North Winds: Governments are behind the blogging times
The Dallas Times, Opinion
As an excellent companion piece to Alia's alert of San Francisco's planned assault on blogging via "registration", comes this Dallas Times editorial yesterday.
Front and center as the blog world's representative is none other than Ed Morrissey, more affectionately known as Capt. Ed on Captain's Quarters.
In the Canadian capital, a government commission is hearing testimony in a political payola scandal involving the ruling Liberal Party of Prime Minister Paul Martin. Canadian media have been able to report very little because of the investigating judge's publication ban prior to jury empanelment.
No slouch with contacts, Cap't Ed has an inside source, feeding him updates on the hearings' progress. And of course, being dedicated to the spread of information, Ed's blogs on the hearings has attracted far too many curious Canucks, hungry for information denied to them by their own press.
This is making the Canadian government very uncomfortable,and looking for ways to clamp down the the information feed.
On the horizon is the possibility that the Canadian gov't will prosecute Cap't Ed under Canadian law, and request the US courts enforce their rulings. In addition, they will be citing any Canadian blogger with hyperlinks to Capt's Quarters.
Whether or not the possible assault on Ed's commentary is successful, Cap't Ed could stand to be hit with astronomical defense costs just battling this nonsense. Yet the well known blogger remains undaunted, joking about postponing a family vacation to Canada on Captain's Quarters site in a post on Tuesday, April 5th.
Perhaps Ed's best encapsulization of the whole debacle lies in his sage statement:
In order for a citizenry to remain at liberty, they have to know what their government is doing, and the press needs to report it without fear of government reprisal. The notion that Brault's rights had to be protected over the rights of all Canadian citizens is not only ludicrous but a false choice at its heart.
You GO Ed!
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