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Berkeley Breathed did that. After dropping Bloom County, he came back intermittently with Outland and some books. Aside from a couple of strips, he never really caught his previous edge and wit. But I love his children's books.

In fact, we HAVE taken away the freedom of the presses we didn't like:

In Iraq, CPA, L. Paul Bremmer III, close newspaper, Al Hawza.

I don't know about the quality of thefileroom, but Bremer admits this same incident in his book, "My Year in Iraq".

...try: http://www.thefileroom.org/FileRoom/documents/Cate goryHomePage.html

It will save you some mindless clicking.

As for the USA being #1, let me offer several observations.

1. Many of the USA incidents were artists feeling "oppressed" because the owner of a private space refused to show their work. What would it say about censorship in the USA if owners of private spaces were compelled to show works they did not like? Isn't my blank wall or un-defiled Madonna also freedom of expression? Now, if the gallery is public it's a different story, but it's still not censorship. After all, you take a government hand-out, you play by the governments rules. True censorhip is when the government refuses to allow you to publish that which you are capable of publishing yourself, or takes your money to support views opposite yours. So, why isn't the public school system listed as a form of censorship? I takes money from Christians, and refuses to allow the preaching of Christianity in the school. Anybody who opposes censorhip must support vouchers for this very reason.

2. Reports for countries that are genuinly oppressive cite fewer incidents because the censorship is against broad classes of speech. For example "no religion". This type of censorship is far more damaging than the single localized incidents cited in the USA. If you took all the USA reports on libraries and simply wrote a brief "Libraries are often pressured by community groups over sexual material" the result would be "people who really want it use their own Internet connection". There would be a lot fewer incidents in the USA category.

3. Reports from other countries are harder to obtain. Duh! They're censored. This also proves the point

4. People in other countries won't even try some of the things that people do in the USA. The flag thing is a great example. The penalty for desecrating the flag in some of these other countries is probably death. No wonder nobody has tried such "art" over there.

Distilling things down to the number of reports and saying the USA has the most is unscientific to say the least.

Agreed. One of the cases listed at the site, Television Sex and Violence Boycott Day, 1991 is really just a simple boycott rather than a case of censorship. One of the most frequently heard arguments from "controversial" musicians and artists is "If they don't like it, they can just turn it off!". Well, here's a case where some people decided to do just that: voluntarily refrain from material that they found offensive. As far as I know there was no pressure, legal or otherwise, from government, church, business, or other institutions.

http://www.thefileroom.org/FileRoom/documents/dyn/ DisplayCase.cfm?id=297

I did a google search out of interest to see if the site ever found a new home. I didn't find the site, but I did find out what became of the intrepid creator of the site, Daniel C. Robbins:

http://research.microsoft.com/~dcr/

Yup, he appears to be working at Microsoft as a 3D User Interface Designer. Strangely enough the BDSM site is noticably absent from his online CV ;)

Wow, who would have thought that the web is a great way to express yourself? Now if I only had the time to google around all day wading through all of the crap. This site, by the way, is a great way to motivate the importance of editors who make sure that the text is clear but who can also be censors themselves!