Our First Amendment rights are being eroded a little bit at a time, day by day, without our even noticing. A friend of mine recently posted a link to an article on MSNBC. It was a cautionary article about future employers asking for your password(!!) on Facebook and other social sites so they can look through your internet life, as it were. Seriously? Am I the only person that thinks this is totally absurd? The answer, the one I gave, was that no one should want to work for someone that would require this surrendering of our First Amendment rights. It is a threatening request, and one we should be concerned about.

So if the potential employer doesn't like what you said in a internet social site, you might not get the job? That is absolutely what they are saying! Fine, ask for a reference. Check out the legitimacy of your posted college degree. Talk to your past employers. But wanting to know how many times you said fuck, or argued that Republicans, in your opinion, are assholes, on Facebook? What possible bearing could that have on whether or not you make good widgets, wash cars thoroughly, defend a big business client in court or teach 4th grade? None.

I don't want to hear the argument that, for instance, you are an elementary school teacher and your students or parents might see your page and know that you drink shots of Jager every weekend with your drunken friends. You know what, it's simple: set your page to private for god's sake!! No one has to know that about you. Ah ha! Unless of course, your future employer does! How voyeuristic of them. Maybe they also want to come to my house to take a look at my bookshelf. It's a slippery slope, and one we pay attention to.

This is just one of many blogs I'll write about my favorite amendment. But I'll end this one the way I will end them all. Be careful. It's the little erosion that can, one day, and has already, end up taking bigger shares of your rights than you thought possible, one tiny little bit of your rights at a time. One is a tiny little number. But add to that 1 quarter, plus one 18th, plus one 24th, plus one 1,000th and suddenly it can equal a lot more than one. A number, and an amendment, that we should all be keeping an eye on.