How Evil Were The Republicans?

George Bush never told me to shut up. He might have read my mail and listened to my phone calls but doesn't that show you that he was happy to hear from me? I find it unusually telling that the first thing the new democratic majority in congress does is to kill the First Amendment. The very first thing these assholes do is propose Senate Bill S1 the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007 seems like a reasonable attempt to limit the amount of contact Congress may have with paid lobby groups. However, there is language in the law that will have a chilling effect at the very least and could possibly be used to silence anyone trying to publicly discuss political issues. That means the end of Dean Rules! since my political speach technically fits all the qualifications.

How the hell do I think that? My blog frequently discusses politics and as such is clearly an attempt to influence consensus. I hope my readers think and act on my advice. Do I have 501 or more readers? Well that number in the law is so vague as to be useless. Let's look at it:

`(B) PAID ATTEMPT TO INFLUENCE THE GENERAL PUBLIC OR SEGMENTS THEREOF- The term `paid attempt to influence the general public or segments thereof' does not include an attempt to influence directed at less than 500 members of the general public.

Do you see the problem? No? There is no time limit or definition on what communication means. 500 people in one day, week, year? I had 28,000 hits last year. Roughly half of my daily hits are regulars. That means that I had about 14,000 random visitors which if I remember how to count is more then 501.

But you say, Dean you clearly don't make any money and your blog is hosted for free. Yes that is true but my blog is hosted by Google which makes assloads of money off my and my blogging peers political speach. That's really the target of this law. It's not my blog that's under attack. It's the big blogging hosts. Do you think for one minute that Google isn't going to bend over in the United States (where they and their families live.) They'll bend over in the US faster then they did in China.

I'll probably set up one of the many abandonned computers in my closet to host my new and improved blog. I have a Pentium III that probably could run Linux and host my blog. My upstream connection isn't very strong, Comcast's home broadband is still very asymmetrical. I'll probably do all right for a few months until Comcast changes their TOS to restrict outgoing bandwidth.

At that point you'll probably have to sneak into the woods to read what I or any other political blogger has to say. I already have my tree picked out. I just hope it doesn't end up being the one they hang me from.