Even for Boston Herald, a bill being pushed by Massachusetts' junior Democrat Senator, the "Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014", goes way over the top:
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey wants to empower an obscure federal agency to begin scouring the Internet, TV and radio for speech it finds threatening — a plan met with jeers from defenders of the First Amendment.
“This proposed legislation is worse than merely silly. It is dangerous,” civil liberties lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate said. “It is not up to Sen. Markey, nor to the federal government, to define for a free people what speech is, and is not, acceptable.”
Why Markey finds speech threatening during an age in which instructions for making bombs are only a few clicks away is unclear. One thing, however, seems abundantly clear: the proper place for loons is on a lake - not in Congress.
