A few months back I dedicated a lot of time and energy working to get a great guy elected to the Illinois State Senate. I worked for Pete Gutzmer for two reasons. First, Pete would be an excellent senator, and second the guy he ran against is an extremist. Unfortunately, Pete lost and the guy who won is proving to be true to form.
Matt Murphy is the name and coming up with legislation to take away your civil liberties is the game. He is on the record saying he would support a South Dakota style ban on abortion. He believes intelligent design is less a matter of quality public education and more about "local control". And he doesn’t want you to have access to social networking websites at public libraries and schools for the sake of "the children" and has gone as far as to introduce legislation in the Illinois State Senate to prevent everyone, not only the children, from getting access to networking sites Illinois State Senate Bill SB1682
Will this legislation succeed in protecting the children if it becomes law? Unlikely. Most schools, if not all, filter social networking sites from their computers. The children are safe from the nasty people lurking about My Space at the public school. So the bill REALLY IS about banning access for EVERYONE at the public library, quoting Murphy "where children aren’t under the watchful eye of their parents". It would appear then in Mr. Murphy’s world, we are ALL children needing protecting from the bad guys on the Internet.
And here is the kicker: a "social networking website" is NEVER DEFINED IN THE BILL. Is dKOS a social networking site? After all, we are having a convention in the fall. How about DFA and Moveon.org? People get together because of those sites. Meetup.com would definitely be on the naughty list. This law won’t protect children. It will prevent the poor, the elderly, and just common Joe and Jane citizen from going to their library, logging on, and connecting with the world.
The GOP doesn’t get the Internets. It scares them. So they will try to clog up the "series of pipes" with all kinds of legislative garbage in the name of the children to try to hobble this progressive movement...the movement that won us back control of the congress. They won’t do it on a nation level because that would get too much press and wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance of passing...not now. They will do it at a state level, quietly, with the best intentions.
DON"T LET THEM SUCCEED. We must remain vigilant on every front, local, state, and federal, in our fight against this kind of draconian broad-brush legislation. Find out what is going on in your state, your community regarding net freedom. Get involved. And if you live in Illinois, contact your representatives and tell them you are against SB1682!