From a group called the United States Justice Foundation:
The FCC is ready to add the Internet to its “portfolio” of regulated industries. The Obama Administration wants to take control of the Internet tomorrow! (even though the regulations won’t “officially” go into effect until after the holidays). FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that he has circulated “draft rules” that he says will “preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet.” No statement—I call it a bald face lie—reflects the vast gulf between the rhetoric and the reality of Obama Administration policy.
Obama’s FCC is ready to steal our Internet freedom by simply declaring it has the “right” to regulate it. Here’s the underlying problem for Barack Obama. Internet journalists tend to report the news without coloring it with the brush of “political correctness.” They challenge the lies that the Obama Administration puts out that the so-called “mainstream media” simply accept and repeat as the truth.
Please, CLICK HERE to send a FAX to every single Member of Congress TODAY, and tell them that they need to exercise their Constitutional authority and oversight over the FCC, by insisting that the FCC postpone the implementation of these new regulations until proper Congressional Committee hearings are held to determine whether the Executive Branch has the Constitutional authority to take over the Internet. Three federal judges in three different cases have already ruled that the Internet deserves the same protection under the First Amendment as printed material receives […]
We must be prepared to do battle with the intrusive FCC federal regulations that will clamp down on our 1st Amendment rights via the Internet. To protect our free speech rights on the Internet, we must fax every single Member of Congress and let them know they must NOT agree to tomorrow’s — December 21st– regulations! Will you do that for yourself and for the rest of us… today—please? This is so important; let me repeat my request so that you understand the extreme urgency. Because, historically, when government seizes liberty, it’s gone forever.
[…]
YOUR First Amendment rights are at stake within hours!
More here, from Mark Tapscott:
Last April, a federal court told the Federal Communications Commission that it has no business regulating the Internet. Unfortunately, judicial rejection of the commission’s first swing at the “net neutrality” ball — the idea the FCC must regulate the Internet to insure everybody has equal access — didn’t deter Obama’s FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, from taking another whack. He’s bringing a new set of proposed net neutrality regulations to the five-member panel Tuesday. Unfortunately, nobody knows any details of the new proposal because Genachowski has kept them secret until the last possible minute even as he rushed them forward for a vote. How ironic that the Internet, the great and empowering liberator of information that “wants to be free,” is being chopped up behind closed doors by an unelected panel. Note, too, that this is being considered by the FCC on the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year.
In their net neutrality quest, Genachowski and two of his fellow Democratic appointees are working to expand government power into an area where the commission has no jurisdiction, under the guise of solving a problem that does not exist. Meredith Baker, a Republican FCC appointee, summarized the situation well: “We have two branches of government — Congress and the courts — expressing grave concerns with our agency becoming increasingly unmoored from our statutory authority. By seeking to regulate the Internet now, we exceed the authority Congress has given us and justify those concerns.” Incoming House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., has called on the FCC to “cease and desist.”
This exercise in government opacity and overreach is already damaging the economy. As major telecommunications and Internet service companies prepare to roll out new fourth generation (4G) wireless service for millions of customers, these unelected bureaucratic commissars are recklessly creating doubt about the future value and profitability of those companies’ investments. They are also discouraging future investments that need to be made for the Internet to continue its phenomenal growth.
Federal courts will almost certainly strike down anything the FCC adopts Tuesday, just as they did earlier this year. Congress will also have its chance to undo Genachowski’s handiwork through the Congressional Review Act. But why should we have to go this far to rein in a government agency supposedly run by people who took an oath to “support and defend” our Constitution?
The Constitution is a dead letter document, is why.
It means whatever it can be made to mean. Such is the end game of certain notions of interpretation and how it works.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Live coverage of the hearings at FoxNews website
Aren’t you glad you’ve got Jim Clyburn’s daughter Filet
looking out for youin charge of the internet?right now they are talking about Next Generation 911 — text messages or pictures into 911 emergency centers
I have no idea how long these hearings will be going on … I’ll try monitoring it from time to time, but these kind of things may have me snoozing on my keyboard and it’s only 8 in the morning here!
The USJF says, “Obama’s FCC is ready to steal our Internet freedom by simply declaring it has the “right” to regulate it.”
Mr. Tapsoctt says that, “Genachowski and two of his fellow Democratic appointees are working to expand government power into an area where the commission has no jurisdiction.”
On the other hand, Mitch McConnell’s statement on the matter today lacks an assertion that the FCC doesn’t have the right to regulate the internet.
Team R needs leaders that fight.
Abolish the FCC.
wireless people now before the commission
Mitch McConnell is on the list of those who need to be eased out.
Michael Copps is babbling now about how the FCC must save the openess of the Internet from the “monopolistic gatekeepers” who are poised over the ‘net’s “choke points”.
And he has the chutzpah to compare this to when ATT controlled the phone lines, which was protected by the FCC
I haven’t had any trouble getting internet access. Has anyone else here had a problem, other than some crappy providers?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
The only “choke points” are these unelected regulators. They make me gag.
Eased out, I dunno, he’s looking more like one of those old bolts so rusted in place it has to have its nut burnt off and sledged out.
Whoa
next commissioner up and he’s publicly spanking the commission saying his colleagues are defying the court AND congress and trying to do a power grab just before Christmas…
wow
found his name … Robert McDowell.
I hope someone is getting a transcript of his remarks
If McConnell won’t be eased out, he’ll be chiseled out. Either way he’s got to go, since he apparently doesn’t get it. He’s been there so long he’s only worried about process.
I WASN’T WARNED!!!
Mignon Clyburn just pulled the race card …
Meredith Baker is also strongly against “Net Neutrality”
Eased out, I dunno, he’s looking more like one of those old bolts so rusted in place it has to have its nut burnt off and sledged out.
SquidCo® brand torches are perfect for burning the nuts off of crusty legislators and over-reaching regulators. Express shipping available! Call now to avoid disappointment!
If we, or the commissioners in our stead, stand back from the immediate issue here, to look at the general condition of this dispute, we, or they, would see a clear disagreement between two factions where the minority representing one view in the committee may very well be constituted by the backing of a majority of the people themselves, or even if not a majority of the people, still a quite substantial number of the people. Such a condition ought under any circumstances to give the majority voting members of the committee pause to reconsider their intention to press their views regardless of the views of their opponents; to seek to ameliorate or compromise with their opponents in order to diminish the possibility their ruling will become tyrannical on its face.
Yet, do they, the committee majority, take this view? Not so far as we can see. Something of ordinary prudence is missing here.
sdferr
Baker pointed out she and her team didn’t get to see the rules they are voting on today until 11:30pm LAST NIGHT.
Plus, we the public, won’t be getting to see the rules for several days
So much for transparency
It just appears to be a jam job entirely like the jam jobs we’ve been witnessing from the Congress for the last year, with the strength in the committee loudly la-la-la-ing with their fingers in their ears: “We can’t hear you!”
Time was, I swear, shit like this didn’t happen solely on the grounds I outlined above. Majorities knew better than to shoot themselves this way.
ugh, just walked by the big screen here at work and it’s on CNN. at first I saw it said “You’re internet at risk” and thought, “cool”. but when I passed by again it said “FCC protecting internet access for all”. nuts.
How exactly did Ms Clyburn manage to inject race into this?
Oh, and fuck off FCC.
JD
She played the race card about how minority communities “disproportionately” use mobile ‘net access and she doesn’t think the rules they are passing today are strict enough over those carriers…but at least the FCC is setting a precedent and they will keep a sharp on wireless so they can get ’em too if they start any shennigans …
like they’ll need an excuse …
Oh good Allah. Fuck you Ms Patronage. And fuck your tyrannical little fucking liberal assbandit buddies at the FCC.
So many agencies crying out, “Defund me before I rape liberty again”. They should be listened to and given a compassionate dose of Kevorkian care, soon, sooner, soonest.
I think the current government class is begging for someone else to shoot them.
I denounce myself, etc.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
“I wasn’t warned.”
Now what?
John Fund on the who’s behind this.