Interesting Weirdness in Strange Places

Recently I have been spending a bit of time on Blogshares, amassing a fantasy fortune by "trading" in the "blog market"...I'm sure many of you are aware of the game, but you may not be aware that there are lots of opportunities on Blogshares to buy links with the virtual blogdollars ("B$"), or to get people to comment on your site, or write a review of your site on their site, or design your site, or...well, you name it, you can probably find somebody on Blogshares who will take some amount of B$ to do it.

They even have a section of the game called "missions", where you can post a "mission" for other participants to perform, and in return they will receive some reward. Today I found Mission #334, "Fight For Your Constitution"--Those of you who know me know that this was like a magnet to me, so I read it to see what I could do to help. Here are the first two paragraphs of this plea for help--

This mission is unlike any mission ever before posted on blogshares. This is a call to US citizens for help. The first amendment of the united states constitution has, as of today, been deteriorated. They have taken certain peoples constitutional rights away and I am one of those people.

I ask that everyone read my entry on this matter, and stand up and do the right thing. I ask all of you to make a blog entry about this violation of our rights. It is not fair and I hate to have to sit back and watch the fall of america because not enough people care. So I refuse to just sit back and I ask for your help.

Touching, right? The non-capitalization of the proper nouns made me think that this might even be a very young person who was taking up for their rights. So I looked up the offending US Code section cited in the post in order to see what, specifically, was offensive to the First Amendment about it. It's 18 US Code sec. 2257, "Record Keeping Requirements."

"What is the heinous effect of this statute?" you might ask. What chilling effect does it perpetrate on our First Amendment right to free speech? It requires pornographers to ascertain their "performers'" dates of birth and names. In other words, you can't hire "Daisy Mae Lapdance," who "looks 18, anyway, Judge" without finding out that she's really Susie Smith, age 15.

So, according to this moonbat, the First Amendment protects his right to hire people without knowing their actual name or age or keeping any record of it, in order that they can plead ignorance when charged with the production of child pornography. I hope all of you with Blogshares accounts will go to this "mission" on the site and tell this clown exactly how much we think the right to make and disseminate kiddie porn ought to be protected by the First Amendment.