs an NPR interview with il donna di menzogne and catches “the lying woman” in a (gasp) lie!

UPDATE II:

Commenter J.A. reminds us of the aftermath of the suit by the DA against Sharpeton:

The DA won his case against Sharpton, but the last I heard he had never collected a dime, as even Sharpton’s custom made suits are not really his — they are given to him (or so Sharpton says). Sigh.

Indeed!

Marvin Moonbat is in the House!

CRAZED BABY KILLING TORTURERS MISS JOURNALIST (By Marvin Moonbat)

The assassination attempt on award winning Italian journalist (I’m not sure what award she won, but she deserves some kind of prize) Guiliana Sgrena carried out by the baby killing torturers who make up the Smirking Chimp’s Imperial Guard almost succeeded. Only the fact that the goober chewing, redneck, red state gun lovers couldn’t hit a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle if their life depended on it saved the courageous truth teller from certain death.

I have to laugh at the wingnuts making a big deal about Ms. Sgrena being a communist. First of all, everyone knows that communists are the most reliable journalists around. How is this possible? Let me explain.

Since communists don’t have the best reputation for accuracy in reporting, all you have to do to get at the truth of the matter is to take what they write and transpose it so that what comes out is exactly the opposite of what they mean.

So when Sgrena says the “car was going slowly,” all you have to do is translate that to “the car was going 100 mph.”

See how simple that is?

And conversely, when she says that the “car was going so fast they almost lost control,” what she really means is “the car was going slowly, around 40 mph.”

I mean, this is so simple even a repugnut should be able to figure it out!

Pay no attention to the slight inconsistencies above. Both she and we know exactly what she means…I think.

Then there’s the question of how many bullets were fired at the car. In my opinion, the more the better. The fact that pictures of the car show very little damage is beside the point. It’s obvious our Imperial Storm Troopers need a little more practice shooting innocent civilians. I suggest they get more training by roaming the streets of Oklahoma City or some other red state enclave of tobacco chewing, gape jawed Christians who wouldn’t have the intelligence to get out of the way of a bullett unless it came attatched to a bible verse.

So when Sgrena says that “300 or 400 bulletts were fired at the vehicle by an armoured car” what she really means is that the redneck goobers fired a dozen or so rounds from a gas guzzling, pollution spewing Chevy pick-up truck supplied by Haliburton so that the baby killers would think they were back home screwing their cousins and firing off rounds into their neighbor’s car.

This would explain why so many shots missed.

And when Sgrena says that her kidnappers told her to “be careful because the Americans don’t want you to leave Iraq alive” you can take her at her word. Similarly, when she says that she doesn’t know why the incident happened, you can bet your booty that she’s telling the truth there too. Being confused is a sure sign of telling the truth.

Just look at Howard Dean.

All in all, this botched assassination attempt shows that Bushitler and his neocon Nazi’s will stop at nothing to prevent the truth from getting out.

Just what truth that is, I’m not sure. But it’s got to be pretty juicy for shrub’s Storm Troopers to go to the lengths they did in trying to kill the courageous Ms. Sgrena.

And I don’t want any sh*t in the comments about me not supporting the troops. Of course I support the troops…at least those who voted for Kerry. And I even support those who voted for the royal Chimp…in a roundabout sort of way. I support the idea that they should come home now. I don’t want to see them dead, maybe only wounded a little. That would get them home in a jiffy.

Well, that’s it for today. Chloe wants to go to a lecture tonight entitled “Ward Churchill: Kill ‘em All and Let God Sort it Out Later.”

Cross-Posted at Blogger News Network

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. A blogger has come out in favor of new regulations to stifle political speech in the blogosphere:

Republicans, particularly conservative activists, have argued with some limited success that campaign finance laws amount to a restraint on free speech since they keep supporters from theoretically doing-or spending-as much as they’d like on behalf of their favored candidate.

Democrats are a bit less worried about regulating political speech through spending limits.

(HT: Captains Quarters)

After having established that “regulating political speech through spending” is the goal of McCain Feingold, the author of this piece, Chris Nolan, then gets to the heart of the controversy and pooh-poohs the idea of any new regulations coming from the FEC:

It’s silly to think Smith’s warnings will all come to pass and that the FEC will attempt to figure out, for instance, the actual monetary “value” to a campaign of a hyperlink from a blogger or anyone else for that matter.

And the FEC is unlikely to craft brand spanking new regulations for online advertising, completely different from those that already cover hardcopy counterparts.

But it is looking into how bloggers are compensated by campaigns as part of an exploration into how campaigns coordinate their messages with blogs or other outside organizations

Ms. Nolan, whose own political blog would be a prime candidate for regulation, doesn’t seem to mind the FEC looking over her shoulder:

Using a Web site to endorse or praise a candidate in exchange for money seems to be a violation of the spirit of the commission’s purpose.

That’s why some kind of regulation-spending limits and full, repeated disclosure are what the commission uses now-is in order

Who in their right mind would want the FEC breathing down their neck? How about this guy:

“Excellent disclosure is nice but not necessarily sufficient,” says Richard Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and himself editor of the ElectionLawBlog.

“If your goal is to prevent corruption and create equality, then disclosure is not enough.”

Please note the phrase “create equality” as if the purpose of the FEC or any federal agency is to achieve some kind of mythical, artificial parity between candidates…sort of like the NFL but with more violence done to the human spirit.

That’s not all. Ms. Nolan is developing a coalition of like minded bloggers to push such regulation:

What’s next? A loose affiliation of bloggers and others interested in online activism is hoping to present FEC Chairman Scott Thomas with a letter outlining some of the changes they think are necessary.

It’s a first step in getting the commission to amend its rules for the modern, online era and an interesting coda to an election season that saw the Internet used-voraciously by both sides-as a partisan weapon.

The coalition has managed to include former Deaniac Democrats, fiercely partisan conservatives and even a Libertarian.

“It’s tri-partisan,” quips one organizer, illustrating yet again, that politics can make strange bedfellows.

First of all, who are these “bloggers and on-line activists” who have the unmitigated gall to speak for the rest of us? I’d love to have someone like Captain Ed or the guys at Powerline find out who these schmucks are so that the rest of us can flood their mailboxes with angry letters.

To acquiesce to government regulation is one thing. To actively seek government intervention-especially in matters pertaining to free speech-is foolhardy and dangerous.

The Captain has some similar thoughts:

It’s thought-policing of the worst order, and the BCRA inevitably pushes towards that end. The FEC will have the power to determine whether or not bloggers, especially those who are politically active, engage in speech or cashless contributions. Moreover, the language in Shays-Meehan v. FEC ominously portends that the burden of proof will rest with the blogger, not with the FEC, to prove the negative: that he or she did not intend their speech to be a campaign contribution.

Why should the FEC stop at regulating bloggers who are on a campaign’s payroll? Why not regulate partisans as well? Who’s to stop them?

Certainly not Ms. Nolan and her merry band of “reformers” who evidently won’t be happy until the government publishes “goals” and “guidelines” for bloggers.

I can see it now…FEC regs taped to the space between my keyboard and monitor just to make sure I don’t step over the “FEC Line of Death” as it relates to posting about a candidate.

An exaggeration of course. But I would say to Ms. Nolan…BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!