A bill proposed to allow government censorship of the internet IN THE US

While we have been talking about censorship in the Chinese, Indian and Arab media in class, this looks like a case where the US government is perhaps trying to censor what Internet pages people in the US are allowed to view as well. A bill is in the works that would allow the US government to blacklist websites at their discretion, disallowing US Internet users from seeing them. This is something so controversial it seems as though it should be visible in mainstream media, but mainstream media doesn't appear to be reporting on the issue at all. Is this a case of government agenda setting? Media agenda setting (why wouldn't mainstream media conglomerates quietly support legislation that would help silence the fringe voices)? What is going on and how could something like this be happening so under the radar? I am curious if this is something that other people in the class have heard about and if so in what context. One of the articles I read about it claims that legislators "haven't heard much in the way of objections." It seems to me that people would be objecting if they knew about it. How have the people pushing the bill forward managed to keep it so well under wraps? The only sites that I have found reporting on it are independent blogs and websites I had never heard of previously. When I searched keywords in conjunction with "NY Times" all that came up is a kind of a non-page in the politics section recording that the bill had been introduced and by whom. Is this not a case in which the idea of "press responsibility" comes into play? This is obviously of interest to the public, and a situation in which we count on the media to make us aware of what is going on in the government.

This is a quote from the site that is linked at the bottom of the page that offers a petition to sign against the bill.

"Just the other day, President Obama urged other countries to stop censoring the Internet. But now the United States Congress is trying to censor the Internet here at home. A new bill being debated would have the Attorney General create an Internet blacklist of sites that US Internet providers would be required to block. This is the kind of heavy-handed censorship you'd expect from a dictatorship, where one man can decide what web sites you're not allowed to visit. But the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to pass the bill as soon as they get back after the election -- and Senators say they haven't heard much in the way of objections! That's why we need you to sign our urgent petition to Congress demanding they oppose the Internet blacklist." http://demandprogress.org/blacklist/?source=etaf