OF THE
TIMES
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."Whoa boy. I don't want to imply that there has been the wholesale disregard on the part of our current government when it comes to upholding hold this amendment, but, at least when it comes to the part about "freedom of speech", things are beginning to look a bit murky. And, today, with many popular websites undergoing a "blackout" in protest of the proposed Stop Online Piracy (SOPA) legislation, I thought I would offer my own thoughts on the matter.
"Going dark is a radical step for an online-only news organization, and it is one that Raw Story's management doesn't take lightly. It wasn't easy to tell our reporters and editors to take time off tomorrow and pretend that the news isn't happening. But we'd rather tell them to take tomorrow easy and come back twice as strong on Thursday than have to tell them later that the government pulled the plug on our whole organization because of SOPA/PIPA..." - Roxanne Cooper, Raw Story publisher