Man, Florida

A Florida state senator, Jason Brodeur has has introduced a bill requiring bloggers who write about the Governor, Attorney General, or state legislator must register with the state.

Our current view of the first amendment came into existance, largely birthed by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, at the turn of the 19th century.

The idea that you could call the governor a pig-felching moron in a public park or a journalists for criminal defamation for a scathing editorial did not really exist as we understand this before 1890 or so.

What was true, however, was that from the adoption of the bill of rights, that courts at all levels agreed that the government was forbidden by the first amendment from licensing or registering news organizations.

Clearly Mr. Brodeur got his knowledge of the US Constitution from a Crackerjack box:

Florida Sen. Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary) wants bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody, and other members of the Florida executive cabinet or legislature to register with the state or face fines.

Brodeur’s proposal, Senate Bill 1316: Information Dissemination, would require any blogger writing about government officials to register with the Florida Office of Legislative Services or the Commission on Ethics.

In the bill, Brodeur wrote that those who write “an article, a story, or a series of stories,” about “the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature,” and receives or will receive payment for doing so, must register with state offices within five days after the publication of an article that mentions an elected state official.

If another blog post is added to a blog, the blogger would then be required to submit monthly reports on the 10th of each month with the appropriate state office. They would not have to submit a report on months when no content is published.

For blog posts that “concern an elected member of the legislature” or “an officer of the executive branch,” monthly reports must disclose the amount of compensation received for the coverage, rounded to the nearest $10 value.

………

Failure to file these disclosures or register with state officials, if the bill passes, would lead to daily fines for the bloggers, with a maximum amount per report, not per writer, of $2,500. The per-day fine is $25 per report for each day it’s late.

Either this guy is really stupid, or he is using this to deflect attention from another part of the bill, which removes the requirement that judicial sales of properties be posted to a public web site, and instead can just be posted (on page 7) of a local newspaper.

I'm thinking that some of his real estate speculator friends don't want people to find their sweet foreclosure auctions on the internet.

Reading the text of the bill, changes are highlighted, and that text seems to indicate that this mook thinks that bloggers should be regulated like lobbyists.

Reporting, or making comments on, the news is different from buying legislators, Mr. Brodeur.