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After Columbine, Eric Holder Advocated Internet "Restrictions"
ErikTheRed writes "In an audio clip discovered by NewsBusters, then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder advocated federal censorship of the Internet. This was in the aftermath of the Columbine High School shootings. From the clip: 'The court has really struck down every government effort to try to regulate it. We tried with regard to pornography. It is gonna be a difficult thing, but it seems to me that if we can come up with reasonable restrictions, reasonable regulations in how people interact on the Internet, that is something that the Supreme Court and the courts ought to favorably look at.'" Holder is reported to be Barack Obama's choice for Attorney General of the United States.
Doubtless the point will be made that NewsBusters is a strongly partisan site, and this is true. Fortunately, though, they aren't asking anyone to take their word for it, instead posting a recording of Holder himself.
While the Bush administration has certainly been no friend of free speech, I am not sure why anyone thinks that Democratic politicians and administrations have been better. For example, when Janet Reno was AG under Clinton, she warned the TV networks to clean up their shows, or the government would do it for them. Influential voices on the left call (unsuccessfully for the most part, it must be recognized) for censorship of various things on various grounds.
The point here is not that one party is great and the other is terrible, but that neither major party is committed in principle to individual freedom, including freedom of expression. Believing otherwise is a dangerous but widespread error.
Libertarian legal scholar Eugene Volokh has posted a discussion of this in which he concludes that what Holder advocated was actually a very narrow restriction on helping people build bombs.
The AG's office also creates legislation to be presented to the congress, that's where the patriot act and many other bills came from, they check over the president's purposed legislation for legalities like constitutionality and they give validation to policies.
The AG isn't some office drone who does only what he is told to do. He is like the head of the legal department at a large company and plays a large role in steering their actions.
Actually, the restrictions Holder had in mind were mostly passed into law four months after he gave that interview. See 18 USC Â 842(p):
(2) Prohibition. - It shall be unlawful for any person -
(A) to teach or demonstrate the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction, or to distribute by any means information pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture or use of an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction, with the intent that the teaching, demonstration, or information be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence; or
(B) to teach or demonstrate to any person the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction, or to distribute to any person, by any means, information pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture or use of an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction, knowing that such person intends to use the teaching, demonstration, or information for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence.
Hey retard, the brownshirts were leftist. NAZI -> National Socialist
And North Korea is a democracy, says so right in their name.
More lies brought to you by people who label anything they don't like as "leftist".
Obama and Biden say that they are listening, so tell them how you feel about curtailing our rights and freedoms in the name of protecting the country.