CHICAGO - As reported in The Daily Caller, Illinois State Senator Ira Silverstein (D) is taking aim at the First Amendment by introducing legislation in the General Assembly that would outlaw anonymous online posting.
Silverstein's bill states that a “web site administrator upon request shall remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless the anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate.”
The Democratic lawmaker’s bill, which does not require any proof of identity from entities requesting the removal of comment(s), would take effect 90 days after becoming law.
Interestingly, Silverstein is the same politician who also introduced new regulations for online dating sites in Illinois. With this new war on free speech, one has to wonder if Sen. Ira "Nanny" Silverstein would have outlawed Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac or the many Founding Fathers and other great individuals throughout history who have published under pseudonyms.
Of course, those folks were never critical of Silverstein or any of his equally thin-skinned Illinois politicians.
