HR 1966: It Could Get a Bit Bumpy, Folks!

Blogosphere colleagues, in the words of St. Mick, "Here comes your 19th Nervous Breakdown." (Via Eugene Volokh):

Federal Felony To Use Blogs, the Web, Etc. To Cause Substantial Emotional Distress Through "Severe, Repeated, and Hostile" Speech?

Otherwise known as House Resolution 1966 by Reps. Linda Sanchez and 14 others.

Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both....

["Communication"] means the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user's choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received; ...

["Electronic means"] means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.

Eugene gives us six broad scenarios of how this law would work in practice, none of them pretty.

The good news is that he believes the courts would strike the law as overly broad.

What are Rep. Linda Sanchez and the others thinking here? Are they just taking the view that "criminalize it all, let the prosecutors sort it out"? Even if that's so, won't their work amount to nothing, if the law is struck down as facially overbroad -- as I'm pretty certain it would be? Or are they just trying to score political points here with their constituents, with little regard to whether the law will actually do any good? I try to focus my posts mostly on what people do, not on their motives, but here the drafting is so shoddy that I just wonder why this happened.

The bad news is that someone would of necessity have to be the guinea pig, the test case.

It may be time to do a testosterone check soon.