Samuel Alito: Welcome to the Nanny State

In confirmation testimony today, Judge Alito weighed in on Internet porn:

Saying the courts and Congress have been struggling with the issue, Supreme Court Justice nominee Samuel Alito told a Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing Tuesday that the government needs to do more to square existing law with the communications technology that has allowed for the distribution of pornographic material.

"...in the First Amendment context, when the means of communications change, the job of applying the principles that have been worked out, and I think in this area worked out with a great deal of effort, over a period of time in the pre-Internet world to the world of the Internet is a real difficult problem.

While specifically addressing the availability of Internet porn to minors --if I'm reading his full statement on the subject correctly-- what Alito is essentially saying is that the framers couldn't have envisioned the burgeoning Internet porn business made possible by today's technology. And that new technologies might pose some "difficulty" in applying the First Amendment as written by the framers.

Read the rest of Alito's testimony on the subject. And bid a warm welcome to the Nanny State.

Also, I wonder how the NRA folks would react if this same standard was applied to the Second Amendment. Actually, I don't.

Comments

[nightshift66]

I knew this guy was a bootlicker, but this... it is to weep. I am a person who's for ALL the Bill of Rights being read as expansively as possible, and the notion that a change in technology can require in a change in principles is asinine. And depressingly, he's going to be confirmed. Well, it was a free country for MOST of my life.

[slickdpdx]

I'm not a big fan of obscenity laws (but I like zoning restrictions!). For goodness sake, prevail on your legislators not to pass these laws, he'll respect that.

Bootlicker? That's a little much too. Obscenity enforcement goes on right now (child porn anyone?) I think you overstate the impact of restriction in this area on Liberty with a capital L, as opposed to libertinism.