Right twice a day, or something like that?
Well, I won’t concede that Mark Penn gives out that many correct answers in a 24 hour period, but this week he’s got a decent idea.
It’s time we added the first 21st Century amendment to the Constitution — an amendment that parallels the First Amendment but explicitly prohibits the government from ever shutting down the Internet. Freedom of the Internet in today’s world is just as important as freedom of the press, religion or speech.
As revolutions spread around the world questioning dictator after dictator, it is clear that the Internet has been the same kind of catalyst that a free press has been in past democratic revolutions — it has given people an easy way to share their experiences, a tool for organizing, and served to publish atrocities in cases where the press was blocked.
Go read. See what you think.
The fact that an amendment is needed exhibits that it has already failed. If the fed.gov can’t restrain itself to it’s constitutionally defined and limited authority now (which doesn’t involve the internet), what good is an amendment going to do? Bills will be passed, executive orders issued, courts packed, and eventually the amendment will be relegated to something to the effect of the Second amendment where anything goes as long as it isn’t total confiscation.
Seems to me that such an amendment should be as necessary as one saying that the .gov cannot shut down all newspapers and magazines.
“Should” being the operative word.