New PAC to Defeat Lamar Smith

A political action committee, the Alliance for Internet Freedom, is hoping to defeat Rep. Lamar Smith (R—Inbred) in the Texas Republican primary on May 29th.  This PAC is made up of IT professionals who don’t appreciate Smith’s sponsorship of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

As you probably remember, SOPA — which was defeated last January — would have basically allowed the government to shut down YOUR blog or website if somebody somewhere said they heard from a friend’s coworker’s roommate that you might have unknowingly linked your blog to another site that might possibly have violated somebody’s copyright.  Or something.

If this asshole came up with an abortional idea like the Stop Online Piracy Act, there’s sure to be more harebrained ideas where that came from.  Let’s hope he gets primaried.

A spokesman for the Alliance for Internet Freedom said:

“The Alliance hopes to give a voice to the techies, bloggers, and IT companies nationwide that we can band together and be just as strong as say the ACLU or NRA.  Since our formation we are working on registering political action committees in California, Ohio, Illinois, and Canada.”

In addition to the Alliance for Internet Freedom, there was already another PAC which was also formed specifically to get rid of Lamar Smith — Test PAC, which is made up of a group of Reddit users.

Believe it or not, the Stop Online Piracy Act isn’t even Lamar Smith’s worst idea.  Last year he sponsored the Drug Trafficking Safe Harbor Elimination Act of 2011.

(I wrote a post about it at the time.)

This law would make it a federal crime for an American citizen to do something in a foreign country which is LEGAL in that country, if the thing he/she is doing is illegal in the United States.  WTF???

Smoking marijuana in Amsterdam — Busted!  Purchasing a drug over the counter in a foreign country, if that same drug requires a prescription in the U.S. — to the slammer!

Lamar Smith has done enough damage already.  Primary the bastard.  Kill it before it multiplies.  (Figuratively.)