One of my favorite targets for the ass-hat award, the normally-uber-swine Sam Brownback is on the right side of an internet freedom issue.
The Chinese government (enshrined with a permanent ass-hat award) monitors all internet service in the country, and has required foreign-owned hotels to install snooping equipment. Sam Brownback is outraged and held a press conference.
No mention was made, during the grandstanding, of the Bush Administration’s monitoring of animal rights, environmental and poverty relief activists, as documented by files released in 2005 as a result of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union. (In those cases, the monitoring was done by the FBI.) (source)
