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I got a letter from a senator! Alright! Tech-savvy Tom Harkin, usually the most liberal senator from Iowa, emailed me in response to my participation in a letter-writing campaign against proposed increases to indecency fines that would casually threaten small radio stations with huge fines for broadcasting indecent material. What constitutes indecent material, you ask? Good question! We’d all like to know. I’m sure the Parents Television Council has some great ideas about what you should be able to hear on the radio. In fact, it turns out that a huge portion of the push behind indecency legislation comes from letter-writing campaigns generated by their website. So push back. Write a letter. You might get one back.

Dear Cedric:

Thank you for contacting me. I am always glad to hear from you.

As you may know, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has the authority to level fines against radio or television stations that broadcast indecent material.

In June of 2004, I joined my Senate colleagues in overwhelmingly passing the Broadcast Decency Act as an amendment to the 2004 Department of Defense Authorization bill. Unfortunately, this amendment was taken out of the conference report with the House. In January of 2005, the bill was reintroduced in the Senate. This legislation will increase fines from $32,500 per incident to a maximum of $275,000 per incident. While the bill is, in part, a response to the Janet Jackson Superbowl incident, these fines have not been increased for many years. Meanwhile, mergers and consolidation of many small broadcasters into a few large media companies have resulted in current fines not sufficiently deterring broadcasters from airing indecent material.

The legislation also includes a provision allowing the FCC to consider the smaller size of broadcast stations in states like Iowa in setting fines. It is important to note that this bill does not define the type of conduct that is indecent, but instead makes broadcasters and artists accountable for those actions which violate existing broadcast indecency standards.

Again, thanks for sharing your views with me. Please don’t hesitate to let me know how you feel on any issue that concerns you.

Sincerely,

Tom Harkin
United States Senator

Just in case you were wondering, the Night-Beam vision that allows you to see 25 feet in the dark is pretty much a red flashlight. Oh, that is sneaky.

I would just like to point out that it is apparently okay for cities to bulldoze your home to make way for a resort hotel. Not kidding.

Apparently, there is actually an issue where I side with Justices Scalia and Thomas. Wadyaknow, I may not be a big ol’ lefty, after all.

It’s another fashion post.

I would like to thank http://preshrunk.info for pointing out this NY Times article, which I also somehow missed. Some of this has been bugging me for a while.

Without the sex and recycled porn, without the labor manifesto, American Apparel would be Gap. Just without blue jeans.

Ouch. But thanks for pointing it out. I mean, we were all thinking it, right? Really, whenever I think about getting American Apparel shirts, it is so that I can put my own design on it. It’s just a plain t-shirt. But the labor thing is a pretty big deal, and one that Gap is just not addressing. So, since I don’t have the option of walking into a humiliating American Apparel store anyway, maybe I’ll just buy some online and ignore the pictures.

I just updated Kevi’s link over to the right so that it points to http://www.slimkevi.com instead of his blog at http://www.kevinswitzer.com, which he never updates. SlimKevi is a much more interesting site, anyway, and he deserves some props for losing like 20 pounds already. Way to go, dude! Also, thanks for the shirt!

[edit]Okay, I swear this blog isn’t about people losing weight. I need to insert a fake blog entry between this one and the previous one. It will be about a motorcycle. The motorcycle will be perfectly happy with its weight.[/edit]