Clipping blog

Democratic Senators Bully RIM into Taking Away Another Choice From You

Posted: 25 Mar 2011 10:16 AM PDT

If you are anything like me, you hate sobriety check points — those blights on weekend and holiday traveling where police officers commandeer an entire highway, slow all traffic to a near-standstill, and lecture each and every driver about the dangers of drunk driving all under the guise of ridding our roads of drunk drivers.

I won’t go into all the reasons I dislike them nor the reasons they are an abysmally-poor use of limited law-enforcement resources that don’t work well at all. I will say that if I had a way to find out where my local police department had set up a sobriety checkpoint, I’d use it to plan a route around the traffic delays and unwanted lecture. I’d actually pay money for, say, a smartphone app.

And what do you know? Such apps do exist, or at least they did until a few busybody Democratic Senators stuck their noses into our business.

Research in Motion said Wednesday that it would comply with a request made by four U.S. senators, and will pull BlackBerry apps that alert drivers of police drunk-driving checkpoints.
“RIM’s decision to remove these apps from their online store proves that when it comes to drunk driving, there should not be an app for that,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), one of the four lawmakers, in a statement Wednesday.
At least one app has disappeared from the BlackBerry App World.
On Tuesday, Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Schumer, Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Tom Udall (D-NM) asked Apple, Google and RIM to pull an unspecified number of apps from their mobile app markets.

Actually, it proves no such thing. What it does prove is that a few Senators have no problem abusing their power to bully a private company into doing what they want it do ti. It proves that Schumer, Reid, et. al., are eager to take yet another choice away from you. It proves that, contrary to common leftist cant, it is the totalitarian-minded progressives in our government who leap at the chance to force their beliefs about how you should live your life on you.

Shame on them for taking away your freedom of choice and shame on RIM for giving in to them.

(via memeorandum)