Coffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical. ~ Jonathan Swift

Right Wing News (John Hawkins) Mohammed And South Park — “If we don’t have the guts to post these cartoons here in the United States because we’re afraid of extremist Muslims, how can we ask moderate Muslims living in the midst of these radical Islamists to stand up to them on other issues?” [John also has two great quotes in this post on free speech. Read the whole thing. Jim]

Iowa Voice (Brian) This Is Why We Should Secure The Border First PT II — “You start talking amnesty or guest worker (same thing, as far as I’m concerned) and what do you get? A horde of people trying to get into the country so they can be a part of it.” [Ed Morrisey looks at the same story here. -- "Just as with the amnesty program that Simpson-Mazzoli gave us in 1986, the Senate's plan to track guest workers into American citizenship has had an effect on illegal immigration, but not the one the Senate intended. MS-NBC reports that border crossings have jumped in the past few days as people attempt to get into the country in time to take advantage of this latest flavor of amnesty."]

In the Bullpen (Chad Evans) Ahmadinejad Calls on West to Bow Before Iran — “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is at it again, this time saying the West “must bow down to the greatness of the Iranian nation.” I beg to differ on Ahmadinejad’s version of the word ‘greatness,’ but let us not let semantics get in the way of a good debate.”

Blogs for Bush (Mark Noonan) The Politics of Global Warming — “Global warming is just another object lesson in why the left must be purged from any sort of political power – they are just too irresponsible, too mean spirited and too wedded to a particular ideology to be rational enough to have a say in how we are governed.”

TMH’s Bacon Bits (DL) What’s Wrong with Illegal Immigration? — “By now there have been over a gazillion words written in reaction to, or support of, illegal immigration. Most of those in support of illegal immigration have conveniently chosen to ignore the most important word –“illegal.” They have focused upon what every red-blooded American respects, supports, and desires – “immigration,” and have deliberately written in a manner to confuse legal with illegal immigration in hopes that Americans will not notice their deception.”

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Ah! How sweet the coffee’s taste is,
Sweeter than a thousand kisses,
Milder than sweet muscatel.
Coffee, coffee, I must have it,
And if someone wants to treat me,
Ah, my cup with coffee fill! ~ Johann Sebastian Bach (Koffee Kantate)

Wizbang (Jay Tea) An open letter to non-Americans in this country — “With the recent wave of protests for changing our immigration laws, there has been a great deal of conflation of all aliens within the United States. That’s wrong — they are not a monolithic group. Of the literally millions of non-Americans in our country, here for numerous reasons, and to lump all of them together under one big label is sheer intellectual laziness.” [This is an great post that everyone should read. Jim]

Captain’s Quarters (Ed Morrissey) Tolerating Intolerance — “The Los Angeles Times reports on a movement to end so-called speech codes at public schools, universities, and in the workplace that infringe on unpopular speech, especially that which argues against multiculturalism.”

Real Clear Politics Blog (Tom Bevan) What Republicans Can Learn From Phil Mickelson — “There’s a lesson here for Republicans: execution matters. Right now, Republicans in Congress are compounding an already unfavorable election year atmosphere with a series of executional mistakes.”

Ankle Biting Pundits (bulldogpundit) Judge Elihu Smails “Buffoon Of The Week” Award Winner Named!!! — “This week’s winner of the prestigious award comes from the dunce-cap world of Hollywood actors who try to speak intelligently about politics and, as usual, end up making an a$$ of themselves.”

Michelle Malkin — For coverage of the make-breaking-the-law-legal rallies there’s no better source than Michelle’s Blog. Lots of photos, links, and more.

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I’ll have to look into this proposal from the FEC before I make up my mind, but on the surface it appears reasonable.

The Federal Election Commission proposed new rules Friday that would leave almost all Internet political activity unregulated. The proposal would, however, require paid advertisements for federal candidates on the Internet to be paid for with money regulated by federal campaign law.

In a summary of the proposal, the FEC said the rules “are intended to ensure that political committees properly finance and disclose their Internet communications, without impeding individual citizens from using the Internet to speak freely regarding candidates and elections.”

We’ll see.

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Cloaked in the nice-sounding phrase campaign reform is an assault on free speech — particularly political free speech. One of my first posts to get any attention was on this subject.

Is that post you just made, the one favorable to candidate Blah B. Blah that you hope will help get him elected, a thing of value? Did you file a report with the FEC? Should you have to? What’s at the bottom of this slope?

I know, that’s a lot of questions, but the main one is this, can the government regulate my speech, particularly my political speech?

This is an issue that could have a chilling effect on blogs and bloggers. From Red State today:

We’ve been working for a long time on HR 1606 – The Online Freedom of Speech Act. It will come up for a vote on the floor of the House TOMORROW [Thursday - 3/16/06 - ed] but as you read this – the campaign regulation community is hard at work – working the halls of Congress, lying about not only our bill – but “their” bill as well. And as far as their intentions go – well, I think it’s fair to say that when it comes to THEM bragging about protecting free speech – they are not to be trusted.

Read Krempasky’s post and then contact your congress critters. Please. Today.

Others:
Kim Priestap – Wizbang: “This bill should be important to all who blog and care about free speech.”
Glenn Reynolds – Instapundit: “THE ONLINE FREEDOM ACT IS UP FOR A VOTE, and it seems to me that supporting it is very important to the future of the blogosphere and alternative media generally.”

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