Senator (and presumptive Republican Presidential nominee in 2008) John McCain is wasting no time in getting started with the necessary pandering. According to cnet.com, McCain has proposed legislation that would require “[m]illions of commercial Web sites and personal blogs … to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000.”

That word “illegal” is associated with child pornography and “obscenity” in McCain’s bill, but in theory at least it could hold poor dear La Cieca (or any of millions of other bloggers) responsible for a link inserted by one of her commenters. Not that any of her cher public link to kiddie porn, but we all know that “obscenity” is a notoriously slippery thing to define. Bloggers like La Cieca (or, especially more popular and widely-read bloggers) do not have the resources to monitor and track every blog comment.

Under the provisions of McCain’s legislation, a blogger could be fined if he failed to report, say, an “obscene” image included in a commenter’s profile page. Fear of liability could lead many bloggers to restrict or eliminate altogether the “community” elements of their blogs.

In short: John McCain hates La Cieca. That’s reason enough to vote Obama/Clinton in ’08.

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