Democratic congresswoman shot in Arizona.

[Mr Khan]

badgenome said:

richardhutnik said:

I want you to observe how you responded to what I wrote.  I brought up one point, on extreme paranoia being observed, where you had one political candidate who supposed tried to play to a crowd that believes that the end is real near and we are going to flip into a politice state.  This is a worthy discussion, where it would be appropriate to address what I wrote and show that Angle was right in that we may be real close to needing to do second amendment remedies.  However, your response was one that is becoming increasingly common, and STRONGLY popping up here.  It became a chance to fire some salvos back.  It is defending by attacking and saying the other side stinks just as bad.  My post did NOT go into civility, and wasn't looking at that, but you changed it to civility.  I will say this type of partisan mentalty is too common, and won't enable an establishing of some base rules of civility.

Again, I didn't bring up civility, I brought up a perception in a number of circles that have people actually believing Obama is going to shut down the Internet any day now, and the turning of Net Neutrality into a power grab by the government to control the Internet.  All I can say is if, all this is true, individuals need to come out and show it, or shut up about it.

There is no scoreboard here, and no winner in this discussion.  Scoring imaginary points and winning an argument here won't make an inch of difference for anyone.  And I know it won't help me get a job.

Well, it was rather hard to tell whether you were talking about overheated rhetoric or paranoia. To be honest, it's often hard for me to suss out exactly what you're talking about. But either way, both were on full display during the Bush years. If it's so unnerving to you that people suspect there are communists in the government (which there may or may not be, now that Van Jones and Anita Dunn are gone), were you equally unnerved when so many on the left constantly insinuated that the Bush administration was comprised of Israel-firsters who would declare war on the entire Middle East for Greater Israel or some such nonsense? Maybe it's just the examples you use, but your concern only seems to flow in one direction.

Sharron Angle said the exact opposite of that, actually: that she hoped we weren't coming to the point where second amendment remedies would be necessary. You can interpret that as her suggesting that they are, in fact, necessary if you're so inclined - and you are, of course - but she said what she said.

Keeping in mind the fact that the FRC was formed to regulate radio frequencies and how the FCC went far beyond that original mandate to become a content-regulating body, I don't think it's so out there to assume the same can happen with the internet. Or that the temptation will be there, at least; regulatory creep is inevitable from regulatory creeps. Even a net neutrality supporter should find it worrisome that the FCC ignored the courts' repeated warnings that the internet is none of their business and decided to push ahead with this on a 3-2 vote strictly along party lines. It's like the Department of Agriculture deciding that you really need to mow your lawn and forcing you to do so.

Content control of cable networks is at least possible. Content control of the internet? Significantly less so. As we've seen even when there have been crackdowns on X or Y (like when the Mangakas and Japanese Publishers lashed out at the Scanlation websites), you can always retreat to the IRCs. Major content control of the internet would be a futile effort in any possible endeavor