I hate Joe Lieberman. He’s one of the dumbest fuckwits in Washington DC who seems to have a loud opinion about every single thing he doesn’t understand. Now he’s demanding that Google place a button on Blogger to flag terrorist content:
Joseph Lieberman, the independent senator from Connecticut, sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page this week expressing his opinion that Google-owned blogging platform Blogger should provide a button that would let readers of Blogger-powered blogs flag “terrorist content,” according to a report.
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“As demonstrated by this recent case, Google’s webhosting site, Blogger, is being used by violent Islamist extremists to broadcast terrorist content,” reads the reported Lieberman letter, which was posted online by blog TPM.
Where do I begin? First of all what qualifies as terrorist content is entirely subjective. If you ask a government agent any anti-government content would likely be considered terrorist content while people asking me what qualifies as terrorist content will get a quick response noting basically everything government agents have ever written.
Are people advocating terrorism using popular blogging software to get their message out? Yes. Is such content protected under free speech? You’re damned right it is. How can I say that? Easy, unless somebody is acting upon their advocacy of violence no crime has taken place because no victim exists. There is a day and night difference between saying something and doing something. Many people say things that they would never act upon, often times just to let off steam.
What Lieberman wants is really the censorship of speech. How do I derive that? What do you think that “terrorist flag” button is supposed to do? I’m sure if jack-booted thug Lieberman had his way it would send all available personal information about the post author to the Department of Motherland Homeland Security and dispatch a Reaper drone to blow the author straight to Hell. Since that isn’t really possible due to pesky laws (not that they’re stopping the government from doing anything) the next best thing will be to have the button remove the content from Blogger, at least for review.
Instead of trying to further stifle our rights how about you work on real problems Lieberman? Perhaps you can use your large and idiotic opinion to demand stupid changes that you believe will fix our country’s major debt problem. At least you could claim you’re working on a pressing issue in an attempt to justify that fat paycheck and great benefits package you earn for doing nothing besides being a dick.