Rep. Hartgen is a fool and solving social problems with technical solutions is a fool's errand. Anonymous comments can be nasty, yes. But passing a law to make them non-anonymous wouldn't change much because even if "Larry Myers" is really "Larry Myers" you, internet reader, still don't know him and he would suffer no stigma even if he said really dumb things. At the end of the day civilized society comes down to the threat of being punched in the face for transgressions, and Larry isn't risking that.

Rep. Hartgen, as a newspaperman, should also know that the American Revolution would have been impossible without "anonymous postings" in newspapers. I can't heap enough casual scorn on the guy for proposing a law that is not only unenforceable but is a destroyer of liberty.

There are known ways to encourage using real names on the internet and that is by offering social rewards. On the Python mailing lists (the computer language) using real names is encouraged. People who use nicknames are given lower priority by convention. There is also a punch-in-the-face danger because you pay a social cost at the many Python conventions if you post under a nickname (and if you're an anonymous dick don't bother showing up at all).

The python list had the interesting case of "Reinhold Birkenfeld;" a German who had contributed two years of work. As it turns out he started when he was sixteen and had adopted a pseudonym to be safer on the internet. When he went to college he revealed his real name and it wasn't a big deal - the good reputation he had built up was transfered to his new work. If Rep. Hartgen had his way Reinhold wouldn't have contributed at all. Guido van Rossum (python's originator) put it so

Someone who signs [the contributor] form "Tim Peters" won't be stopped by a clause asking them to use their real name, *really*.