The Bigsibling Blog

I find this such and incredible story. It boggles the mind. Like that bill that was proposed in Mississippi that would have made it illegal for a restaurant to serve fat people, there is currently a bill before the state legislature in Arizona that would hold businesses liable for civil damage if they distribute obscene or dangerous stuff.

Bookstores, news organizations, cable companies and other businesses are strongly opposed to legislation that would make an individual or a company liable for civil damages if they produce, publish or distribute any dangerous or obscene materials that causes someone to commit an act of terrorism or a felony.

Are these guys for real? So a bookseller sells a book, and someone buys it, and they go and kill some poor schmuck, and then claim that reading the book made them do it. So the bookseller is now on the hook, civilly, for the crime? Well, I suppose it worked for the tobacco industry. People smoke, don’t like that they made poor choices, and therefore sue the tobacco company for their poor decisions.

It works for bars. If a bartender serves an already drunk person more, then he goes out and runs over some little old lady, killing her and mangling her walker, the bartender can be held liable for that. It sucks I know. But it’s just one more way to remove responsibility from the offender, to make the offender the victim. It’s not Johnny’s fault he took a rifle and shot up the mall, he just listened to Helter Skelter 500 times in the last two days. That’s why we killed all those people, it wasn’t Johnny’s fault, it was that evil, evil music.

Although…thinking about this just a little more…that would mean that booksellers could no longer sell the Koran. That can even go so far as to make so that Koran’s can’t even be given away. I wonder if that is possibly the true reason for this stupid bill? It would be interesting to see if any religious groups will express outrage or opposition to this bill.

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I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, ‘Woe to you folks up in Canada who believe you have a modicum of free speech’. This week there was a hearing regarding the practices of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. This is the governmental body in Canada which is charged with investigating and punishing thought crimes hate speech.

I’ve stated here before that Canadians are being fooled into thinking they have freedom of speech. But that they really don’t. They can’t say or write anything that might "bring ridicule or contempt" upon a person or group of people. The CHRC have been jackbooting their way through people’s lives. Scouring the Internet for anything they could find that would enable them to drag people before "The Commission". Oh, and like the Mounties, "The Commission" always gets their man. They have a 100% guilty rate for people who have been judged by them.

For those not in the know, the CHRC is not a judicial body. They are not law enforcement. They don’t require search warrants or wire taps. And on slow days, they log onto Internet sites, using fictitious names trying to goad and bait people into saying something the commission can then charge them with.

I know, I know…all of this seems like some strange movie akin to Orwell’s 1984, or "V for Vendetta" but it is real. The CHRC agents have even gone so far as to illegally hijack some private citizens’ wireless Internet connection in order to anonymously log onto the web sites they are investigating in order to mask their IP addresses. I guess these thugs have never heard of anonymous proxies. There are plenty around.

At one point in the hearings, the CHRC’s Dean Steacy was asked "What value to do you give to freedom of speech?" to which Steacy replied:

"Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value … It’s not my job to give value to an American concept."

Exactly what I have been trying to say. The Canadian government, by way of the CHRC places absolutely no value on free speech for your poor Canucks. It is frightening really.

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Linda S. Heard wrote in the Gulf News web-site - which I believe when they say "gulf" they mean Persian Gulf, not down Mississippi way because when one clicks "Nation" for national news, they get news about the UAE - in which she calls freedom of speech an "Admirable Concept" and explains how the West doesn’t really have free speech.

The main point of her misguided, but very well written rant, is that while we may think we have free speech, we really don’t. She cites some hate-speech examples in Europe. She believes that some US states have laws against blasphemy which, I have to see to believe. The whole wall between church and state that the left is just so nuts about would seem to impede any laws regarding blasphemy. I could be wrong (but I’m not).

She spends a bit of her time with Geert Wilders’ movie "FITNA" which is causing quite a ruckus with those peace loving followers of Mohamed. So peace loving in fact, that Wilders is under state protection in the Netherlands, and the Dutch are preparing for the worst when the film is finally released.

She states if the Dutch government really wanted to stop the film from being shown, they could. Which is completely false. All Wilders has to do is release the film in the USA, from US servers. See, as much as Heard wants to believe that our first amendment is an "Admiral Concept", what she doesn’t, and probably will never understand, is that it is so much more than that. It is sacred. Freedom of speech…religion…to peaceably assemble…these are not concepts. These are not some high ideals that we only strive for. These are not the edicts of ayatollahs and imams that will get us into heaven, but which are nigh impossible to attain.

Jesus said that if we only had the faith to fill a mustard seed, we could command a mountain to move, and it would move. But in reality, that kind of faith is simply unattainable in the human realm, with our limited mind and inability to fully comprehend God in all his glory. Something similar to Heard I think. She simply cannot (or more probably will not) comprehend 1) what this freedom is; and 2) what it actually and truly means to us, as Americans.

There is a reason the framers of our country placed that amendment first. It is the most important of all the freedoms they have guaranteed for us. That document was drafted with copious debate, and nothing is in there, or placed, by accident. Every letter, every piece of punctuation, is intentional. It is where it is supposed to be.

She claims that Wilders’ film will serve as a recruiting tool for extremist groups:

Furthermore, it will serve as a recruiting tool for extremist groups calling for a jihad against the new Crusaders.

Shame on him and shame on those who would prioritise the so-called rights of this imbecile over the heartfelt pleas of Muslims in the Netherlands and around the world!

Shame on us? Shame on the freedom loving people? What about the please of the non-Muslims in the Spain and England who didn’t want their trains bombed? What about the please of the Israelis in settlements constantly being bombed by the Muslims. Are the bombs they send in heartfelt? Probably not.

Heard will never understand what it means to be free. She will never understand what freedom of speech is really about.

As for Wilders’s film, given his known detestation of Islam, one can only wonder about his motives for making it. Rather than exemplifying his freedom to express his views, it is likely to be 15 minutes of pure, unadulterated hate probably designed to cause an even greater rift between Muslims and non-Muslims than already exists.

The question which Heard does not ask. And will never explore, is why does that right exists in the here and now? Why is there such a great divide between Muslim and non-Muslim? Could it be that the non-Muslim is horrified at the Muslim treatment of women? That non-Muslims can’t understand why converting from Islam to a different religion is punishable by death? Could it be that the non-Muslim simply can’t fathom that the victim of a gang-rape is punished, then pardoned by the Muslim government? I’m certain Heard will discount any of these things for helping to create, and keep the divide between Muslims and non-Muslims. I’m certain Heard has some other far-reaching reason, and all fault will be placed squarely on the shoulders of us Westerners. Oh and the Israelis, can’t forget them, it’s their fault too.

Let’s not forget, the reason for the riots last year, the burnings of buildings, and the deaths were not the Muslims. Sure, they perpetrated the atrocities, but who could blame them? Newspapers in the Netherlands and Denmark published the Mo’ Toons. I mean seriously, if that isn’t a reason for wholesale lawlessness, what is?

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On 23 June, 2007 four people were silently praying in a park in Elmira, NY. The people were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace. Of course, they wouldn’t ever be convicted of such a thing. Surely a jury of their peers would realize that praying in a park is protected speech under the First Amendment…right?

No. On 29 February, 2008 they were found guilty of disturbing the peace and ordered to each pay a $100 fine and court costs. As you can probably guess there is just a little more to this story than just four folks praying in a park. Did I mention the folks are Christians? Of course, how could they not be. Would the police arrest four Muslims silently praying in public? Would they arrest four Muslims loudly praying in public? No, that would be discrimination, after all, the Muslims have a right to pray (more so apparently than Christians do).

In addition, in the park that day, and the time they were silently praying, was occurring a gay pride event. The notorious four were laying on the ground, praying silently. They were not passing out Christian literature. They were not talking to anyone. They were not evangelizing, they were not proselytizing. They were laying prostrate in silent prayer, asking God to shine His mercy on the souls of sinners.

Granted, they were told by the police they were not allowed to cross the street and enter the park. The police told them there were unwelcome at an event that was advertised as "open to the public" where "all are welcome."

While the ACLU won’t step in a protect he civil rights of the Elmira Four, the Alliance Defense Fund is. They have filed an appeal in the case. I’m hoping beyond hope that the appellate court will see the folly and reverse the decision. Somewhere in the justice system there just has to be some sanity and common sense remaining.

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Our freedom loving *cough* allies in the middle east made a rather huge faux pas over the weekend. The benevolent and democratic *cough* government of Pakistan decided that the YouTube contains content that is blasphemous, and that the free people of Pakistan should not be allowed permitted forced to watch such trash. So they issued a mandate that the YouTube was to be blocked so that the intelligent and free *cough* people of Pakistan would not be subjected to such filth.

One Pakistani ISP decided the best way to stop the nefarious YouTube from breaching Pakistani’s peace loving *cough* borders was to change, in the BGP tables in their routers, where the YouTube was located to a server within Pakistan.

This seemed to work out very well…but probably was not fully thought out. Because when the ISP’s router began broadcasting the change, it was picked up world wide, causing all traffic meant for the YouTube - worldwide - to be re-directed to said server. This caused the YouTube to be unreachable for about an hour, and for the telecom delivering the majority of Pakistan’s bandwidth to shut down their connection while things were sorted out.

I’m certain this ‘poisoning’ of the Internet was completely unintentional. Just an example of someone probably wanting to take a short cut in their work without fully realizing how their equipment worked (and these are the people we outsource tech support to? - no, wait, that’s India, never mind). But this got me to thinking about something similar happening maliciously.

For instance, say someone altered their BGP tables to point charlesschwab.com to a server they controlled with a website which had the same look and feel of the real charlesschwab.com. Now, it is fairly easy to tell a phishing site from the real website, if the address is something like www.charlesschwab.com.itakeyoumoney.net, then one is probably not at the charlesschwab.com website. But with the users being re-directed at the level we’re talking about, the address would still see www.charlesschwab.com. How would one know? So you enter your username and password and get an error about the site being down for maintenance or some such, and to try back in an hour or so. And when it is tried again, this time going back to the real charlesschwab.com website, everything works and nobody’s the wiser.

Kinda scary to think it about…isn’t it?

Now I haven’t been in the hardware side of the house for a long, long time, and even when I was, my knowledge didn’t go that deep. But the scenario sure seems plausible on the surface. There are probably a wide range of reasons it wouldn’t work.

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Technorati Tags: Pakistan, BGP, YouTube, Internet

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Somebody I’ve never heard of named Shirien Elmasraya wrote the following in a rather wordy, yet oblique column in the LSU Daily Reveille:

People always parrot the words “free speech,” but if you ask people to explain what exactly this concept entails, they will often give you a blank look.

Freedom of speech is so vague.

Um…no, not really. Freedom of speech is not vague at all. It is exactly as it implies. People here in the United States of America are free to speak their minds without fear of reprisal by the government. Exceptions are…fraud. That is about it. We are free to tell lies, we are free to tell truths, we are free to tell half-truths. We are free to criticize our government, we are free to criticize our neighbors. We are free to say “Hey, I don’t like what that group of people are doing.” There is not vague or ambiguous about it at all.

Elmasraya goes on to take issue with fellow columnist Daniel Lumetta’s quoting form Mark Steyn’s book “America Alone” where Steyn discusses the fact that Muslims in the west are reproducing at a much greater rate than non-Muslims. Where Westerners tend to have two kids, Muslims tend to have five or six. With that rate of re-population, it won’t be long before Muslims are the majority. Personally, that doesn’t bother me, unless they decide that Sharia Law is what should be the law of the land. The fact is that in the Middle East, which is primarily Muslim, the laws are so strict that simply converting to a different religion is punishable by death. That is what Steyn was getting at. If the strict Muslims have their way, we will all be either Muslim, or dead. No in-between.

Elmasraya continues to shove foot into mouth by discounting the statement that Lumetta made about the American culture being the greatest culture in the world. Saying:

This view usually emanates from people who have not traveled very much and have not seen different cultures for themselves.

Which is just another way to say “American cutlure is not the greatest culture, and only an idiot would say so.” Well, the fact is that the American culture is the greatest the world has ever seen. If one refuses to see that, they simply aren’t looking hard enough.

The American culture is unique in the world. It has evovled over the last several hundred years. America’s policies of welcoming (legal) immigrants from around the globe, from any and all countries and cultures has created the greatest culture. America’s culture is hodge-podge melting pot of each and every other culture in the world today (and in the past couple hundred years). America’s culture is created from the best all the other cultures have to offer, while discarding the crap. We discard the female genital mutiliation, we discard the honor killing rites, we throw out performing human sacrifices, we leave outthe part where a thief is dismembered, we frown upon polygamy, we toss out the mysoginistic tendancies of some cultures, and keep the good stuff.

How can all the good stuff from different cultures, combined into one not be the greatest? In what other culture does a woman have greater opportunity and equality than in the American culture? What other culture can produce a great leader from the son of the town drunk, or from a pauper’s upbringing by an abusive step father? Where can that happen but for America?

Elmasraya goes on to claim:

Saying American culture is superior to all other cultures without actually experiencing even just a couple of other cultures is an abuse of freedom - and perhaps an even bigger abuse to society at large by instilling these views into the public.

Ummm…okay, but I don’t have to experience the sensation of sticking a hot needle in my eye, to know that I’m not going to enjoy it. So it is an abuse of free speech to look at all the other cultures (without having to actually be immersed in them) and claim, hey, this is the best? What kind of crap is that? How is that an abuse of anything? With the ready availability of information today, one need to travel to foreign lands physically to know what their cultures are like. For instance, I have never been to India, but I know and have interacted with many, many people from India. I know their divorce rate is very low. I know they are some of the most polite folks I have ever met. Those aspects of the Indian culture, I really like, but counter to that is the caste system, arranged marriages and honor killings. Sorry, but American culture trumps theirs.

Look at the culture of the Middle East. While they have some great things going for them, low divorce rate, high rate of belief in God. They have no freedom of religion. Their women are treated as little more than chattel. They have honor killings. Women who are raped are punished by the courts. Hmmm…yep, American culture beats that hands down.

How about something closer to home? Canada? People are going to jail for speaking their minds. It is illegal to say something which would hold another to contempt or ridicule. No freedom of speech - not really anyway. Yeah, America has that one beat as well.

China? Tienamin Square - ’nuff said.

Cuba? Puh-leeze.

Elmasraya claims:

Sometimes the best form of speech or communication is to know when to not speak at all.

Apperantly, the ‘when not to speak at all’ part comes in when something is said that Elmasraya takes offense with. I wonder if the quote about the demographics had been about Mexicans, or Catholics, or Mormons, if Elmasraya would have taken such offense. My guess is not.

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Technorati Tags: LSU, Daily Reveille, Shirien Elmasraya, Mark Steyn, Free Speech, First Amendment

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For those of you who enjoy reading the entertaining anti Islamic-supremacist crusader (oh, is that offensive?) Foehammer over at Foehammer’s Anvil blog, you’ll know he has had a recent rash of problems with his web server host. It’s been his contention all along that there are folks who are trying to shut him down. A recent message from his hosting company has confirmed his suspicions.

“This should satisfy all that are wondering what has been going on with the hosting here at the Anvil. I finally received an email from a LunarPages admin that actually knows how to do her job. Not surprisingly, her name is something that I can actually pronounce and most likely doesn’t belong to a Muslim convert. What follows is an edited version of the response, but you will now see that I have absolute proof that the Leftofascists and Islamofascists have been hard at work tying to shut me up. I’ve been telling LunarPages to check for ddos attacks for weeks; someone finally listened:

Hi,

Our admin has moved your account to a quieter server whilst the issues are worked out with regards to your CPU /MEM usage which is why your main page is back online.

This server has fewer customers and is less likely to crash in the event of attacks or high usage.

I have checked back through the last 6,000 lines of your domlogs for foehammer.net on it’s present server

It has indeed been hit by a flurry of ddos attempts:

This IP has almost 500 hits to your domain and is now blocked in the severs firewall:

(Hits: 467) #.#.#.# (netvigator Hong Kong)

There were also hits in the 100 to 300 from other ISP’s.

I then went on to check the pages hit by this IP and it is apparent that this attacker was angered by a post on there with regards to the criticism of obamas muslim background being justified as almost every single hit was to this article:

#.#.#.# - - [22/Jan/2008:22:37:33 -0800] “http://foehammer.net/2007/12/ criticism-of-obamas-muslim-background-is-absolutely-justified.html” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”

To overcome this I have now (edited out).

Your current usage is down today and this is before I installed the script, hopefully we will see this greatly reduced in the next 24 hours.

This “quieter server” is obviously a snail and unacceptable. I’m hopeful that once some protections are put into place that I might actually want to blog again.

To those that might think switching hosts is no big deal, I’m afraid you do not understand that I am being caught in this treadmill at the worst possible time for me personally, so yes, switching the Anvil to a new host is a very, very big deal — to me. Beyond that, the Anvil is not a virtual sheet of paper. It is a heavily customized blog and setting it all up again on a new host would take many hours of intense work that I think I made clear around the New Year definitely wasn’t what I wanted to be dealing with in 2008.

D–nit, at this point I do not even want to blog. Can anyone really blame me? Just look at the economy, the Presidential campaign, the continued rocket attacks into Gaza, the Stock Market being bought up by greedy Arab Oil Barons, and on and on and on.

Frankly, too much of what I’ve been predicting all these years keeps happening and it looks like we’re going to elect a President that won’t make things better, more likely far worse, in fact. Blogging to a few hundred awake readers and spending 40+ hours a week doing that is no longer an option for me. I have to start circling the wagons. I suggest many of you do the same.

This latest round of attacks on my Free Speech simply puts the exclamation point at the end of every sentence I’ve been typing since 2003. Watch out! It looks like I’m not lobbing softballs around here to be getting this much unwanted attention.”

All this is reported at the 1389 blog, along with some other great stuff. Bigsibling certainly hopes that Foehammer gets his blog back onto an acceptable server as the information he passes on is certainly information worth having. As proven by the DDOS attacks on his site.

Technorati Tags: Islamic Supremacists,Muslims,Foehammer,Foehammer’s Anvil,DDOS,Denial of Service

del.icio.us Tags: Islamic Supremacists,Muslims,Foehammer,Foehammer’s Anvil,DDOS,Denial of Service

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In the small town of Aspen, CO- home to exceptional skiing and quaint shops (and formerly John Denver), a controversy has brewed. It appears there is a film on the internet titled “Judea Declares War on Germany.” I haven’t seen it, nor have I even heard of it before this recent flap. By the title, I am surmising the film bends towards the anti-Semitic and attempts to justify the Nazi led attempt at genocide.The controversy arrives courtesy of Steve Campbell of Glenwood Springs, CO. He asked local television station GrassRoots TV to air the film. Knowing the film would be extremely controversial, the station’s board of directors opened the subject for debate. Most people haven’t seen the film, but believe it is a film depicting denial of the holocaust. But Campbell says the film does not deny the holocaust, but tries to show other evidence that is not widely discussed.

It seems to me, by the title and the description given by Campbell, that the film is severely titled against the Jews. An attempt to justify the attempted genocide by Nazi Germany. Of course, if the people who believe in censorship have their way, the good folks in Roaring Fork Valley may never know what the film depicts.

Believe me, I can understand, and have a hard time not siding with, the good, decent, upstanding folks who don’t want this film aired. More than the likely the film is not more than a pack of vile, disgusting half-truths and out-and-out lies. But does that mean it should be banned? It was banned in Australia already. Of course, it can’t be shown in France or Germany because holocaust denial is actually a crime in those places. Are we to do that here as well? Are we to make a crime out of exercising one’s free speech?

While the Constitution of the United States of America guarantees us, each and every one of us, free speech, it guarantees nothing in the way of a forum for that speech. It does not dictate that every television or radio station or newspaper or magazine must broadcast our speech, or give any air or print time to that speech. So while the GrassRoots TV station will be completely within its rights to not air the film, I tend to think along the lines of Harvie Branscomb who, at the meeting, declared:

“I’m scared of information totalitarianism.”

As well as Sheila Markowitz, of Glenwood Springs, CO who, at the same meeting, stated:

“I am afraid when I’m told I can’t see something, I would rather have this be seen and let people decide.”

Look, people by and large are not idiots. Even the lefties out in Aspen, CO are not idiots. Heck, if they can afford to live in Aspen, they have to be doing something right. By refusing to allow this film to be seen, the board is telling the folks of Roaring Fork Valley that they are too stupid to know what is truth and what is fiction. That they are so stupid they will all suddenly become skinheads just by watching this film.

I know this much, if someone says that I can’t watch a film or read a book because it is bad for me, I’m pretty much going to run out and do just that. I would have to see what is so bad that it required being banned. I remember the movie “Children of the Damned” when I was quite a bit younger. I remember wanting so badly to see that movie because the newspaper adverts declared in big bold letters “Banned in Cleveland” - or it could have been Chicago, or some other city, but that isn’t the point - the point is, by declaring that movie to be banned I just had to see the movie! I had to see what it was about. I didn’t like the movie much as I recall, it seemed fairly banal. But it got me to see it.

Now I’m probably going to feel the inexplicable need to hunt down this movie and watch it. Just because the government of Australia says their citizens can’t, and even more so because it seems like the board of directors at GrassRoots TV will also tell their viewing audience they can’t see it either. I’m pretty sure I can find the thing on the YouTube.
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Technorati Tags: GrassRoots TV, Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Judea Declares War on Germany, Holocaust, Steve Campbell

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Google has that motto “Do no evil” but how true to their motto are they? Google, for the most part, pretty much owns the Internet. They are the premier ad revenue generating machine in existence. Their ad revenue model is second to none. Everyone should (by now) know that they own the YouTube, and have recently purchased evil pop-up ad generator DoubleClick. And everyone should also be well aware that Google censors search results for oppressive markets like China.

Let’s face it, Google is the Microsoft of the Internet. Now, I don’t fault Google for censoring search results in China. The capitalist in me says they do what they have to do to make a dollar. If I were Google, and China said to me “if you want to have visibility in China, you must filter the results to remove things we don’t want our people to see” I’d do the same thing. But then, my motto would not be “do no evil” either. It would probably be more like, “Have fun, make money, grow the company through profit.” But that is the capitalist in me speaking.

No, I don’t fault Google for censoring things in foreign lands because, as stated, they do what they have to do. I do fault them for censoring things all the while saying “do no evil.” I fault them for that because censorship, in and of itself is evil. By censoring their content, they are engaging in evil conduct, which goes against their motto. In addition to that, they also selectively censor their advertising clients. For instance, they removed ads by Republican Senatorial candidate Susan Collins that made mention of MoveOn.org. They pulled the ads on the basis they violated Google’s trademark policy. However, they routinely allow negative ads which contain trademark names such as Wal-Mart, Blackwater, Exxon, Haliburton, Microsoft and a whole host of others. These ads aren’t pulled for trademark reasons.

Since Google does not enforce its policy uniformly, it becomes evident they have an agenda. And it is a leftist agenda at that. Negative ads against their competitors (Microsoft) and other capitalist-centric organizations (Wal-Mart) are allowed to go forth unencumbered, but ads that mention leftist entities (MoveOn.org) are shut down. The only conclusion one can draw from this is that Google, now riding high on its capitalist earnings, would like to snub its nose at all those freedom loving capitalist Americans that made them rich and powerful by aggressively promoting a left wing, socialist agenda.

Google will routinely remove videos from the YouTube that portray Islam in a less-than-stellar light, while allowing vitriolic anti-American  and anti-Semitic videos to remain. They remove news reporting websites like the Jawa Report from the Google News pages because of stories that, again, show a dark side of Islam.

In a blatant, “we love censorship” move, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with CEO Eric Schmidt encouraged the board of directors to vote down an anti-censorship proposal in May. The proposal would have outlined under exactly what conditions Google would censor content, and also display to the end-user that content had been censored and why.

Even though Google has become a rather generic term used when ever someone talks about searching the Internet, somewhat like Jeep is a generic term for an off road vehicle, or Kleenex for facial tissues, or Xerox for copiers, there really are plenty of other search engines available for people to use. Personally, I like Microsoft Live. It gives me pretty much the same results. At least for the first several pages, and quite frankly, if I can’t find what I want in the first couple of pages, I refine the search anyway. There is a pretty good example of their censoring pages here at Blogoscoped.com.

I have to wonder, as the word spreads about Google’s totalitarian activities, will their popularity begin to dwindle? Will people begin to wonder if, when the “google” something, are they getting everything? It seems to me, it is closely approaching the right time for Yahoo! to make a leap, and regain its once former dominance in the search engine world.

Technorati Tags: Google, Censorship, leftist, socialist, fascist

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Everyone by now should know about David McSwane. He is the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper at Colorado State University up in Ft. Collins, CO. For those that don’t know, he is also the one who published an editorial in the newspaper which was four simple words “Tazer this, [unmentionable] Bush”.

This was, of course, in response to the tazering of a student in Florida who tried to ask Senator John Kerry un-agreeable questions in a question and answer forum. Forget for the moment that somehow President Bush is responsible for what happened to the Florida student who was asking questions of Sen. Kerry (I have been trying to figure that out, but somehow I just can’t connect the dots), and just focus on the editorial.

The CSU Board of Student Communications which oversees the newspaper is calling McSwane to the carpet. They feel he has violated the paper’s code of ethics, and are looking into firing him. McSwane, of course, is crying they are violating his First Amendment rights. Kids these days, they just don’t understand the term ‘ethics’, or ‘appropriateness’.

If McSwane were working for a real newspaper, in the real world, reporting real news, he would have been fired long before now. The editorial appears on 21 September, and here it is 30 September, a full nine days have passed and McSwane still has his job. In the real world, the Board of Directors or the owner of whatever paper he was working for would have sacked him the day it appeared.

This is just another in what is becoming a fairly long line of cases where students display poor judgment, then scream First Amendment when they are called on it. McSwane has to learn at some point in his life that decisions have consequences, and while he has a First Amendment right to say what he pleases, his employers have every right to can people who make the company look bad.

His unethical, immature use of foul language in a newspaper should not be tolerated if the newspaper wants to retain any credibility as a reporter of real news. That might be okay in a tabloid type paper, or something akin the Lampoon of Harvard, but not an official school newspaper.

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Technorati Tags: David McSwane, Colorado State University, Tazer This, Free Speech, First Amendment

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