Oh sure. From Reuters:
Drug makers, Internet companies and nonprofits packed a hearing into what is a gray area for U.S. health regulators: how far Twitter, Wikipedia, blogs and other social media can go in promoting drugs.
The two-day public hearing, convened Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration, aims to find out if the agency needs to specifically regulate how drugs and medical devices under its oversight are promoted on the Internet.
But then, who really cares about the First Amendment? Not a single mention of it in the article. Certainly neither the FDA nor the person who wrote the Reuters article gives a damn about free speech. It’s that ol’ compelling interest again.
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_usoz_2.gif)
#1 by Vake on November 13th, 2009
| Quote
Yes, we need to get back to enumerated powers.
#2 by Libertarian on November 13th, 2009
| Quote
How drugs and medical devices are marketed over the Internet is none of the government’s business. In fact, there’s a lot of stuff that’s none of the government’s business, yet it likes to poke its nose (and build the government’s power) in to everyone’s business.
I’m with Vake on this on: let’s start enumerating exactly what the government can do. Anything not of the list of enumerated powers is verboten for government to do.
Works for me!
#3 by Mark on November 13th, 2009
| Quote
Though I agree that enumerated powers would be the way to go, our experience is that holding government to powers enumerated in a paper document does not work. The constitution is exactly that, a list of the only powers government has. Nobody pays any attention to it. So how can the list be enforced? Democracy (elections) doesn’t work. Term limits? That might work, but try getting federal politicians to limit their political careers. And try getting people who collect money stolen from others to throw out the politicians who write their checks. As more people get on the federal payroll, the less likely it becomes that anything will be done to restrain the government monster. Only a near total financial meltdown will provoke real change and I’m not sure I want to see what that change might be. See Weimar Germany in the 1920s or Zimbabwe in the last few years for what could happen. We need to strike down the system and create a free society. But not many people care about freedom.
#4 by CorkyAgain on November 13th, 2009
| Quote
It’s none of the government’s business?
I would argue that interfering in the marketplace in such ways IS the government’s business — and that this is why we need to get rid of government altogether.
#5 by the_gaffer on November 20th, 2009
| Quote
Until the sheeple are deprived of their bread and circuses, power will remain entrenched where it is, with the powerful reaching and grabbing for more and more. I don’t savvy how the elite maintain their present course knowing that the house of cards they’ve built has got to come tumbling down. The sheeple will be driven hither and thither, unthinkingly attracted to whomever has the loudest drumbeat (or meal!).
Libertarians and Anarchists will still not be heard, because sheep can’t process much thought.
For my part, I have thrown in with the Constitutionalists, and will try in my own way to bring people to heed it. This way the thoughtful and the thoughtless can experience freedom again, for their gain or their detriment.