It's not just G*ogle

Readers here will be aware that I oppose all political censorship. And putting people in jail for holocaust denial seems a particularly egregious case of political censorship to me. Quite aside from any principles involved, it seems to me that political censorship is just plain dangerous. Once you allow it, you never know where it will end up.

And net censorship is well advanced. G*ogle is now well-known for it (there is another example of their evil ways here) but one can argue that as long as they are not breaking any law, a private company can do as it likes. Seeing that there are already myriads of regulations that businesses have to obey in order to protect the public, however, another law to protect the public from information censorship by semi-monopolists like Google might not be such a bad idea.

One hopes, however, that the market will solve the problem without the need for government intervention. The evil practices of G*ogle may simply create a market for another more comprehensive search facility. So far, however, it does not seem to be happening. There seem to be certain sites or sections of sites which are off limits to ALL search engines.

And -- you guessed it -- sites that engage in holocaust denial seem to be an example of that. I tried to find this article using MSN search, G*ogle and Clusty.com -- the three engines that usually give me the best results. No luck -- even though the site concerned is quite a prominent far-Right site and even though the article has been up for a month -- plenty of time for the search crawlers to find it.

Since this seems to have come about voluntarily, imagine what might happen to anything but the tamest conservative sites if a future Democrat incumbent in the White House saw fit to exert a little gentle "pressure" on the search companies. A threat of prosecution for promoting "hate speech" should do the trick.




Wicked Coins!

How the freedom OF religion mandated in the First Amendment got turned right around to become freedom FROM religion only a Leftist judge could explain -- but that's the USA of today. So we read of a school yearbook in Texas:

"The cover of the Keller ISD school's annual depicts the 2005 Liberty Nickel – complete with the face of Thomas Jefferson – but the words "In God We Trust" are missing. Instead, the $16 yearbook contains a sticker with the credo and directions on how to apply it to the cover if the owner chooses.

Source

Apparently, trusting in God is the establishing (State sponsorship) of a particular church!




Albino Correctness!

We read:

"The notion of Christ as a family man is not the only raw nerve "The Da Vinci Code" has touched. Albinos are bothered that one of their own has yet again been depicted as a villain.....

Among his co-stars is Paul Bettany, the British actor playing monk-assassin Silas, an albino with red eyes who carries out a series of bloody murders to secure the secret of the Holy Grail, a trove of lost Christian documents that could prove Jesus had wed."

Source

Must not mention "Crack"

I cracked up when I read this:

"Parents and at least one school board member said they believe an elementary school in Pennsylvania overreacted when it suspended 14 students earlier this month for mixing sugar and Kool-Aid crystals and calling it "Happy Crack.""

Source