Blogging for Max

It appears that Athens Congressman John Barrow is not fully content with using minimum wage legislation as an election year issue, but now he has his sights on the internet and sites like MySpace and Facebook. Apparently, Barrow is under the belief that limiting the freedom of individuals to look at even appropriate content is a good thing.

H.R. 5319, which passed the House in July and will possibly be introduced on the Senate floor as early as this week, amends the Communications Act of 1934 to require all Federally Funded schools and libraries to “protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms.” In other words, this measure would force these public institutions to prevent people from looking at a number of appropriate and relatively harmless websites, further decreasing the public freedom of access to websites of their choice.

Few will argue that certain sites with pornography, explicit violence, and other radically inappropriate things have little place in a public facility, but attacking Facebook and MySpace is going too far, and is unconstitutional. Perhaps even in pre-secondary and secondary facilities, this may be an acceptable measure, but in adult public facilities, this is a drastic reduction on individual rights.

Worse than the bill itself though, is the notion that Barrow is once again using a piece of as a mid-term item to sway a few swing votes at the cost of the 12th District rather than approaching it with the unbiased, representative initiative that people expect of a Congressman.

From a Saturday Augusta Chronicle story:

In July, the U.S. House passed the Deleting Online Predators Act. The bill would require public libraries and schools receiving federal funds that pay for Internet access to block social networking Web sites. The Senate could take up the legislation this month.

Supporters say the bill will protect children from predators who use the online sites to lure victims.

Critics argue that the legislation would be ineffective and is driven by election-year politics.

U.S. Rep. John Barrow, D-Ga., who represents Augusta, voted for it.

“Schools and libraries are important points of access for kids in getting to the Internet, and we want to encourage that for educational purposes,” Mr. Barrow said. “But we want to make sure that sexual perverts aren’t using that as a way of getting at our kids.

“This strikes the right balance between allowing schools and libraries to provide access to the Internet so that kids learn while at the same time keeping them from falling under the spell of some sexual predator somewhere.”

Sexual predator? These are community sites that allow people access to personal communication and BOTH strictly forbid explicit material. Barrow is attempting to make a river out of a campaign drought, and his constituency will end up drowning unless we stop him first.

Should Barrow have his way, it would be up to legislators to decide what we can and cannot view online. Is that really the kind of representative the people of Southeast Georgia really want… or deserve?

Use your freedom of speech to help stop John Barrow before he legislates that away too!