Alien and Sedition Acts

As many of you know, John Adams is a hero of mine, for many reasons, but he made some mistakes (looking at them in hindsight) too. The Alien and Sedition Acts, the largest of them. While they expired in 1800, Farnsworth looks at the modern day equivalent:

...

Okay, fast-forward to today's case in point: Laura Berg, an employee of the US Veterans Administration -- a nurse, in fact -- in New Mexico, who had the fucking nerve, the pure unmitigated gall, to write a letter to the editor of a small weekly newspaper, a letter that was critical of the Bush Maladminstration...

Yeah, I know, what a subversive. But it gets worse.

Storm troopers from the VA Gestapo (whatever they call their Internal Affairs Division over there) showed up at her desk, impounded her computer and accused her of "sedition". Jesus, sedition? Who even talks like that any more? And maybe somebody ought to set up a fund to buy a goddamn dictionary for these assholes, so they can see the fucking difference between "forcefully" and "forcibly".

...

Real good, but the thing that makes me sit up and think is this graf:

...

So let's go back to the Alien and Sedition Acts. That last one, Number 4, it's the Big Kahuna, and that's exactly the one that we have to worry about the most. Every one of us out here in Left Blogistan is potentially at risk of violating that one. We're fortunate that the act expired with the end of Adams' term -- otherwise the BFEE would not be above dusting it off, dressing it up and trotting it out, to apply it wholesale to those of us who are acting forcefully to remove an administration filled with vicious deceit.

...

To the free speech Gestapo: Bring it on, bitches. You know where to find me.