Rhetoric On Anti-Myspace Bill Reaches New Levels

Okay, Mike Fitzpatrick. (That’s him, at right, helping UPS deliver some packages. No, really.) You almost had us fooled. You were a Republican congressman who seemed pretty levelheaded, without any sort of wild extreme right-wing positions. And you seemed pretty on the ball. But of course, now, you have to go and try to block access to Myspace — and other social networking sites — from being accessed in schools or libraries.

(The bill actually blocks access for people under 18, but the thinking is that schools and libraries will just block it. Schools are mostly under-18 anyway, and almost all libraries don’t have room for a separate over-18 section.)

The Democratic candidate for house, Patrick Murphy, has rightly denounced the legislation as re-effing-diculous, and an overreaction that would do nothing to solve the problem of child predators online:

“You don’t protect children by infringing on people’s constitutional rights,” Murphy said Thursday. “It’s shortsighted and wrong. It’s a political ploy from a typical politician.”

A ploy? Indeed. It’s a typical election year ploy: Fitzpatrick gets to introduces this bill; he happens to be coincidentally up against a war vet would could prove to be somewhat popular one, too. (He’s a good guy, it seems, so he won’t attack his service record.) And so, when Murphy denounces the legislation, Ol’ Fitzy can paint him as a lover of child molesters:

“Pat seems more interested in the constitutional rights of online predators than he is about protecting young children,” Fitzpatrick said. “He ought to be ashamed for opposing it.”

Using the newly created Mike Fitzpatrick Overstatement Machine™, we’d like to translate our response — “this bill is more of a political ploy to win votes than something that will protect children; also, guess who doesn’t have computers at home: the poor” — into a Mike Fitzpatrick overstatement:

“Mike Fitzpatrick ought to be ashamed at creating this bill that’s just a ploy for him to win votes come November. He seems more interested in staying in office than helping his constitutients. Also, he’s introducing the worst bill since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and he hates the Constitution.”

Look for more from the Mike Fitzpatrick Overstatement Generator™ any day now!

Heated exchange follows Fitzpatrick’s Myspace bill [Bucks County Courier Times]
Mike Fitzpatrick - Photos [House.gov]
Monday: U.S. Rep. Has No Friends On Myspace

Something Is Rotten In The State Of PennDOT

There was a meeting yesterday about the extension of Woodhaven Road, which is having a race against finding a use for the old Byberry Hospital for “project in the Far Northeast that will take longest to get done.”

Woodhaven Road (PA Route 63) was “completed” in 1966. (So it’s beating Byberry.) It connects I-95 and the Boulevard. Its western end is at a small two-lane road, Evans Street, which dumps everyone onto Byberry Road in Somerton. If you’ve ever driven on Byberry Road in that area at any time besides, oh, 3 a.m., you’ll know that it’s possibly the most congested road in the world.

And so there have been plans to extend Woodhaven Road to Bustleton Road, but naturally residents in the area have complaints, NIMBY, blah blah blah, you get the idea. They’ve come together in the Tri-County Coalition to fight it, and, like many community groups fighting the government, sometimes the rhetoric is a bit over-the-top:

“Clearly there is no honor in PennDOT,” Tri-County spokesman Jim O’Neill said.

Yes, clearly, there is no honor in this state agency with a faceless bureaucracy! There is no honor in retreat! We will not go down without a fight! Win this one for the gipper!

Extension opponents blast PennDOT [Bucks County Courier Times]
Woodhaven Road (PA-63) [PhillyRoads.com]