Aren’t Republicans Supposed to Be for Less Government Intrusion?

Well, someone better tell John Cornyn, of Texas, because he never got the memo. Perhaps all Republicans from Texas are guilty of not reading the ‘Rules of the GOP’. No, I guess Ron Paul knows, however, he seems alone.

There is a senate bill sponsored by Cornyn, and it is apparently so repulsive to anyone of cogent thought that there are no co-sponsors,

from govtrack.us

This version: Introduced in Senate. This is the original text of the bill as it was written by its sponsor and submitted to the Senate for consideration. This is the latest version of the bill available on this website.

S 436 IS

111th CONGRESS

1st Session

S. 436

To amend title 18, United States Code, to protect youth from exploitation by adults using the Internet, and for other purposes.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

February 13, 2009

Mr. CORNYN introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

A BILL

To amend title 18, United States Code, to protect youth from exploitation by adults using the Internet, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ‘Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act of 2009’ or the ‘SAFETY Act’.

SEC. 2. FINANCIAL FACILITATION OF ACCESS TO CHILD PORNOGRAPHY.

(a) Offense- Chapter 95 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:

‘Sec. 1960A. Financial facilitation of access to child pornography

‘Whoever knowingly conducts, or attempts or conspires to conduct, a financial transaction (as defined in section 1956(c)) in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowing that such transaction will facilitate access to, or the possession of, child pornography (as defined in section 2256) shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.’.

(b) Clerical Amendment- The table of sections at the beginning of chapter 95 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new item:

‘1960A. Financial facilitation of access to child pornography.’.

I will leave off there, you can see the bill, in its entirety here.

Once again, a bozo introduces a bill of little use to any sane person, but because it is cloaked in the idea that it will ‘protect the children’ we are supposed to never raise a voice of reason, for doing so would be like saying we, in opposing, are most certainly child pornographers.

from Tech Dirt

Similar ideas have been proposed before, but new bills have been proposed in both the House and the Senate that require anyone offering internet connectivity to retain log files for two years. There’s no good reason for this, of course. It’s been shown that such data retention laws actually make it more difficult to track down the information you need while being expensive. But, of course, the politicians are claiming this is “to protect the children.” Of course. They even have come up with a silly acronym so that the title of the bill (Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act) spells out “Internet SAFETY Act.” Of course, that’s a load of crap, because this bill has little to do with protecting children, and won’t do much, if anything to actually protect children.

It will, however, be a huge nuisance for just about everyone. That’s because the bill, as written, doesn’t just apply to big ISPs, but to anyone providing internet access — meaning all of you with your home routers fall under this law and will need to keep log files for two years or, you know, be accused of helping child predators. I can’t wait until prosecutors are looking to charge someone with something — and since they have no actual evidence on whatever it is they’re looking for, they’ll make use of such a law to prosecute. For the children. Of course.

The site has a little voting booth along the side of the article, and right now the vote is 98% against, and 2% for (the fors are obviously Republicans from Texas).

This is an example of the garbage that needs to be purged from Congress, as it takes up far too much of the small amount of time the Congress persons are actually in session. If more of the public would simply pay attention, they could then vote intelligently each time, and we would eventually have most of the idiocy removed. All it would take is a small piece of paper on the refrigerator, with a tally of each good and bad vote the person’s representatives have made each session. If the good outweighs the bad, that is a step in allowing the person to vote for the representative again. If the bad is greater…time for someone new.

Since most have too much going on in their everyday lives to keep a mental tally, the refrigerator paper method would work well.

§