Where bad law comes from

Apparently, if this post causes you substantial emotional distress, Congress wants to put me in prison.

Of course, that’s not how they characterize it.

Again, we have more proposed legislation to protect the children. Which begs the question why say this, “with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass or cause substantial emotional distress to a person” instead of  “with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass or cause substantial emotional distress directed at a minor child.” Is this hard? Almost as if they want to leave the door open to prosecute such comments directed at anyone.  And a note on the language that’s really troubling, there’s nothing that says that the bullying has to be targeted at a particular person. Under this, if you intend to cause substantial emotional distress to some group (say Scientologists, to pick a random group that would never ever abuse a bad law to intimidate its critics) you’re breaking the law.

I got into a semi-heated discussion with a friend on Facebook who thought I was trivializing the problem this legislation is supposed to address by saying, in my snarky fashion, that this was a blatant power-grab by Congress to attempt to give the government the power to throw a chilling blanket over the raging fail-fire that is the interwebs. Problem is, way too many people think that way and support legislation based only on its stated intent. This includes the asshats in Congress. Especially the asshats in Congress.

So my asshat today is Rep. Linda Sanchez, not because she wants to deal with cyberbulling, but because that by supporting legislation like this she is one of three things: 1) She’s too stupid to recognize the unfortunate implications of such poorly-worded law. 2) She’s too cynical to let any legislation that purports to help the children (regardless of actual content) pass by without her fingerprints all over it. 3) She is intentionally using a tragic event as a pretext to slip in a unconstitutional power-grab by the state.