The Indigestible

Three weeks after the Republicans got spanked for being powermongering, belligerent assholes, Newt Gingrich came out against freedom of speech at a party … honoring those who exercised freedom of speech.

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a “different set of rules” may be needed to reduce terrorists’ ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

No word at this time how the audience felt in general; perhaps they’re still to stunned to be able to register any opinion on the topic at all.

We might remember that Newt was the one who invented the Contract On With America, none of which actually ended up being adhered to by the Republicans after they staged their coup in 1994. Newt obviously has become more greedy and shitty since then, and clearly hasn’t paid much attention to what the voters had to say about his party.

(Actually that’s enedmic; Karl Rove is also of the opinion that the ouster of the warmongering-spendthriftery party is merely a temporary setback. And he has The Math to prove it.)

Newtie boy appears to think that the internet is a major recruiting tool for “tur’rists”; he’s probably right about that. He also appears to think that the Fed should be granted power, for an unlimited period in the future, to shut down web sites that it deems to be supportive of “tur’rism”.

Constitution? No; we’ll leave that intact. It’s just the amendments we’re going after.

This is eerily like the recent detainee act — you know, the one that lets habeas corpus be suspended for enemy combatants, said combatants to be declared as such at Il Duce’s discretion, thus leaving them powerless to defend against the very charges that have brought them to damnation.

So … the Fed says I have a web site, perhaps, that gives “aid and comfort” to “the enemy” by pointing out the indisputable truth that Bush is a fucktard. They move in and shut it down … and there’s no way for me to appeal or dispute the finding, because my primary mode of expression* has been abrogated.

This seems sensible to Newt, I suppose; but those of us endowed with something other than fiberglass in our skulls know better. Nearly a month after being publicly exposed, neither the emperor nor his retinue have bothered to don a stitch.

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* Free speech.