Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Once Again, China Leads the Way on Freedom - This time, the Press

Previously, I posted here about China's methods of prosecuting people accused of crimes, and how their methods must be the envy of prosecutors everywhere for their efficiency and brutal effectiveness.

Now, I see that China has come up with a plan that would put that pesky NY Times, and other pro-Al Qaeda rags out of business once and for all - a new subversion law aimed at all news outlets, even foreign ones.

In light of recent incidents in which the Times and others have had the audacity to report on unconstitutional behavior of our political leadership, many conservative commentators have recommended that these newspaper editors be tried for treason for reporting this information. Obviously, this stuff is far more important than a top political advisor to the president leaking the name of a covert CIA agent who was working to stem the international trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction (not like we fought a war on that issue or anything), at the behest of the president and vice president. And, raising a defense that the government has already talked about doing this exact stuff (which they trumpeted up the highest walls in the aftermath of 9/11 that they were going to do this), would not defend the press.

The fact is, this press is just too damn inconvenient for a war, and damned if we weren't so happy back in WWII when we our freedoms were severely restricted and those pesky Japanese were stuck in internment camps, where they all belonged anyways. So, harkening back to the good old days, conservatives have seized upon the latest reports of the press to try to get them imprisoned, or, maybe even executed (Treason is punishable by death in a time of war, and even though we aren't actually in a time of war, Conservatives commentators say it often enough, and conservative voters vote that way often enough, that perhaps a jury of the Time's peers, picked at random in some prosecution-friendly county like Selma, Alabama, or maybe Sugarland, Texas - home to Tom Delay, would look past those silly technical rules and find we're at war and vote for death). I'm quite sure that Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Antonin Scalia will give them a fair shake when the case hits the Supreme Court. Who knows, maybe that traitor John Paul Stevens will be gone by then, and we can have Robert Bork on the bench then as the 5th vote to repeal the law of gravity as being in conflict with the Bible?

But, I digress, for, China has worked it all out. Just make a vague law that says you can't hurt the country in any way, and then start putting people in jail and letting them enjoy the intricacies of the Criminal Justice System, China-style.

This must have William Bennett literaly frothing at the mouth in anticipation. I can see William Kristol and Karl Rove canvassing right now with Hu Jintao asking him for advice on how exactly they should word the law in order to get it past a compliant Congress.

Yes, it's nice to have allies in our war on terror who have similar respect for our values like we have. GO CHINA!!!!

Sometimes I wonder if the Chinese government has a huge sense of irony and does this stuff only to so that they can show common cause between the authoritarian left there and the authoritarian right in our country. Boy, are they funny or what?