Post: #1

Posted this in the "Everything Goes" thread, because I wasn't too sure if it deserved it's own thread. Basically it's a bill to troll mainstream media, equating restrictions on one (the second) amendment to be applied to the first amendment as well.
Obviously no way it's going to get past house, but it's still funny as hell.

Full Bill Intro
Excerpt:

Quote:A BILL

TO AMEND THE CODE OF LAWS OF SOUTH CAROLINA, 1976, BY ADDING CHAPTER 85 TO TITLE 40 TO ENACT THE "SOUTH CAROLINA RESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM REGISTRY LAW" SO AS TO ESTABLISH REQUIREMENTS FOR PERSONS BEFORE WORKING AS A JOURNALIST FOR A MEDIA OUTLET AND FOR MEDIA OUTLETS BEFORE HIRING A JOURNALIST; TO REQUIRE THE ESTABLISHMENT AND OPERATION OF A RESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM REGISTRY BY THE SOUTH CAROLINA SECRETARY OF STATE'S OFFICE; TO AUTHORIZE REGISTRY FEES; TO ESTABLISH FINES AND CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR VIOLATION OF THE CHAPTER; AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.

Section 40-85-30. (A) Before hiring or contracting with a person as a journalist, a media outlet shall require the person to present a copy of a criminal record background check and shall make a determination pursuant to Section 40-85-40 whether the person is competent to be a journalist.

(B) Before working as a journalist for a media outlet in this State, a person shall provide a criminal record background check to the media outlet to determine journalistic competence and register with the South Carolina Responsible Journalism Registry. After registering, the person shall provide a copy of the registration to the media outlet. A person may not work as a journalist until the person provides a copy of a registration to the media outlet.


Articles on it:
Time: South Carolina Lawmaker Wants to Register Journalists With the Government

Quote:Republican State Rep. Mike Pitts said the legislation would create a panel of experts to determine if a person qualifies as a journalist, similar to the process doctors and lawyers go through, The Post and Courier reports.
...
“The problem that I have with the printed press is, like I said, it appears especially in the last decade to me each story has become more editorial than reporting,” he said. “It might just be my perception.”

NPR: Journalist-Registration Bill Is Modeled On Gun Law, S.C. Lawmaker Says

Quote: The bill lays out fines — and prison time — for a "person who works as a journalist without registering," culminating in a maximum punishment of either a $500 fine or a 30-day prison term. Those who head media outlets that hire unregistered journalists would be subject to the same penalties.
...
"My real issue is simply to start to debate about all of your constitutional rights. And that they are all equally important, and they are all separate," Pitts tells the newspaper. "This was an easy parallel."
...
Of course, Pitts isn't the only lawmaker to use a bill to make a point. Earlier in the same legislative session, State Rep. Mia McLeod, a Democrat from Columbia, submitted a bill establishing new requirements on prescriptions for drugs that treat erectile dysfunction — including obtaining a notarized affidavit from "at least one of the patient's sexual partners."

ABCNEWS: Bill Would Require South Carolina Journalists to Register

Quote:Pitts told The Post and Courier newspaper that the bill is not a reaction to any particular news story but was intended to stimulate discussion over how he sees gun issues being reported."It strikes me as ironic that the first question is constitutionality from a press that has no problem demonizing firearms," Pitts said. "With this statement I'm talking primarily about printed press and TV. The TV stations, the six o'clock news and the printed press has no qualms demonizing gun owners and gun ownership."

Bill Rogers, executive director of the South Carolina Press Association, said he'd lobby hard against the measure, which he said he found bizarre.

"Any registration of journalists would be unconstitutional — unless you lived in Cuba or North Korea," Rogers told The Associated Press.

TheDailyBeast: What’s Behind the Nutty Law to Register Journalists?

Quote:Pitts, a retired police officer and three-term Republican in the South Carolina House, who previously received fleeting recognition for his crusade to keep the Confederate Flag flying at the State Capitol after a white supremacist shot and killed nine black church members in Charleston, basked in the warm glow of national media attention on Tuesday after introducing H 4702, “The South Carolina Responsible Journalism Registry Law.”

His legislative proposal was promptly celebrated, if that’s the right word, by media outlets ranging from Mother Jones to Yahoo to ABC News, and became a popular topic on Twitter (at least among members of the Fourth Estate).

“Always an easy way to get attention is to attack the press,” noted journalism professor and former CNN correspondent Charles Bierbauer, dean of the University of South Carolina College of Information and Communications. “Just as any political candidate knows, you only have to say something outrageous to get the media focused or to divert the media attention from whatever is presumably more important that they might be looking at.”
...
Pitts, who didn’t return a phone call from The Daily Beast seeking an explanation, told South Carolina’s Post and Courier that his bill is essentially a piece of performance art calling out the press for its unsympathetic coverage of Second Amendment rights.

Finally, Washington Post figures out the troll job:

Quote:Gun-rights advocates have gleefully mocked reporters who denounced the bill for playing right into Pitts’s hands. In the interest of sparing colleagues, I'll stick to highlights of my own taunting, which included a cameo by Pitts himself:

@charlescwcooke ha seems @callumborchers is a sucker that fell for the trap. He failed at due diligence as a reporter.

— Brad (@Brad_D80) January 20, 2016

@Brad_D80 @jcsalomon @callumborchers People want to scream 1st amendment rights yet they want to trample all over the 2nd.

— Mike Pitts (@RepMikePitts) January 20, 2016

@callumborchers @washingtonpost Are you dumb or just went to a bad school? It's an allegory on gun registration lolZ

— shonuffharlem (@shonuffharlem) January 20, 2016

@callumborchers man you really got trolled there. Hook, line and sinker. Great job!

— Michael Nicholson (@mike_nicholson1) January 20, 2016
...
The point is that most people — and, more importantly, the courts — agree that some boundaries should exist. So the question is where those boundaries should be, and it’s a question that must be answered separately for every right. If murderers and 3-year-olds who can’t own guns want to publish blogs, let them. And if a reporter who has been sued for libel wants to blow off steam at the gun range, that’s fine too. One has nothing to do with the other. You can’t impose a uniform standard across the entire Bill of Rights.

Which seems to be what Pitts is really arguing for here.

Post: #2

I wish I wasn't completely unelectable for any kind of public office. I would do shit like this constantly.

Post: #3

I was a bit concerned about this until I saw the definition of a 'journalist' is "a person who in his professional capacity collects, writes, or distributes news or other current information for a media outlet, including an employee or an independent contractor."

Most bloggers are not engaged in a professional capacity. Media outlet, though, is a wide definition: "a for-profit or not-for-profit publication or broadcast program that provides news and feature stories to the public through various distribution channels including, but not limited to, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the Internet." That would cover all amateur blogs since they're not for prof and distribute to the Internet.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #4

I'd introduce a bill.

69-96-69: No person shall be eligible for public office if they've watched their wife get fucked by another man.