Subversive Literature Act of 2009

[Bob Schroeck]

And okay, folks, here's the first draftish kind of thing of the SLA article, followed by notes for an article on Rep. Susan Happery.  As with the Land Theft Act, the date she submits the SLA is the same date the real HR451 was submitted in 2009. 
Note that this more a vague structure with notes than a real draft.  Also, Happery kind of got away from me, I will probably scale her back a bit (unless everyone likes the idea of her being a full-bore gonzo all-but-flat-earther evangelical Christian).
Anyway, please feel free to offer suggestions, expansions, changes, deletions, etc.

---

The Subversive Literature Act of 2009
Infamous bill (H.R. 451) introduced into the United States House of Representatives on January 18, 2009 by [[Susan Happery] (R-KS), a freshman Representative affiliated with the Tea Party movement.  The Subversive Literature Act was intended to criminalize the science fiction and fantasy genres across all known and future media. One of the first bills of the 111th United States Congress, it was also the very first legislation proposed by Happery, who had been sworn in as a member of the House less than two weeks earlier.  Congressional observers also credit it with ''ending'' her political career as well, at least on the national stage.
The bill had nearly a dozen co-sponsors, a bi-partisan assortment composed mostly of Republicans and Tea Party members, but all of whom were known to be strongly anti-Fen.  (Some of the co-signers -- most notably [[Wallace Webster] (R-NH), [[Isabella Ward] (R-TN) and [[Kendall Dixon] (D-NJ) -- would later go on to sponsor the ill-fated [[Federal Land Theft Protection Act of 2012].) Happery had spent nearly all of her first two weeks in the House pursuing, persuading and sometimes haranguing other Representatives into supporting the bill.  Several co-sponsors later admitted that they only agreed to put their names on the Act to make Happery go away, and did so without reading a word of the proposed legislation -- or even, in some cases, knowing the full name of the bill.
== Summary ==
((Bill defines SF/F as "obscene" and bans its possession/viewing/reading by anyone under 21.  Also claims it is "inflammatory speech",
Bill requires libraries to actively track the reading habits of all their users and report everyone who checks out more than 2 SF/F books (as defined by the incredibly broad terms of the bill) to the FBI. 
the 2009 "Subversive Literature Act"... probably would not have named F&SF directly, but make references to "enabling or encouraging handwavium-related criminal activities" would be a good code-phrase.))
== Reactions ==
((Bill would have made it into committee unnoticed, except Happery decided to sweep into the Congressional press pool offices and trumpet her first piece of legislation to the reporters on duty.  The reporters blink and confirm that she does really intend for the new law to criminalize a huge swath of American culture and duly report on it with surprising restraint and just-the-facts-ma'am simplicity. 
It takes a couple of stunned days (of course there are a blogger or ten who go nuts right away) before people start reacting to the bill.  (It takes a while to read it all and decode some of the more obfuscated parts.)  The outcry starts immediately.
The ACLU, the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Lucasfilms, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and Paramount remind Congress of the First Amendment - especially if news of the bill breaks near or during Banned Books Week (Week of September 26, 2009, so it won't, but still...).
WB, Disney, other Media conglomerates all threaten to move offshore en masse if bill passes.
Let's not forget the Holy Rodent Empire. Imagine heavy-handed political advertisements featuring doe-eyed children asking their folks why they can't sing along with Elsa anymore, daddy? Why? >
(Since the bill claims that F&SF is "inflammatory speech" citing ''Brandenburg v. Ohio'' as a precedent for unconstitutionality is a common talking point http://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/492, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio )
Sadly, I can see one of their constituents who very vehemently "Did not vote for that jackass" cheerily burning a stack of "innocuous" books like Alice in Wonderland, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and Bibles to "... [get] ready for when [Childish opponent nickname]'s law passes."
Spielberg, Lucas etc. hold press conference to denounce Happery.
Mention Gordon Van Gelder of F&SF.
Even FOX News is terribly unsympathetic to her, as FOX owns several very profitable SF/F properties, not the least of which are the X-Men movies.))
=== Happery's responses ===
((Makes a number of appearances on news TV, radio, etc. and demonstrates very clearly that she suffers from a profound cultural tunnelvision.  She's of the strain of evangelical Christian that distributed tracts warning about the "dangers" of "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie" in the 60s-70s, organized marches against D&D in the 1980s, and were behind the "Satanic Child Abuse" flap in the 1990s -- basically disconnected from the American Pop Cultural Mainstream except where something that might be "satanic" comes to their attention.  "Satanic" meaning in this case "not obviously biblical, and involving more imagination and/or critical thinking than we want our children to have". 
Even on FOX News she comes across as a whacko, especially once she starts ranting about a vast Satanic conspiracy out to silence her, and how any space exploration is a sin because it involves throwing impure mortal constructions into Heaven, which is just beyond the clouds in the sky, and how wherever the Fen are it can't be outer space which doesn't really exist, so since it's not on earth it must actually be a part of Hell disguising itself as the fairy story scientists actively deceive the world exists past the sky, how Science Fiction, Comic Books, Handwavium and, well, everything else are all actually a fiendish plot by the Forces of Satan to corrupt good Christians and so on.  Even Bill O'Reilly thinks she's off her rocker after one too many rants.))
((SNL gets Dana Carvey to guest star and portray Happery as the Church Lady after one such appearance on FOX.  Naturally, she threatens to sue, but doesn't follow through, presumably because someone explains the nature of satire and being a public figure to her.))
== Congressional Reaction ==
((Once it gets out what's actually in the bill, her co-sponsors disassociate themselves as quickly as they can.  People on both sides of the aisle stop answering her calls, and refuse to speak to her on the floor (which only fuels her "conspiracy" talk).  The Republicans take a huge hit (somewhat unfairly, since there were Democratic co-sponsors, although they do get their share of unwelcome attention and blame) as would-be censors and cultural police who would deprive children of fairy tales and Disney movies because they don't like the Fen.
The bill vanishes into committee and never reappears, while politicians from both parties quietly meet with reps from the various industries and other groups to reassure them that the SLA is dead and buried and Happery is never going to be allowed to submit legislation again without a minder making sure it's not utterly insane.  This mollifies (most of) the groups, and so the RNC doesn't suffer too much for Happery's behavior, but they now have incentive not to pursue cultural "solutions" to the Fen "problem". 
However, Happery and all the co-sponsors are now on the radar of civil liberties bodies like the ACLU, and the ones that remain in Congress never quite get out of the spotlight, for good or bad.
Meanwhile in February 2009, after one too many disastrous TV appearances, Happery and the rest of the Kansas delegation get called on the carpet by the party.  She's a liability, doing more damage than good.  The Republican brand is dependent on not looking like absolute lunatics, and she's damaging it with her behavior.  Meanwhile, the rest of the Kansas delegation failed to integrate her with the party framework in Congress, and didn't properly rein her in after she started harassing other members of Congress.  They are told outright that the party is assigning her a babysitter for the rest of her time in Congress, whom she must integrate into her staff -- firing someone if necessary to meet the staff size limit.  She'll be allowed to introduce the occasional bill, but she's no longer allowed to operate without party oversight.  And come 2010, she will get no party support for re-election.))
((other co-sponsors:  Montag, McClellan, Beatty...)
((where to put the following?))
According to sources from her campaign, Happery conceived of the idea behind the Act between her election and her arrival in Washington, and wrote the bulk of the proposed law herself with the help of several attorneys on her staff.  The House Office of Legislative Counsel later confirmed that while Happery's staff requested an attorney from the OLC to help draft the Act, the request was apparently only for appearances. Jaye Creed, the OLC attorney assigned to Happery and a specialist in First Amendment law, later testified that she was presented with what was essentially the final form of the Act as later submitted to the House, and was told to rubberstamp it.  "I had serious concerns about the Constitutionality of the Act," she said later, "but Mr. NewsomeBenjamin Newsome, Happery's chief of staff. told me that my professional opinion of the legislation was unwelcome and that my job was to be 'a glorified proofreader and nothing more'.  Those were his words exactly."
{{gazetteer}}{{Mundania}}[[Category:Government][[Categoryanelaw government][[Category:Fen History][[Category:Fen Politics] 
anti-Fen Jack Chick tracts?
--------------------Page on Susan Happery
Susan "Sue-Happy" Happery -- a 1-term freshman Representative (Tea Party) who basically loses all RNC support after she makes them look bad with the SLA.  A know-nothing housewife-turned-Representative who suffers from evangelical Christian cultural tunnel-vision ("Star Track? Star Wars? Aren't those popular only with terrorists and teenaged misfits living in their parents' cellars?") and who wants to defund NASA because it contradicts the Gospel. 
Pick a small Kansas town off the map for her home.  (Smallville? heh)
She got into politics by way of a series of lawsuits filed against just about anything she didn't like, hence her nickname.  She got her start by successfully getting independent comic shops shut down in her home county in the middle 1990s.  After the beginning of the Handwavium age she spearheaded lawsuits that tried to shut down SF conventions in Kansas, like ConQuest (http://www.conquestkc.org/) and Kansas City Comic Con (http://www.kansascity-comiccon.com/), tried to get anime banned from Kansas libraries, and attacked the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas (http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/), calling for the arrest and trial of KU professor and noted SF author James Gunn as a subversive.
Sometimes her objections were combined with or disguised as budgetary/fiscal responsibility, anti-entitlement or other "small-government" shibboleths, even when it made no sense in context.  This brought her to the attention of Tea Party organizers in Kansas, who saw the attractive and passionate thirty-something soccer mom as an ideal candidate and talked her into running for office.  State-level office before congress?  map out a good career path.  Presidential ambitions?
Elected to Congress November 2008, took office January 2009, submitted the SLA on 18 Jan 2009.  Deprived entirely of support even from the Tea Party, she failed in her bid for re-election in November 2010, not even making it past state primaries when the national party favored a less-insane person with funding and media coverage.  Returns home in December 2010 and takes up her old hobbies again, but after her congressional self-destruct, she's now a local figure of ridicule/pity and a warning to the other extreme Christians in Kansas, who learn from her and adjust their tactics to look more reasonable.
{{gazetteer}}{{Mundania}}[[Category:Government][[Categoryanelaw government]
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Rajvik]

That actually works even for me, and I'm a die hard conservative.
 

[M Fnord]

Ergh, cannot brain this evening, but one thing jumps out:

The Tea Party wouldn't be a thing in ca. 2009 Fenspace. It only really got started as a reaction to the OTL '08 election, and since that went to Guiliani the Tea Party would've been subsumed into the somewhat more bipartisan kerfluffle of the handwavium panic.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[robkelk]

...
Page on Susan Happery
...

If she's getting her own page, I suppose she should get an image... http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?titl ... -Happy.png
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

Rajvik -- I tried to be reasonably fair, and make it her and not a vague nebulous "Republicans" or even "Christians" in general.

Fnord -- changed accordingly.

Rob -- cool. Adding to file. Thanks!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Foxboy]

I've no complaints with what's put together, but I might think of making Sue's faux-pas-laden career a launching point for a young female comic on SNL to inherit "Church Lady" from Dana Carvey? Mainly because her lack of experience makes her lest costly than an Alum, even if his career had largely tanked.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Threepony]

My big issue is that the tea party movement didn't really take off politically until 2010, when that caucus actually formed. Politicians weren't really 'affiliated' with them until then. And before that point, Teap-ies were much more old-school libertarian, and wanted less government, and would probably support fen-space for being at the time what they wanted (an ungoverned frontier, etc). It wasn't until the Koch's and other big-money people hijacked it that it turned from 'annoying but mostly harmless' into the vile hive of all the worst parts of republican scum and villainy that it is today.

Also, Isabella doesn't get elected until later, she's still a state-level senator instead of a federal level one as she uses the fame off of her brother's career-wrecking war-injuries and the incident that got them to promote her enough to get elected. Wait, hang on.. no, you had her timing right. *Facehoof.* Well, at the same time she probably wouldn't be signing this. She'd be spending her time trying to accrue political power and keeping under the radar, as she's still dancing to her daddy's strings at the time. Her sponsorship of the later bill had more to do with a personal vendetta against her brother when he refused to get under her thumb and a relatively minor part of her strategy that came from her letting her emotions get the better of her. At the time, she'd be busy trying to form a coalition of the less savory parts of the republican party in order to fuel her parent's vain schemes of trying to rekindle the lost glories of the family, so she wouldn't be poking at something quite so mad. As I noted in the other one, she's just fine with handwavium and science, and is more interested in power for the sake of power than actually suppressing it's use.

[Bob Schroeck]

No problem, Threepony. I'm following Fnord's lead on the Tea Party, and I'll just take Isabella out of the notes. That's why I'm posting such a rough version -- to fix the continuity errors that creep in because I don't have everyone else's stories as memorized as they do, and make sure everything lines up with the timeline where it's possible.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

Fixed a few things above and beyond the points raised above and expanded some of the notes, but still nowhere near done.  And still requesting comments and suggestion.

---

The Subversive Literature Act of 2009
Infamous bill (H.R. 451) introduced into the United States House of Representatives on January 18, 2009 by [[Susan Happery] (R-KS), a freshman Representative.  The Subversive Literature Act was intended to criminalize the science fiction and fantasy genres across all known and future media. One of the first bills of the 111th United States Congress, it was also the very first legislation proposed by Happery, who had been sworn in as a member of the House less than two weeks earlier.  Congressional observers also credit it with ''ending'' her political career as well, at least on the national stage.
The bill had nearly a dozen co-sponsors, a bi-partisan assortment composed mostly of Republicans, but all of whom were known to be strongly anti-Fen.  Happery had spent nearly all of her first two weeks in the House pursuing, persuading and sometimes haranguing other Representatives into supporting the bill.  Several co-sponsors (most prominently [[Cecil Montag] (D-GA), [[Ruby McClellan] (R-IA) and [[Danforth Beatty] (R-AK)) later admitted that they only agreed to put their names on the Act to make Happery go away, and did so without reading a word of the proposed legislation -- or even, in some cases, knowing the full name of the bill.
== Origin and Creation ==
According to sources from her campaign, Happery conceived of the idea behind the Act between her election and her arrival in Washington, and wrote the bulk of the proposed law herself with the help of Benjamin Newsome (Happery's chief of staff) and several attorneys she then brought with her to Washington.  The House Office of Legislative Counsel later confirmed that while Happery's staff requested an attorney from the OLC to help draft the Act, the request was apparently only for appearance's sake. Jaye Creed, the OLC attorney assigned to Happery and a specialist in First Amendment law, later told the press that she was presented with what was essentially the final form of the Act as later submitted to the House, and was instructed to rubberstamp it.  "I had serious concerns about the Constitutionality of the Act," she said later, "but Mr. Newsome told me that my professional opinion of the legislation was unwelcome and that my job was to be 'a glorified proofreader and nothing more'.  Those were his words exactly."
== Summary ==
The Act opened with a blunt declaration that works in the science fiction and fantasy genres were to henceforth be considered legally obscene and not subject to First Amendment protections.  It also cited the Fen as proof that they were also "inflammatory speech", encouraging those who consumed them to challenge and overthrow existing social, political and technological institutions as well as "enabling or encouraging handwavium-related criminal activities".  Although by using that language it was unnecessary, the Act then went on to explicitly ban the possession of works of science fiction or fantasy by anyone under 21.
Not satisfied with that, the Act went on to require that public libraries receiving Federal funding purge their collections of science fiction and fantasy works at risk of losing such funding.  Further, libraries were required to collect all available information on every person who had checked out those works since 2000 and deliver it to the Department of Homeland Security for investigation and potential inclusion on terrorist watch lists.  Similarly, universities, colleges and secondary schools were similarly enjoined to purge their libraries and abandon any courses of study involving science fiction or fantasy, again using the threat of loss of funding.
The Act concluded by defining a broad category of works -- including, among other things, anything covering spaceflight or computers -- which themselves were not banned but whose possession or consumption were considered indicative of potential "terrorist" tendencies requiring attention by Homeland Security.
=== Senate Version ===
Parallel to the Act's introduction, several senators who shared Happery and her co-sponsors' anti-Fen views -- most notably [[Wallace Webster] (R-NH) and [[Kendall Dixon] (D-NJ) (who would later go on to sponsor the ill-fated [[Federal Land Theft Protection Act of 2012]) -- began drafting their own version of the bill, based on a late draft of the Act passed to them by Happery's office. 
((got 90% complete before the firestorm erupted, made the mistake of jumping on press bandwagon right after happery))
== Reactions ==
It is entirely likely that the bill would have made it into committee unnoticed save for Happery's ego and eagerness for recognition.  Upon the introduction of H.R. 451, Happery left the House floor and swept into the Congressional press pool offices to trumpet her first piece of legislation to the reporters on duty. 
The reporters blink and confirm that she does really intend for the new law to criminalize a huge swath of American culture and duly report on it with surprising restraint and just-the-facts-ma'am simplicity. 
It takes a couple of stunned days (of course there are a blogger or ten who go nuts right away) before people start reacting to the bill.  (Part of it is simple "that can't mean what I think it does" disbelief, and part of it is because it takes a while to read it all and decode some of the more obfuscated parts.)  The outcry then starts.
The ACLU, the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Lucasfilms, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and Paramount remind Congress of the First Amendment - especially if news of the bill breaks near or during Banned Books Week (Week of September 26, 2009, so it won't, but still...).
WB, Disney, other Media conglomerates all threaten to move offshore en masse if bill passes.
Let's not forget the Holy Rodent Empire. Imagine heavy-handed political advertisements featuring doe-eyed children asking their folks why they can't sing along with Elsa anymore, daddy? Why? >
(Since the bill claims that F&SF is "inflammatory speech" citing ''Brandenburg v. Ohio'' as a precedent for unconstitutionality is a common talking point http://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/492, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio )
Sadly, I can see one of their constituents who very vehemently "Did not vote for that jackass" cheerily burning a stack of "innocuous" books like Alice in Wonderland, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and Bibles to "... [get] ready for when [Childish opponent nickname]'s law passes."
Spielberg, Lucas etc. hold press conference to denounce Happery.
Mention Gordon Van Gelder of F&SF.
Even FOX News is terribly unsympathetic to her, as FOX owns several very profitable SF/F properties, not the least of which are the X-Men movies.))
=== Happery's responses ===
((Makes a number of appearances on news TV, radio, etc. and demonstrates very clearly that she suffers from a profound cultural tunnelvision.  She's of the strain of evangelical Christian that distributed tracts warning about the "dangers" of ''Bewitched'' and ''I Dream of Jeannie'' in the 60s-70s, organized campaigns against D&D in the 1980s, and were behind the "Satanic Child Abuse" flap in the 1990s -- basically disconnected from the American Pop Cultural Mainstream except where something that might be "satanic" comes to their attention.  "Satanic" meaning in this case "not obviously biblical, and involving more imagination and/or critical thinking than we want our children to have". 
Even on FOX News she comes across as a whacko, especially once she starts ranting about a vast Satanic conspiracy out to silence her, and how any space exploration is a sin because it involves throwing impure mortal constructions into Heaven, which is just beyond the clouds in the sky, and how wherever the Fen are it can't be outer space which doesn't really exist, so since it's not on earth it must actually be a part of Hell disguising itself as the fairy story scientists actively deceive the world exists past the sky, how Science Fiction, Comic Books, Handwavium and, well, everything else are all actually a fiendish plot by the Forces of Hell to corrupt good Christians and so on.  Even Bill O'Reilly thinks she's off her rocker after one too many rants.))
((SNL gets Dana Carvey to guest star and portray Happery as the Church Lady after one such appearance on FOX.  Naturally, she threatens to sue, but doesn't follow through, presumably because someone explains the nature of satire and being a public figure to her.))
== Congressional Reaction ==
((Once it gets out what's actually in the bill, her co-sponsors disassociate themselves as quickly as they can.  People on both sides of the aisle stop answering her calls, and refuse to speak to her on the floor (which only fuels her "conspiracy" talk).  The Republicans take a huge hit (somewhat unfairly, since there were Democratic co-sponsors, although they do get their share of unwelcome attention and blame) as would-be censors and cultural police who would deprive children of fairy tales and Disney movies because they don't like the Fen.
The bill vanishes into committee and never reappears, while politicians from both parties quietly meet with reps from the various industries and other groups to reassure them that the SLA is dead and buried and Happery is never going to be allowed to submit legislation again without a minder making sure it's not utterly insane.  This mollifies (most of) the groups, and so the RNC doesn't suffer too much for Happery's behavior, but they now have incentive not to pursue cultural "solutions" to the Fen "problem". 
However, Happery and all the co-sponsors are now on the radar of civil liberties bodies like the ACLU, and the ones that remain in Congress never quite get out of the spotlight, for good or bad.
Meanwhile in February 2009, after one too many disastrous TV appearances, Happery and the rest of the Kansas delegation get called on the carpet by the party.  She's a liability, doing more damage than good.  The Republican brand is dependent on not looking like absolute lunatics, and she's damaging it with her behavior.  Meanwhile, the rest of the Kansas delegation failed to integrate her with the party framework in Congress, and didn't properly rein her in after she started harassing other members of Congress.  They are told outright that the party is assigning her a babysitter for the rest of her time in Congress, whom she must hire on as part of her staff -- firing someone if necessary to meet the staff size limit.  She'll be allowed to introduce the occasional bill, but she's no longer allowed to operate without party oversight.  And come 2010, she will get no party support for re-election.))
== Suit Against OLC and Jaye Creed ==
In 2011, after her departure from the House, Happery sued Creed for defamation, claiming that the OLC attorney had in fact dramatically rewritten her original text for the Act as a deliberate act of sabotage.  The lawsuit was withdrawn when Newsome (who had had a falling out with Happery toward the end of her tenure as a Representative), produced a handwritten first draft of Act which other than for spelling and grammar corrections was all but identical to the final version introduced to the House.  The draft was signed and dated by Happery on January 3, 2009.  Happery claimed it was a forgery, but handwriting experts testified that it was in her hand, and Newsome was able to provide the document's provenance, including full chain-of-custody evidence reaching back into Happery's own archives.
{{gazetteer}}{{Mundania}}[[Category:Government][[Categoryanelaw government][[Category:Fen History][[Category:Fen Politics] 
anti-Fen Jack Chick tracts?
--------------------Page on Susan Happery
[[File:Sue-Happy.png]
Susan "Sue-Happy" Happery -- a 1-term freshman Representative who basically loses all RNC support after she makes them look bad with the SLA.  A know-nothing housewife-turned-Representative who suffers from evangelical Christian cultural tunnel-vision ("Star Track? Star Wars? Aren't those popular only with terrorists and teenaged misfits living in their parents' cellars?") and who wants to defund NASA because it contradicts the Gospel. 
Pick a small Kansas town off the map for her home.  (Smallville? heh  Petitville!  Pick a county)
She got into politics by way of a series of lawsuits filed against just about anything she didn't like with the help of a couple lawyers from her church, hence her nickname.  She got her start by successfully getting independent comic shops shut down in her home county in the middle 1990s.  After the beginning of the Handwavium age she spearheaded lawsuits that tried to shut down SF conventions in Kansas, like ConQuest (http://www.conquestkc.org/) and Kansas City Comic Con (http://www.kansascity-comiccon.com/), tried to get anime banned from Kansas libraries, and attacked the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas (http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/), calling for the arrest and trial of KU professor and noted SF author James Gunn as a subversive.
Sometimes her objections were combined with or disguised as budgetary/fiscal responsibility, anti-entitlement or other "small-government" shibboleths, even when it made no sense in context.  This brought her to the attention of RNC organizers in Kansas, who saw the attractive and passionate thirty-something soccer mom as an ideal candidate and talked her into running for office.  State-level office before congress?  map out a good career path.  Presidential ambitions?
Elected to Congress November 2008, took office 6 (?) January 2009, submitted the SLA on 18 Jan 2009.  Deprived entirely of support from the RNC, she failed in her bid for re-election in November 2010, not even making it past state primaries when the national party favored a less-insane person with funding and media coverage.  Returns home in December 2010 and takes up her old hobbies again, but after her congressional self-destruct, she's now a local figure of ridicule/pity and a warning to the other extreme Christians in Kansas, who learn from her and adjust their tactics to look more reasonable.
Dont forget to mention SNL lampoon -- Dana Carvey as the Church Lady, dressed in something distinctive -- a favorite cardigan or something?
{{gazetteer}}{{Mundania}}[[Category:Government][[Categoryanelaw government]
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

...
The Act concluded by defining a broad category of works -- including, among other things, anything covering spaceflight or computers -- which themselves were not banned but whose possession or consumption were considered indicative of potential "terrorist" tendencies requiring attention by Homeland Security.
...

In reaction to the bill's linking of computer books and subversive activities, a coalition of "Silicon Valley" corporations acted quickly to oppose the proposed legislation. Apple and Microsoft worked together on an ad campaign informally called "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC, and we're both being branded as terrorists", which was heavily promoted on Facebook, Netflix, and Google. Amazon and eBay added click-through banners to their systems saying that they would have to "go black" if the bill was passed.

More quietly - and more effectively - Brocade, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Hitachi, HP, IBM, NetApp, Oracle, Seagate, Symantec, and Western Digital pointed out to their government clients that the legislation's wording regarding publications about computers included training materials and documentation for their high-capacity network and data-storage hardware. As a result, if the bill passed, Homeland Security, DOD, and NSA would be required to either forego receiving training and support for their mission-critical computer systems or list themselves as potential terrorist organizations - the companies would have no legal choice but to report them as clients and thus suspicious. All three departments quickly referred their suppliers' concerns to their political masters, who were unable to convince Ms. Happery to accept amendments to the bill.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[robkelk]

I'm just going to mention this for consideration: Topeka, Kansas is the home of the Westboro Baptist Church. Although linking Sue-Happy to them would probably be going too far, IMHO.

EDIT: A bit of poking around gives us a possible http://allthetropes.org/wiki/Genius_Bonus]Genius Bonus, as long as we never explain it - have her represent Medicine Lodge, Kansas. The Genius Bonus comes from that town's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Nation]most famous resident.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Rajvik]

actually Rob, i would say thats about accurate
 

[Foxboy]

Rob, if this forum had likes and/or points you would get as many as I could give out for that post.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Bob Schroeck]

Rob, consider both those suggestions now pasted in for use. Thank you!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

The Subversive Literature Act of 2009
Infamous bill (H.R. 451) introduced into the United States House of Representatives on January 18, 2009 by [[Susan Happery] (R-KS), a freshman Representative.  The Subversive Literature Act was intended to criminalize the creation, distribution and consumption of works in the science fiction and fantasy genres across all known and future media. One first bills of the 111th United States Congress, it was also the very first legislation proposed by Happery, who had been sworn in as a member of the House less than two weeks earlier.  It was also the ''last'' piece of legislation proposed by Happery, and Congressional observers also credit it with ''ending'' her political career as well, at least on the national stage.
The bill had nearly a dozen co-sponsors, a bi-partisan assortment that still was strongly Republican, but all of whom were known to be strongly anti-Fen.  Happery had spent nearly all of her first two weeks in the House pursuing, persuading and sometimes haranguing other Representatives into supporting the bill.  Several of these (most prominently [[Cecil Montag] (D-GA), [[Ruby McClellan] (R-IA) and [[Danforth Beatty] (R-AK)) later claimed that they had only agreed to put their names on the Act to make Happery go away, and did so without reading a word of the proposed legislation -- or even, in some cases, knowing the full name of the bill.
== Origin and Creation ==
According to sources from within her campaign, Happery conceived of the idea behind the Act between her election and her arrival in Washington, and wrote the bulk of the proposed law herself with the help of her chief of staff Benjamin Newsome and several attorneys whom she then brought with her to Washington.  The House Office of Legislative Counsel later confirmed that while Happery's staff requested an attorney from the OLC to help draft the Act, the request was apparently only for appearance's sake.  Jaye Creed, the OLC attorney assigned to Happery and a specialist in First Amendment law, later told the press that she was presented with what was essentially the final form of the Act as later submitted to the House, and was instructed to rubberstamp it.  "I had serious concerns about the Constitutionality of the Act as written," she said later, "but Mr. Newsome told me that my professional opinion of the legislation was unwelcome and that my job was to be 'a glorified proofreader and nothing more'.  Those were his exact words."
== Summary ==
The Act opened with a broad definition of the science fiction and fantasy genres that, if interpreted absolutely literally, would have covered a continuum of works as widely different as ''Bulfinch's Mythology'', ''Richie Rich'' comic books, and (no doubt unintentionally) the Bible.  It then made a blunt declaration that works in the described class were to henceforth be considered legally obscene and not subject to First Amendment protections.  It also cited the Fen as proof that these works were also "inflammatory speech", encouraging those who consumed them to challenge and overthrow existing social, political and technological institutions as well as "enabling or encouraging handwavium-related criminal activities".  Although by using that language it was unnecessary, the Act then went on to explicitly ban the possession of works of science fiction or fantasy by anyone under 21.
Not satisfied with that, the Act went on to require that public libraries receiving Federal funding purge their collections of science fiction and fantasy works at risk of losing such funding -- and these purged works were to be destroyed instead of sold "to prevent the further distribution of subversive material".  Further, libraries were required to collect all available information on every person who had checked out any such works since 2000 and deliver it to the Department of Homeland Security for investigation and potential inclusion on terrorist watch lists.  Similarly, universities, colleges and secondary schools were similarly enjoined to purge their libraries and abandon any courses of study involving science fiction or fantasy, again using the threat of loss of funding.
The Act concluded by defining a second broad category of works -- including, among other things, anything covering spaceflight or computers -- which themselves were not banned but whose possession or consumption were considered indicative of potential "terrorist" tendencies requiring attention by Homeland Security.
Because of its multiple invocations of DHS, and because of the 2008 White House guidelines that classified all matters involving the Fen and Handwavium as issues of national security, the bill was quietly referred to the House Committee on Homeland Security.
=== Senate Version ===
Parallel to the Act's introduction in the House, several senators who shared Happery and her co-sponsors' anti-Fen views -- most notably [[Wallace Webster] (R-NH) and [[Kendall Dixon] (D-NJ) (who would later go on to sponsor the ill-fated [[Federal Land Theft Protection Act of 2012]) -- began drafting their own version of the bill, based on a late draft of the Act passed to them by Happery's office.  Surviving copies of their original drafts clearly show the influence of Happery's bill in the Senate bill's structure and organization, although its authors obviously made a point of rewriting almost all of its language.  While no less aggressive and restrictive than H.R. 451, the Senate bill would have been more polished and sophisticated in its approach -- "a stiletto rather than a bludgeon" as Davis Melchik of Public Policy Watch described it.
However, the Senate version of the Act was never finished.  Its authors were some pages short of a complete first draft (and had not yet requested aid from the Senate Office of Legislative Counsel) when the firestorm over Happery's bill erupted.  Despite having publicly declared their support for H.R. 451 and their intent to submit a similar bill, the senators involved in the effort abandoned the effort (some immediately, the rest over the space of several weeks) once the scale of the public and corporate opposition to the Subversive Literature Act became obvious.  
== Reactions ==
It is entirely likely that the bill would have made it into committee unnoticed save for Happery's ego and eagerness for recognition.  Upon the introduction of H.R. 451, Happery left the House floor and swept into the Congressional press pool offices to trumpet her first piece of legislation to the reporters on duty.  Distributing paper copies of the Act to the reporters there, Happery proudly declared that it would "permanently cripple the Fen and their efforts to recruit good Christian youngsters to their unholy cause".
Multiple news outlets dutifully -- and in some cases ''eagerly'' -- reported on the new bill within the next 24 hours; most of them treated it as a "silly-season" type of story and took an approach along the lines of "Freshman Representative hopes to criminalize most of American pop culture".  While several political bloggers immediately reacted with vociferous outrage, it took several more days for a reaction to begin percolating through the nation, accelerating dramatically when the full text of the Act was posted on the House website.  
Outside of those few who were able to get their hands on a paper copy, the early reactions were generally skepticism and disbelief that the Bill could actually be as extreme as the initial reports claimed.  However, a few days after the Act was posted on the Web, several news organizations and civil liberties groups had all finished reviewing it; analyses of just exactly what it was designed to do and how it proposed to do it became headline news on the Web, TV and newspapers all across the country.
The response was vociferous and overwhelming.
The ACLU, the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the National Coalition Against Censorship joined together to take out full-page ads in newspapers in every major market -- and ''every'' newspaper in Washington, DC -- opposing the Act and reminding Congress of the importance of the First Amendment.  The New York Times published a front-page editorial entitled "Outlawing Imagination and Progress" in its January 25 Sunday edition in which it excoriated both the Act and Happery; within a week it had been reprinted in newspapers all across the nation.
Media firms with significant income from SF/F properties -- most notably among them Lucasfilms, Paramount, Warner Brothers and Disney, along with the Big Four book publishers -- began bombarding Congress members, warning of the economic impact that the bill would have, and most if not all threatened to move their operations overseas and abandon the American market entirely if the Act went to vote.  In particular, representatives of both Universal Studios and The Walt Disney Company noted that under the Act their theme parks would at best be considered gathering places for potential terrorists (and thus subject to DHS surveillance), and at worst would be outlawed outright.  Either way, both corporations pointed out, they would have to shutter their parks, with subsequent local economic consequences.
In reaction to the bill's linking of computer books and subversive activities, a coalition of Silicon Valley corporations along with  also acted quickly to oppose the proposed legislation. Apple and Microsoft worked together on an ad campaign informally called "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC, and we're both being branded as terrorists", which was heavily promoted on Facebook, Netflix, Hulu, and Google starting on January 25. The same day Amazon and eBay added click-through banners to their systems saying that they would have to "go black" if the bill was passed.
They weren't alone in going to the public with advertising campaigns and public service announcements.  Even as Disney representatives were informing Congress that the most American of entertainment companies would pick up and move all of its operations overseas should the bill even come to a vote, the House of Mouse was already finalizing a devatating campaign which hit the airwaves before the end of the month.  In each of a dozen different spots, an iconic clip from a Disney film was slowly blacked out as a voice-over ominously recited passages from the Act which applied to the work.  Finally, over a black screen, the voice-over concluded with, "Congress wants to turn you and your child's happiest memories into crimes.  Tell them no."  Along with these commercials was a series of full-color print ads featuring doe-eyed children asking questions such as "Why can't we read fairy tales anymore, mommy?", "Why can't I sing along with Elsa anymore, daddy?" and "Why can't we go to Disneyland?" in bold print; below them in each appeared the same answer, "Because Congress says it's terrorism", followed by a plain-English explanation of the Act and exhorting citizens to contact their Congresspersons to express their opposition to it.
Perhaps the most memorable anti-Act commercial was fielded by DC Comics.  Featuring Brandon Routh reprising his 2006 role as Superman, it portrayed a resigned Man of Steel arrested, manacled and imprisoned by sinister "men in black"-style Federal agents, who then slam a cell door emblazoned "Terrorist" on him; the spot ended with the text "Stop the Subversive Literature Act" fading in over the door.  It appeared more than a dozen times during prime time on each of the major networks between April and May 2009, and racked up over 20 million views on YouTube.
More quietly -- and possibly more effectively -- Brocade, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Hitachi, HP, IBM, NetApp, Oracle, Seagate, Symantec, and Western Digital pointed out to their government clients that the legislation's wording regarding publications about computers included training materials and documentation for their high-capacity network and data-storage hardware. As a result, if the bill passed, Homeland Security, DOD, and NSA would be required to either forego receiving training and support for their mission-critical computer systems or list ''themselves'' as potential terrorist organizations -- the companies would have no legal choice but to report them as clients and thus suspicious. All three departments quickly referred their suppliers' concerns to their political masters, who were unable to convince Happery to accept amendments to the bill.
(Since the bill claims that F&SF is "inflammatory speech" citing ''Brandenburg v. Ohio'' as a precedent for unconstitutionality is a common talking point http://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/492, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio )
Sadly, I can see one of their constituents who very vehemently "Did not vote for that jackass" cheerily burning a stack of "innocuous" books like Alice in Wonderland, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and Bibles to "... [get] ready for when [Childish opponent nickname]'s law passes."
Spielberg, Lucas etc. hold press conference to denounce Happery.
Mention Gordon Van Gelder of F&SF.
Even FOX News is terribly unsympathetic to her, as FOX owns several very profitable SF/F properties, not the least of which are the X-Men movies.))
=== Happery's responses ===
((Makes a number of appearances on news TV, radio, etc. and demonstrates very clearly that she suffers from a profound cultural tunnelvision.  She's of the strain of evangelical Christian that distributed tracts warning about the "dangers" of ''Bewitched'' and ''I Dream of Jeannie'' in the 60s-70s, organized campaigns against D&D in the 1980s, and were behind the "Satanic Child Abuse" flap in the 1990s -- basically disconnected from the American Pop Cultural Mainstream except where something that might be "satanic" comes to their attention.  "Satanic" meaning in this case "not obviously biblical, and involving more imagination and/or critical thinking than we want our children to have".  
Even on FOX News she comes across as a whacko, especially once she starts ranting about a vast Satanic conspiracy out to silence her, and how any space exploration is a sin because it involves throwing impure mortal constructions into Heaven, which is just beyond the clouds in the sky, and how wherever the Fen are it can't be outer space which doesn't really exist, so since it's not on earth it must actually be a part of Hell disguising itself as the fairy story scientists actively deceive the world exists past the sky, how Science Fiction, Comic Books, Handwavium and, well, everything else are all actually a fiendish plot by the Forces of Hell to corrupt good Christians and so on.  Even Bill O'Reilly thinks she's off her rocker after one too many rants.))
((SNL gets Dana Carvey to guest star and portray Happery as the Church Lady after one such appearance on FOX.  Naturally, she threatens to sue, but doesn't follow through, presumably because someone explains the nature of satire and being a public figure to her.))
== Congressional Reaction ==
Once the contents of the Act became widely spread -- and explained -- in American media, Happery's co-sponsors began disassociating themselves from it and her as quickly as they could.  Several -- including [[Cecil Montag] (D-GA), [[Ruby McClellan] (R-IA) and [[Danforth Beatty] (R-AK) -- held press conferences where they attempted damage control.  Having determined that the potential damage to their political careers from the Act outweighed that which would be caused by obvious cronyism or looking careless, they chose the latter course and publicly admitted to signing onto the bill without reading it first.  One Representative actually claimed that his name was added to the bill by Happery without his knowledge or consent.
Meanwhile, on the floor of the House, Happery became a pariah.  Representatives on both sides of the aisle stopped answering her calls, and refused to speak to her in person.  
(which only fuels her "conspiracy" talk).  The Republicans take a huge hit (somewhat unfairly, since there were Democratic co-sponsors, although they do get their share of unwelcome attention and blame) as would-be censors and cultural police who would deprive children of fairy tales and Disney movies because they don't like the Fen.
The bill vanishes into committee and never reappears, while politicians from both parties quietly meet with reps from the various industries and other groups to reassure them that the SLA is dead and buried and Happery is never going to be allowed to submit legislation again without a minder making sure it's not utterly insane.  This mollifies (most of) the groups, and so the RNC doesn't suffer too much for Happery's behavior, but they now have incentive not to pursue cultural "solutions" to the Fen "problem".  
However, Happery and all the co-sponsors are now on the radar of civil liberties bodies like the ACLU, and the ones that remain in Congress never quite get out of the spotlight, for good or bad.
Meanwhile in February 2009, after one too many disastrous TV appearances, Happery and the rest of the Kansas delegation get called on the carpet by the party.  She's a liability, doing more damage than good.  The Republican brand is dependent on not looking like absolute lunatics, and she's damaging it with her behavior.  Meanwhile, the rest of the Kansas delegation failed to integrate her with the party framework in Congress, and didn't properly rein her in after she started harassing other members of Congress.  They are told outright that the party is assigning her a babysitter for the rest of her time in Congress, whom she must hire on as part of her staff -- firing someone if necessary to meet the staff size limit.  She'll be allowed to co-sponsor the occasional bill, but she's no longer allowed to submit her own legislation or operate without party oversight.  And come 2010, she will get no party support for re-election.))
== Suit Against OLC and Jaye Creed ==
In 2011, after her departure from the House, Happery sued Jaye Creed for defamation, claiming that the OLC attorney had in fact dramatically rewritten her original text for the Act as a deliberate act of sabotage.  The lawsuit was withdrawn when Newsome (who had had a falling out with Happery toward the end of her tenure as a Representative), produced a handwritten first draft of Act which other than for spelling and grammar corrections was all but identical to the final version introduced to the House.  The draft was signed and dated by Happery on January 3, 2009.  Happery claimed it was a forgery, but handwriting experts testified that it was in her hand, and Newsome was able to provide the document's provenance, including full chain-of-custody evidence reaching back into Happery's own archives.
{{gazetteer}}{{Mundania}}[[Category:Government][[Categoryanelaw government][[Category:Fen History][[Category:Fen Politics] 
anti-Fen Jack Chick tracts?
--------------------Page on Susan Happery
[[File:Sue-Happy.png]
'''Susan "Sue-Happy" Happery''' (born March 22, 1971) was a U.S. Representatve for Kansas' 4th Congressional District, serving from 2009 to 2011.  She was (and continues to be) a member of the Republican Party.  Prior to her single Congressional term she held several local and state offices in Kansas.  After submitting the ill-fated [[Subversive Literature Act of 2009] to Congress and a subsequent public meltdown, Happery lost the support of both the Kansas and National Republican Parties, which threw their support behind Mike Pompeo as her successor.  After the end of her term she returned to Kansas and local-level politics.
== Early life, education and career ==
Born '''Susan Christine Eckert''' in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, she was the only child of Louise Stephanie (née Hummon) and Dennis Charles Eckert.  Her father owned a chain of laundromats in Barber County, Kansas, and intermittently served on the Medicine Lodge city council between 1970 and his death in 2008.  She attended Medicine Lodge Junior-Senior High School.  She went on to receive an Associates Degree in Education from Central Christian College of Kansas in McPherson, KS in 1991, where she met her husband Lawrence Happery.  The couple were wed in 1992.
((no children, Lawrence killed in auto accident in 1993.  Happery lives comfortably off family money and survivor benefits, and works/worked part-time as a substitute teacher for the Barber County North school system.
Church membership since child.  Extreme "separatist" Evangelicalism, of the type that builds its own parallel subculture with media, music and whatnot.  Grew very active after husband's death.))
=== Christian activism ===
((suffers from evangelical Christian cultural tunnel-vision ("Star Track? Star Wars? Aren't those popular only with terrorists and teenaged misfits living in their parents' cellars?") and who wants to defund NASA because it contradicts the Gospel. ))
((She got into politics by way of a series of lawsuits filed against just about anything she didn't like with the help of a couple lawyers from her church, hence her nickname.  She got her start by successfully getting independent comic shops shut down in her home county in the middle 1990s.  After the beginning of the Handwavium age she spearheaded lawsuits that tried to shut down SF conventions in and near Kansas, like ConQuest (http://www.conquestkc.org/) and Kansas City Comic Con (http://www.kansascity-comiccon.com/), tried to get anime banned from Kansas libraries, and attacked the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas (http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/), calling for the arrest and trial of KU professor and noted SF author James Gunn as a subversive.
Sometimes her objections were combined with or disguised as budgetary/fiscal responsibility, anti-entitlement or other "small-government" shibboleths, even when it made no sense in context.
Dubbed "Sue-Happy" by The Wichita Eagle in 2001.
))
== Early political career ==
((This brought her to the attention of RNC organizers in Kansas, who saw the attractive and passionate thirty-something soccer mom as an ideal candidate and talked her into running for office.  State-level office before congress?  map out a good career path.  Presidential ambitions?))
((Local school board?))
== U.S. House of Representatives ==
((Elected to Congress November 2008, took office 5 (?) January 2009, submitted the SLA on 18 Jan 2009.  (check date new reps were sworn in in 2009)
No committee memberships, no other legislation submitted.))
=== Legislation ===..... [[Subversive Literature Act of 2009]
=== Disgrace and fall ===
((Deprived entirely of support from the RNC, she failed in her bid for re-election in November 2010, not even making it past state primaries when the national party favored a less-insane person with funding and media coverage.
RNC "babysitter".))
== Post-congressional life ==
((Returns home in December 2010 and takes up her old hobbies and career again, but after her congressional self-destruct, she's now a local figure of ridicule/pity and a warning to the other extreme Christians in Kansas, who learn from her and adjust their tactics to look more reasonable.))
=== Suit Against Office of Legislative Counsel and Jaye Creed ===
In 2011 Happery sued Jaye Creed, an attorney from the House of Representatives Office of Legislative Counsel, for defamation.  Creed was the OLC attorney assigned to advise Happery on drafting the Subversive Literature Act, who later testified that her professional opinion was ignored and that she was ordered to rubberstamp the bill.  Happery claimedthat the Creed had in fact dramatically rewritten her original text for the Act as a deliberate act of sabotage, turning it into the bill as proposed.  The lawsuit was withdrawn when Happery's former chief of staff Benjamin Newsome (who had had a falling out with Happery toward the end of her tenure as a Representative), produced a handwritten first draft of Act which other than for spelling and grammar corrections was all but identical to the final version introduced to the House.  The draft was signed and dated by Happery on January 3, 2009.  Happery claimed it was a forgery, but handwriting experts testified that it was in her hand, and Newsome was able to provide the document's provenance, including full chain-of-custody evidence reaching back into Happery's own archives.
-- a 1-term freshman Representative who basically loses all RNC support after she makes them look bad with the SLA.  A know-nothing housewife-turned-Representative who 
Dont forget to mention SNL lampoon -- Dana Carvey as the Church Lady, dressed in something distinctive -- a favorite cardigan or something?
{{gazetteer}}{{Mundania}}[[Category:Government][[Categoryanelaw government]
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

One first bills of the 111th United States Congress,

One of the first bills of the 111th United States Congress,

== Suit Against OLC and Jaye Creed ==

In 2011, after her departure from the House, Happery sued Jaye Creed for defamation, claiming that the OLC attorney had in fact dramatically rewritten her original text for the Act as a deliberate act of sabotage. The lawsuit was withdrawn when Newsome (who had had a falling out with Happery toward the end of her tenure as a Representative), produced a handwritten first draft of Act which other than for spelling and grammar corrections was all but identical to the final version introduced to the House. The draft was signed and dated by Happery on January 3, 2009. Happery claimed it was a forgery, but handwriting experts testified that it was in her hand, and Newsome was able to provide the document's provenance, including full chain-of-custody evidence reaching back into Happery's own archives.

Jaye Creed also produced copies of the email chains related to the proposed legislation, which included the "a glorified proofreader and nothing more" quote. These had been backed up with "legal hold" software (preserving their admissibility in Federal court) - which Ms. Happery represented as both proof that anything related to computers was a potential "terrorist" threat and yet another part of the conspiracy against her.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[LynnInDenver]

And the least insane of her claims during interviews was that the F-SF conventions in the United States were little better than recruitment and training camps for the terrorist Fen. This did nothing to endear her to the media conglomerates that send representatives to events like San Diego Comic Con.

Discovery Channel did a few spots of their own, starring all five of the Mythbusters, where they stated that their own show, even their careers, would be ruled criminal under the SLA. This is one of the few times Jamie Hyneman could be said to be "animated" on television... and it wasn't the schoolgirl giggle of an upcoming explosion.
--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor

[Bob Schroeck]

Added! Thank you!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[InsaneTD]

Maybe mention that several of the more prominent schools and colleges went and quietly spoke to alumni in DC about what the bill would mean? Probably overkill to include it. It would happen though.

[M Fnord]

Hm... some critique:

I think Happery is leaning a little too hard into the Christian elements in general. I get that she's supposed to be the crazy fundamentalist but even the wackier types currently serving OTL are capable of couching their terms in ways that don't make them out as total nutjobs 90% of the time. For example:

Distributing paper copies of the Act to the reporters there, Happery proudly declared that it would "permanently cripple the Fen and their efforts to recruit good Christian youngsters to their unholy cause".

A better quote would be something like "this act will protect our nation from the threat of international terrorism and significantly damage the terrorists' efforts to recruit impressionable young Americans." Dogwhistling is an art, and fundamentalist politicians are very good at it. Even the crazy ones. Likewise, most of her Satanic conspiracy theory madness is... well, it feels wrong. I wouldn't be surprised to find that somebody believes that space travel is a lie cooked up by Satan, but I'd be very surprised if they were willing to share that publicly and get elected, even in the reddest of red districts. A lot of what Happery starts going off on in the later phases of the counter-reaction is stuff that ought not to have gotten her elected in the first place. She needs to get dialed back a little, make the conspiracy less openly about Satan and more about the Fen and "liberal Hollywood bigwigs" and so forth. Which, y'know, isn't that far from the truth.

On the subject of the reaction, while it's really goddamned satisfying to read it could also get dialed back a little. The Disney, Warner/DC and tech bloc stuff hit pretty hard as it is, some of the more minor protests could get cut as needed. Also, choose one of two pullquotes for the firestorm:

"The Subversive Literature Act is the greatest act of political self-immolation in American history. Never before has a politician destroyed herself so thoroughly so quickly for so little." --Momo von Satan, Earth-Fen Relations: A History of Bullshit

"The entertainment industry is the last realm in which the US still holds unquestioned dominance. As they used to say back on the farm, 'you fuck with the bull, you get the horns.'" --Gen. Mal Fnord, VVS

Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, do I have to choose just one? They're both good. Maybe one as a pullquote for the entire article -- Momo's, probably -- and Mal's for the reaction section.

And you make good points. I would probably have thinned the crop a bit for the final draft; I'm still feeling my way through.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[JakeGrey]

Come to think of it, wouldn't a decent fraction of the original Tea Party -ie the actual genuine libertarians and rugged-individualist types- have jumped on the 'waved bandwagon and be on their way to the Belt by 2009, or at least be some of the leading proponents of lifting any and all restrictions on handwavium ownership and usage?

[robkelk]

Come to think of it, wouldn't a decent fraction of the original Tea Party -ie the actual genuine libertarians and rugged-individualist types- have jumped on the 'waved bandwagon and be on their way to the Belt by 2009, or at least be some of the leading proponents of lifting any and all restrictions on handwavium ownership and usage?

Hmmmmm... We have mentioned "Pournelle Fen", but we've never done anything with them...

(And until you posted that, I hadn't thought of Noah Scott being an original-flavor Tea Party type - and I still don't, but he definitely has opinions in common with them.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[JakeGrey]

And then at the other end of the spectrum (sort of), we have Occupy... or not, because a huge chunk of them would be going Up as well. And not just to the VVS or the Federation, because you'd be surprised how much some of the people I met at an Occupy protest agreed with the saner original-flavour Teabaggers on.

In fact, I wonder if there aren't a few good stories in an Upwards brain drain, with a greater and greater percentage of the young, ambitious and well-educated leaving for better opportunities spaceside and leaving their home nations with just those too poor, too stubborn or too scared to leave.

[Bob Schroeck]

That's a classic effect of a new frontier on a society with a calcified social/economic order. You're all right, we ought to have something like that happening.

Speaking of things that happen, I just realized that there's another unexpected by-blow of the SLA: by having such a broad definition of the genre(s) as to include fairy tales, and declaring them legally obscene, that makes every parent who reads a fairy tale to their child a sex offender, with all the joy and happiness that entails in the American legal system...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.