ricketyclick

I’m not a fan of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-People’s Democracy of Frisco, CA). She’s a commie gun-grabbing terrorist-enabling would-be tyrant, but fortunately she’s also an incompetent weakling. She has led Congress to its lowest approval ratings ever, in the single digits, worse than the Bushitler.

Now, Slashdot points to a story on the righty Chicago Boyz blog featuring her latest attack on our liberty:

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who would like very much to reimpose the old, so-called, “Fairness Doctrine” that once censored conservative opinion on television and radio broadcasting, is scheming to impose rules barring any member of Congress from posting opinions on any internet site without first obtaining prior approval from the Democratic leadership of Congress. No blogs, twitter, online forums - nothing.

The Boyz, prompted by Rep. John Culberson (R-Shitkickers, TX) link to a PDF of the enabling letter from Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Massaidiots), then continue:

Set aside the nakedly partisan aspect of this plan for a moment - on the technological merits alone this may be the goddamn dumbest thing I’ve heard of regarding the Internet coming out of Congress in a long, long time. The dinosaurs who are uncomfortable with computers, the unwashed masses being aware of their actions and free political debate want to turn the clock back to the 1970s. Except during the 1970s no one would have dared to propose controlling what a democratically elected member of Congress could say to their constituents. Doesn’t it register in the Beltway that they are talking about public information that already belongs to the people of the United States? Senators and Congressmen should be interacting with citizens more freely, not less; the U.S. Congress needs radical transparency not greater opacity imposed by the Democratic House leadership to better hide shady dealings

It’s a brazenly Orwellian and most likely unconstitutional power grab by the Speaker of the House unlike anything dreamed of by any previous speaker - not Sam Rayburn, not Joseph Cannon. Nobody.

Oh, delightful! Downright tasty! Too good to be true!

Well, yeah. Too good to be true, indeed.

As many comments point out, both on the CBz site and on Slashdot, the letter appears to say nothing of the kind. In fact, it seems to be aimed at making it easier for Representatives to host official House documents, particularly video, on servers other than the the official House servers. It isn’t aimed at the personal communications of House members, nor at content they generate. The closest this document comes to “prior restraint”, as far as I can tell, is a restriction, “to the maximum extent possible”, on posting official House documents where they “may appear with commercial or political information or any other information not in compliance with the House’s content guidelines.”

[The PDF is a scan of the letter, so I can't cut and paste text, and I'm too lazy to retype it.]

In other words, as I read this, Congresscritters shouldn’t pass off stuff produced in the name of the House at large as being the product of their own offices, or vice-versa. This is not an attempt to restrict the dissemination of “public information that already belongs to the people of the United States”. To the contrary: it’s intended to make that information easier to get to.

C’mon, folks. Pelosi and company really are evil. They do plenty of actual bad stuff. It does us no good at all, and great harm, to make transparently unfounded accusations like this.

That’s stooping to their level, that is. We don’t need to.

---

The 24-hour rule should be in effect on this story: come back tomorrow, after the dust has settled, and see where things are then. I, personally, am crossing my fingers in the hopes that Pelosi is as evil, and as stupid, as the Boyz make her out to be, and that her fellow ‘Critters boot her out to the street for interfering with their Constitutional right to dispense rabid propaganda to their sheep constituents.

In the meantime, I’m saving the text of this page, and the letter, in case they change or disappear.