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How does dear Meghan know that Karl rove doesn’t have a staffer handle the followers for him?

Karl Rove follows me on Twitter. That’s creepy. I joined Twitter a few months ago; so far, it has been a liberating way to transition from political to personal blogging. It’s allowed me to share the less-serious aspects and humorously uncensored moments of my life. But there’s also been a downside: I am now being followed by Karl Rove, and my local sheriff, and God knows how many other political pundits. We need to take Twitter back from the creepy people.

Uh, Meghan, Maricopa County, Arizona Sherrif Joe Arpaio is NOTon Twitter. Apparently, someone is impersonating him – much like the staffer who wrote your dad’s (Senator John McCain’s) initial tweets.

The Twitter creeps gets stranger. My local Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (who, as the author of America’s Toughest Sheriff, is notorious in his own right) recently sent me a Tweet about an answer I gave a fellow Twitter follower. He tried to tell me to go easy on them. It’s really scary when the guy who houses his inmates in tents in the summer and whose most visible public-relations success involves pink underwear, boxers, and handcuffs tells you to tone it down. The sheriff also inexplicably Tweeted me to say my mother owes him $10. Say what?

But, OK, anyone can make a mistake and maybe your mother owes the Sheriff money for covering up something or not.

Flap thinks this commenter to Meghan’s blog has the whole situation summed up:

You denigrate Rove’s tweets as boring, although you are the one writing about them. Whatever people think about Karl Rove, he is unquestionably one of the most interesting political minds in a generation. Dumb and uninteresting are not adjectives that even his many political foes level against him. On the other hand, what exactly is it that you have accomplished for which people should read your shlock? You’re enjoying your 20 minutes of fame on your dad’s coattails. It appears that you fancy yourself as something of a conservative-liberal crossover. That’s fine, really. It’s easy because it’s en vogue these days anyhow. But don’t assume that you should be a model for, or be listened to by, the conservative movement. There is something amusing about how today’s moderates decry traditional conservatives as outmoded purists even while castigating them in their own superior sense of self-righteousness.

Don’t like Karl Rove or your Sheriff following your tweets? Then don’t put the details of your life on the Internet – that’s like what the public Internet is for. And maybe consider getting a real job and a life.

Amen, Bro.

By the way, Meghan,  @Flap has blocked you – you creep me out.

This bill which outlawed “animal crush” videos was overturned last year by a federal appeals court and was sponsored by Flap’s Congressman, Elton Gallegly. The United Sates Supreme Court today granted review of the case and will do so in the Fall Term of the court.

The Supreme Court will consider reviving a federal law banning the sale of images of animal cruelty. A federal appeals court said the law illegally restricts this form of free speech.

The justices said Monday that they will look at the decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that also overturned the conviction of Robert Stevens of Pittsville, Va. In 2005, Stevens was convicted and sentenced to 37 months in prison for selling videos of pit bull fights.

The appeals court described one video as including a “gruesome depiction of a pit bull attacking the lower jaw of a domestic farm pig.”

The government says it has a “compelling interest in protecting animals from wanton acts of cruelty.”

The Humane Society of the United States, backing the government, says that the 1999 law played a critical role in stopping the spread of so-called crush videos that show women crushing to death small animals, often with their bare feet or high-heeled shoes.

The case will be argued in the fall.

The case is U.S. v. Stevens, 08-769.

The United States Supreme Court will decide whether there should be a new exception to the First amendment to apply to the portrayals of animal cruelty.

The new First Amendment case the Justices will be hearing next fall or winter involves the constitutionality of a 1999 federal law, passed by Congress in an attempt to curb animal cruelty.  The en banc Third Circuit Court struck down the law as written, thus barring its use in any case no matter what the specific facts.

Although the law has been in effect for ten years, it was used for the first time to prosecute Robert J. Stevens of Pittsville, Va., for selling videotapes of fighting among dogs of the Pit Bull breed.   He was convicted of three counts of violating the 1999 law, and was sentenced to 37 months in prison.

In nullifying the law, the Circuit Court refused to create a new exception to the First Amendment to apply to portrayals of animal cruelty. It noted that the Supreme Court “last declared an entire category of speech unprotected” by the Amendment in 1982 (in New York v. Ferber, involving child pornography).  The Circuit Court rejected a government argument that the depiction of animal cruelty was analogous to the depiction of child pornography.

In taking the case on to the Supreme Court, the Justice Department argued that the 1999 law is narrow in scope, applying only to a “particularly harmful class of speech,” only when that is done for commercial gain, and only when the particular depiction has “no serious societal value.”

It may be a close call for the court, but Flap does not really see any societal value in permitting animal cruelty or “animal crush” videos. As long as the decision is narrow, there should be no danger to our constitutionally protected free speech.

Stay tuned……