Tom Corbett Hates Free Speech

Tom Corbett won a convincing victory on Tuesday in the Republican primary for governor of Pennsylvania. Corbett is the state’s Attorney General. He is known for aggressive prosecution of state officials (from both parties) and for joining the lawsuit against health care reform. He’s making waves again, this time by trying to subpoena Twitter to find the identity of some critics.

The subpoena orders Twitter to provide “any and all subscriber information” of the person(s) behind two accounts – @bfbarbie and @CasaBlancaPA – who have been anonymously criticizing the man on the popular micro-sharing service.

…

The account @CasaBlancaPA, whose owner is identified as ‘Signor Ferrari’ (a criminal in the film Casablanca, played by Sydney Greenstreet) on Twitter, links to this blog in the bio section. The blog, hosted on Google’s Blogger service, is dedicated to “exposing the hypocrisy of Tom Corbett” according to its subtitle.

Some choice tweets that may have gotten the @CasaBlancaPA account owner in trouble:

– “Is it wrong to mix campaign work with taxpayer business? Apparently not when Tom Corbett does it bonusgate #pagovrace” (tweet, blog post)

– “Corbett erupts at campaign event; security tries to eject questioner #bonusgate #pagovrace” (tweet, blog post)

– “Quiz! Who sputters with indignation over failure to recuse from cases involving contributors? #bonusgate #pagovrace” (tweet, blog post)

Polls have shown that Pennsylvanians have not paid much attention to the governor’s race. Could this be why Corbett is doing this? If so, he picked a bad way to introduce himself to voters. He looks thin-skinned and petty.