[Fat chance. --Declan] --- STATEMENT OF BARBARA COMSTOCK, U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: "The Department of Justice is now reviewing the ruling issued today by the three-judge district court in American Library Association v. United States of America. The Justice Department is disappointed by the court's declaration that the Childrens' Internet Protection Act violates the First Amendment, and the Department is currently reviewing the ruling in connection with an appeal of that ruling." Note: An appeal to the Supreme Court must be filed within 20 days of the ruling. --- IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Micah Swafford May 31, 2002 202-225-2132 Istook Confident CIPA Decision Will Be Overturned Washington, DC -- Congressman Ernest Istook (R-OK) expressed confidence that the Supreme Court will overturn today's ruling by a three-judge panel on the Children's Internet Protection Act. Istook was one of the principal authors of the legislation to require obscenity-blocking software on computers in public schools and libraries to which children have access. The legislation included a provision requiring any challenge to proceed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. "The plantiffs selected a venue they knew would be sympathetic, the same court which struck down several other legislative attempts to protect our children from obscenity," said Istook. "The Supreme Court has previously recognized that taxpayers can decide what they what and will not fund, and nobody has a legal right to subsidized pornography. This ruling indicates that the only way to stop libraries from providing children with access to Internet obscenity would be to stop giving them funds to provide the access. Nobody wants that to happen. I have every confidence that the Supreme Court will apply common sense and the Constitution and overturn this extreme decision." -30- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri May 31 2002 - 14:18:40 PDT