Now that the cost of higher education is falling and endowments are growing, universities will have lots of money to spend on music taxes!

Alternatively, they could just give every student a free copy of PeerGuardian.

And don't forget the V-chip, which allows parents to disable certain TV channels. It's in all new TVs and unused in nearly all of them.

The 90s were a very different era, and the culture war/political correctness issues that dominated the decade look painfully idiotic in retrospect.

I am pretty confident that Holder has many higher priorities than regulating speech on the internet, but someone definitely needs to ask him.

neither major party is committed in principle to individual freedom, including freedom of expression.

when Janet Reno was AG under Clinton, she warned the TV networks to clean up their shows, or the government would do it for them

OK, but I didn't see the Clinton FCC start any actual prosecutions of the TV networks, or hand down any million-dollar fines, like Bush's FCC did.

I agree that neither party is totally committed to freedom of expression. Neither party is committed to any absolutist principle, because parties are inherently compromises. That's why we have the ACLU (and the EFF and...)

But in practice, if you compare the Democrats and Republicans' ACLU scorecards, it's very clear that the Democrats are generally better for freedom of expression.

In a democracy, practical voting matters more than principle; you're the one making the error.

A professional should not react that way, slaughter or not.

So considering our government, media, military, and legal community's embarrassing kneejerk response to 9/11: Bush is OUR HERO! Muslims are scary! They could attack any minute! We must invade Iraq!...

There must not be a single professional in the US, except for dentists.

I think your definition is too restrictive. You're looking for the true Scotsman, and you're not going to find him.

Because Obama seems to understand the issue and is designating responsibility to qualified professionals--

Not to a 75 year old, internet illiterate convicted felon like Ted "Tubes" Stevens?

It was hard to escape the conclusion that Crichton was a guy who would believe literally anything anyone told him...I was somewhat surprised to see him arguing in favor of more objective thinking in the global-warming debate

Have you considered that, well before the time Crichton wrote State of Fear, climate change denialism had become the woo-woo position?

For whatever reason, climate change denialists got to him first, and made him feel cleverer and more imaginative than everyone else for listening to them. What if climate change is a conspiracy of poor environmental interests? Well, what if a powerful woman sexually harassed a man?

Could have been much worse-- could have been 9/11 truthers.