SEN. DURBIN SUPPORTS “MEDIA SHIELD LAW” BUT NOT SURE IF BLOGGERS “ENTITLED TO CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION”, WHY BLOGGERS ARE THE NEW THOMAS PAINE OF AMERICA

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., appearing on Fox News Sunday made remarks that made number one radio host Rush Limbaugh notice. Durbin said on the show there’s no rush to call for special counsel to investigate the recent Obama/Holder monitoring and snooping of journalists at Associated Press and Fox News.

The not-so-excited-to-investigate and not-yet-ready-to-investigate Senator Durbin is instead calling for alternative action that he calls “media shield law” . But Durbin was not sure if the media shield law would protect bloggers and “someone who is tweeting“. Durbin argues, “ What is a journalist today in 2013? We know it’s someone who works for Fox or AP, but does it include a blogger? Does it include someone who is tweeting? Are these people journalists and entitled to constitutional protection? We need to ask 21st century questions about a provision that was written over 200 years ago.”

However, Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday during his show interprets Durbin’s remarks as Democrats plan to license journalists. Limbaugh said,” You see what they want do folks? That’s right, they want to set up licensing of journalists. That’s where the Democrats are headed on this. “You tweeters, you bloggers, you are not journalists. We are going to determine who is a journalist and who is not. We are going to license journalists. ..that Constitution’s 200-plus years old. It’s no longer relevant.” That’s what it means.”

Rush made it a good point that if government “will decide who is a journalist and who is not and grant licenses and approvals. And if you don’t get your license and you start doing journalism, you could be sent to jail or you could be reprimanded.”

Remember America that it was a non-journalist Thomas Paine and his 48-page pamphlet Common Sense that stirred up the 1776 American Revolution. Common Sense is still believed today to be the “most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era.” Paine avoided the journalistic style of writing at that time that used Latin and other complex phrases to impress the upper echelon but kept the lowly ignorant. Paine broke the mold by writing Common Sense using man’s everyday language. It was read at public gatherings where common folks gather. In proportion to the colonies 2.5 million population at that time, Common Sense had the largest sale and circulation of any published book in American history.

Dick Durbin is acting like an elitist British lord looking down his Democrat nose to ordinary people like Thomas Paine and the bloggers and tweeters of today in order to protect the royal highness of the Obama administration. If the American government won’t allow the Thomas Paine people of today to express their views against or for the government, that kind of insecurity is dangerous because from that insecurity is lurking behind a need for tyranny. With tyranny, there’s no liberty. America needs more Thomas Paine in order to stop any tyranny.