Jim "Blue Book" Exon: RIH!

So former Senator James Exon, the architect of the Communications Decency Act, has finally shuffled off this moral coil at age 83.

Good! He died after his masterpiece did!

This is the man who took the most salacious images possible, threw them into a blue binder, and then showed this dreaded "blue book" to every member of the Senate and told them that if they didn't support his bill, then they were supporting letting children see hardcore porn. That's how the CDA got passed in the Senate, and he used his power as chairman of the consolidation committee to make sure his law got inserted into the final joint Telecom law that Bubba Clinton signed in 1996.

Prior to 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act, this was THE most tyrannical piece of legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the courts wasted no time in putting a stop to his project! If this law was allowed to stand as it was written, then a lot of people would have been convicted of it, myself included. And we're not talking about the adult websites either! Anyone talking about the Ken Starr Report online would have been sent to prison. In fact Matt Drudge himself would have been convicted by this law, because he was the one that broke the Monica Lewinsky story from his website. Anyone wanting to talk about serious sexual issues would have been convicted. Anyone chatting in a chat room or sending email would have been convicted. Anyone in a newsgroup that uses language that wasn't super-santizied would have been convicted.

This man threatened the freedom of MILLIONS, and all to satisfy his ego-centered moralism! That goes to the heart of evil!

So now he's dead, just like the bulk of his project. And if there is any justice in this universe, then he is rotting away in hell where he belongs and where all of his supporters and allies who conspired to destroy the First Amendment will someday be going to as well.

(RIH: Rot In Hell!)