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The Internet and other channels of free speech, including talk radio, newsletters and this newspaper, are cherished incarnations of American society. Despite the heartfelt reflections we all have in reaction to the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City let us not toss away our constitutional freedoms just to protect us from criminals who are already being prosecuted under the laws of the United States.
The 1st Amendment may have enabled the plotters of the Oklahoma City tragedy to spread propaganda and build a following. However, mere speech should not ever be prosecuted, or even implied as, a mitigating factor in the commission of a crime like what happened in Oklahoma City. Even the dissemination of bomb-making instructions, which has been popularized in some other media, is an obscure corner of literature in cyberspace which deserves the same protection as the militant socialist bookstore just a few blocks from this office.
Cyberspace Today does not condone or in any way support the hateful speech promulgated by certain Internet writers or talk show hosts. We are decidedly in the middle of this debate. The only thing that we care about is the support of the United States Constitution and rule of law in their present forms.
Those people in Congress who wish to piggyback hate speech provisions on the Internet to measures that move to ban obscene speech are plain wrong. An examination of the impact of banning any kind of speech from the cyberspace reveals that these new laws can be used to ban all kinds of offensive speech, as deemed by the Government.
We are especially disappointed in Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) taking a leadership position that "something" must be done to regulate the content of the Internet.
Don't allow your elected representatives to restrict your ability to say what you feel, even if it's offensive to your neighbor. Allow the Internet to be an intelligent way to discuss these issues, not a way to be prosecuted and imprisoned by a overly protective government.
Vernon Keenan, Publisher