"Good luck" indeed.

I really think that the right likes the idea of limiting freedom of speech just because the left tends to be against it. It's the tough thing to do; we have to make sacrifices. Or at least the people with objectionable things to say have to make sacrifices. You can see it in right wing rhetoric, some of them almost seem to yearn for another 9/11. "All of this discussion would be moot if we had another 9/11", Neil Cavuto says.

The dynamic is very similar to the Cold War--liberals have the most to fear from the successes of the enemy, because those successes cause people to turn against the policies of liberals. If you like civil liberties, you really want to find a way to prevent another 9/11. If you want to limit civil liberties, you are torn between wanting to fight the terrorists and thinking that if they had continued successes then things might not turn out so bad.

Psiphon: http://psiphon.civisec.org/PsiphonAug232006.html

I don't know who said this, but it holds true:

"we're so fucked up that common sense seems like a good idea"

doesn't what he says in his special comments sound like common sense to you?

Maybe Lewis Black said that?

It is frightening to imagine this guy to be president, take a look at his website. But the american people are probably fed up bo this kind of politics after the last years.

"All of this discussion would be moot if we had another 9/11"

That sums it up quite nicely. If there was another 9/11 the neocons could do what they did post 9/11... tell everyone to shut up and just let them do it their way.

Let's not discuss it, let's not make sure that peoples rights are protected, let's just steam roll them with fear and turn America into just a little bit more of a police state

I want them to keep doing this, and drive the Republicans back to the fringes where they belong. They are their own worst enemy's. And if you're stupid enough to vote for these fuckers, don't worry, sooner or later they'll get around to taking away something that you hold valuable too...

Man I hate these fuckers

Astounding that the free speech battle is reversed in America from the way it plays out elsewhere. In the other developed nations, it is the liberals who seek to snuff out the right to free expression by calling any opinions contrary to their own "hate crimes."

Ain't life mystifyin'.

"Man I hate these fuckers"

Likewise, I hate Christofascists......

(Use the term, learn to love it - it may save our country from the GOP some day)

You're right: it was Lewis Black who said that.

This is quite the coincidence in my books. I just finished an essay on the humanity and economics of sweatshops, using the words of Denis Arnold and Alan Gerwith:

Gerwith: Since the agent [or person] regards as necessary goods the freedom and well-being that constitute the generic features of his successful actions, he logically must hold that he has rights to these generic features and he implicitly makes a corresponding rights claim.

...

Arnold: because all other persons share these qualities, they must - as a matter of rational consistency - ascribe these rights to all other beings. To deny that persons have the rights to freedom and well-being is to deny that one is a purposive being. Since the denial is a purposive act, it contradicts the proposition being asserted.

Then again, no one would leave it to the likes of Gingrich to even understand the language being used by these philosophers.

With his high-profile access, I wish that Olbermann would directly confront the people he revels dressing-down on a first-name basis, instead of doing it vicariously through us --as if there's any question that he's nothing less than an ideologue himself. Every last word dribbling from his mouth is such a pearl and he won't quit until you know it. Yet, to me, every listen to Olbermann is like being pulled by a rope through an endless sewer pipe of expedient arguments and cheap omissions.

And the beat goes on.

On the other hand, Olbermann is a perfect study of a bigger problem. In the current political climate of America, there's very few winners, except elite big mouths on either side of the spectrum. The discourse is slash and burn with no sign of letting up (you've really got to pity the civilian, who has zero advocacy right now). I see Olbermann as the archetypal bright but bitter child reacting to hypocritical parents but that's about as far as it goes.

One can make great music during a period like the Vietnam war but paradoxically that kind of identity risks running dry without a nemesis driving it. In such case, Nixon, George Bush, Joseph McCarthy are actually your best friends providing you with excellent media notoriety and a smorgasbord of Capitalistic opportunity. Likewise, Olbermann's bookish fury has a veneer of holy purging but it's got a narcissistic core.

True, Olbermann would never have made this commentary on the heels of another 911. People may think that's a trope from right wing radio but it also happens to be right-on. He's avoiding the unparalleled complexity of the issue and, once again, favors wrapping it in the exquisite seal of his self-involved romantic obsession with the memory of Edward R. Murrow.

"the problem with common sense is that it is not very common"

I believe it was Mark Twain

Homeland Security Toilets

Pants on Fire Leads to Further Travel Restrictions

"it is the liberals who seek to snuff out the right to free expression by calling any opinions contrary to their own "hate crimes.""

Funny that, every time I point out war crimes committed by Israel, I get accused of "hate crimes" by the right.

Ain't life mystifyin'.