Gun Owners of America Alert-- November 29, 2006

Earlier this month, the Brady Campaign asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate GOA's practice of posting its candidate ratings on the Internet. Millions of gun owners rely on these ratings, and that is something the Brady Bunch would like to halt.

In 2002, the Bradys rejoiced when Congress passed the Incumbent Protect Act, stating that "now the gun lobby's stranglehold on Congress will be broken." Indeed, they want to make it illegal for GOA to tell gun owners what their legislators are actually doing.

But it should not surprise anyone that a group which doesn't understand the Second Amendment does not understand First Amendment freedoms as well.

Realize that we are going to need your help more than ever in 2007. Because of this recent Brady assault, we could be looking at a very costly court battle that could eventually go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Gun Owners is not going to back down, however, from the Brady Campaign's intimidation tactics. We realize that these candidate ratings are extremely important, for they force your legislators to stay in the light.

Are they doing this to the NRA as well?  Personally, I value GOA's ratings more than the NRA's.

Free Constitution has all the info.  No warning, no explanation, except that they shut it down because they can.

When your side is wrong and the truth is against you, political correctness and censorship are your friends.

From The Observer:

The founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written by its users, has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries.

Jimmy Wales, one of the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine, challenged other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with Beijing.

Wikipedia, a hugely popular reference tool in the West, has been banned from China since last October. Whereas Google, Microsoft and Yahoo went into the country accepting some restrictions on their online content, Wales believes it must be all or nothing for Wikipedia.

[...]

[Wales said:]  "One of the points that I'm trying to push is that if there's a small town in China that has a wonderful local tradition, that won't make its way into Wikipedia because the people of China are not allowed to share their knowledge with the world. I think that's an ironic side-effect and something the people in the censorship department need to have a much bigger awareness of: you're not just preventing information about Falun Gong or whatever you're upset about getting into China, you're preventing the Chinese people speaking to the world."

It works both ways.  No information in, no information out.  I wonder which way the Chinese government fears most.

SayUncle points to more anti-McCain-Feingold blogs.

Following the link above, I found this post by Kim du Toit on the subject.  Says Mr. du Toit, " And if you want to join me, feel free to have at the graphics."

I have had at them and have hacked out a couple of variations.  If anyone wants to use them, have at them.

I made these alternative versions because I don't do that red state/blue state stuff.  Until someone comes up with a color for Constitutionalists and/or Libertarians, I won't be pledging allegiance to any single color.

The big one, 440 pixels wide because if I make graphics any wider it skews my columns:


The small 200-pixel-wide version because it will fit in my sidebar:


For anyone who wants to keep track of the blogs telling Congress exactly what they can do with this attempt to abolish our First Amendment rights, I recommend SayUncle's category on the Incumbent Protection Act.

And just to clarify:  I don't carry "ads" as such on this site.  But I can whip up a sidebar box with a picture, a link and a short message in a few minutes.  Not that it will reach very many readers, but then, it's that "army of Davids" thing.

SayUncle and Appalachian Gun Trash reminds us that it’s time.

Today is the beginning of the 60 day “grace” period of the McCain-Feingold bill that makes it illegal for any organization to do a TV or radio spot about a candidate for Federal office.

Which leads me to announce the new component at the top of the right sidebar.

As I said before, I can't vote for him because I don't live there.  But name recognition is everything, so I'll do my small part to help him get some.

District 22 is Tom Delay's old district.  Texas law stipulates that he must live in his district on election day to be eligible for the position.  He obviously is not going to be living there on election day, so his Democrat opposition has used this as an excuse to force him to remain on the ballot.  Some goofball court upheld their twisted interpretation of this state law.  If he wins the vote anyway, he will be disqualified because he isn't living there.  The Democrat candidate wins by default, even if he doesn't get a majority vote.

There is another option for voters in District 22 who find this distasteful.  Bob Smither, Libertarian.  Mr. Smither's blog is at Bob's Campaign.  In addition to the sidebar ad, his blog will be in my main blogroll at least until election day.

The sidebar ad will also remain there through election day.

Can you really blame them for censoring this?

I mean, really.

A commenter sent me this link which led me to this from the International Freedom of Expression eXchange

Reporters Without Borders is concerned about the decision of the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) to block access to twelve websites that posted the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, which appeared in the Danish daily "Jyllands-Posten".

The PTA, on 28 February 2006, ordered Internet Service Providers to block the website http://www.blogspot.com (or http://www.blogger.com), taking down thousands of weblogs hosted by this tool. "We believe that the decision to ban a website should only ever be taken by a judge, at the end of a fair trial. It is moreover unacceptable that the order to block a site should go through the PTA, which while apparently aiming to shut down one blog, hosted by blogger.com, led to the filtering of all websites sharing the same domain name," said the organisation.

So I must admit my earlier assumption was wrong.  Google/Blogger are apparently not cutting off their users in Pakistan--it is actually the Pakistan ISP.Go to Help-Pakistan.com for more information and a way to show your support.


Technorati Tags: Blogger, Pakistan, censorship

From BBC NEWS:

Instructions were issued to internet service providers across Pakistan on 27 February to block about a dozen websites of various origins.

The ban comes amid protests in several Muslim countries against the cartoons, first published in Denmark last year.

Islamic tradition prohibits depictions of the Prophet.

Bloggers in Pakistan first became aware of the ban on 28 February when they were unable to access a popular blog hosting site, Blogspot.

One of the blocked sites is hosted on Blogspot, which led to the blocking of all web journals hosted on the site.

The Pakistan bloggers found their blogs blocked, even though their blogs are not connected with the cartoons.

And apparently, according to one's internet provider, this has also spilled over into India.  So Google cuts them off from Blogspot, even when they haven't broken the rules.

Recently another eponym user contacted me to ask for help with configuring his blog.  He is in India.  He said he had quit using Blogger/Blogspot because it had been blocked.  I can still access his old blog, however.  It seems that many blogs are  being blocked in India!  (Or, as NPR likes to call it:  India-the-world's-largest-democracy).  He said he had been hearing that many Blogger/Blogspot blogs had recently become inaccessible in both India and Pakistan.

Curious.

Technorati Tags: Blogspot, India, censorship