Thanks to array for the pointer.
This brings a new twist to weblogs that cover politics or political issues... I am fulfilling a civic duty to participate in the Republic with iRights! (Now if THAT doesn't add some legitimacy to the weblog movement, nothing will.)
The Internet brings government By The People, For The People to the masses again... one way of looking at it is the scaling of the fourth branch of the government to handle the 250 million+ people who now live in this country.
Hey, think about this for a second. Is iRights a member of the press, even a little? If that makes sense, then look! I'm part of the fourth branch of the government!
More on that thought-train... USIS -- Issues of Democracy, February 1997 -- Goodale on First Amendment and Press Freedom: "As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart explained in a 1974 speech, the 'primary purpose' of the First Amendment was 'to create a fourth institution outside the government as an additional check on the three official branches' (the executive branch, the legislature and the judiciary)."
I was thinking about the essay... suppose Dave Winer declared Scripting News to be a member of the press. It's not unreasonable. Would Conxion's attempt to censor him attracted more attention from the more mainstream press?
The people do not today have much of a free press.
When Corporate Media Cover "Independent Media": "'Only in democratic countries,' [George Seldes] wrote in the 1930s, 'is there the beginning of a suspicion that the old axiom about the press being the bulwark of liberty is something that affects the daily life of the people -- that it is a living warning rather than an ancient wisecrack. A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free press.'"
Poetic justice, in a sick sort of way. "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword." 
Dr. Dre Sued By Lucasfilm: "One day after taking legal aim at Napster, Dr. Dre is now the target of a high-profile legal salvo himself.... Lucasfilm's suit, which seeks unspecified damages, hinges on Dre's use of something called the "THX Deep Note," a sound trademarked by Lucas' company. According to Lucasfilm, the sound is the first ever to be trademarked; it should be familiar to moviegoers as the sound that accompanies the THX logo before films screened in theaters with THX sound systems."