Blogged Elsewhere

If you don't read my Detroit News blog, I have a couple of posts there from yesterday that I don't feel like rewriting into fresh content because there's a lot new stuff I want to get to later tonight when I get home.

Not to be missed is Declan McCullagh's piece about the war on porn. He nails the underlying threat to free expression of all kinds that lurks within this administration's current preoccupation with indecency regulations. As with all culture wars, the right-wing extremists couch their concerns in terms of protecting the children. In truth the regulations already enacted don't protect children and have been used to suppress unpopular expression.

And if you needed any more proof that we are on the brink of the new police state, check out Raw Story's piece on the latest documents released by the ACLU. The FBI has been spying on various anti-war and other activist groups, after having designated them as domestic terrorists. Which of course means they can use their expanded Patriot Act powers to completely trample their civil rights and conduct what would otherwise be illegal surveillance without a specific court order.

Check it out, there's a long list of organizations that have been targeted, including Food not Bombs, which could not be more peaceful. Cripes, even today, their membership is kind of the last stronghold of the hippy-dippy types who always had a "acid grin" even though they never actually took any drugs.