When the People’s Republic of China began cracking down on its citizens and their internet access a few years ago, many civil libertarians and human rights activists issued dire warnings.  They cautioned us that various forms of government and corporate-assisted censorship would eventually find their way to American shores. They were right. Censorship is alive and well in the land of the so-called “free.”  George Orwell’s “1984” has very much become reality, albeit 25 years after the British novelist’s ominous forecast.  Minnesota, of all places, has become the new Oceania. Recently, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, through its Gambling Enforcement Division, instructed several major telephone companies and internet service providers (ISPs) to block access from computers based in Minnesota to hundreds of online gambling websites.  The list of companies that were notified in the public advisory included AT&T, Comcast, Direct TV, Embarq, Sprint/Nextel, Qwest, Verizon, and others. What all this means is a few un-elected and inaccessible bureaucrats in Minnesota are about to take a butcher knife to the freedoms of 5,197,621 residents of their state.  Minnesota’s online poker players are about to run head-on into a massive firewall cemented by Big Brother, with many of America’s largest corporations faithfully holding ...