Fitzeroni!

Fitz…

Fitz u are

Impeach the Chimp Update: California and Illinois lead the nation.

http://www.democrats.com/node/8696

California Becomes Second State to Introduce Bush Impeachment
Submitted by davidswanson on April 24, 2006 - 12:40am.Campaigns

By David Swanson

Joining Illinois, California has become the second state in which a proposal to impeach President Bush has been introduced in the state legislature. And this one includes Cheney as well.

California Assemblyman Paul Koretz of Los Angeles (where the LA Times has now called for Cheney’s resignation) has submitted amendments to Assembly Joint Resolution No. 39, calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney. The amendments reference Section 603 of Jefferson’s Manual of the Rules of the United States House of Representatives, which allows federal impeachment proceedings to be initiated by joint resolution of a state legislature.

The resolution, in the words of Koretz’s press release, “bases the call for impeachment upon the Bush Administration intentionally misleading the Congress and the American people regarding the threat from Iraq in order to justify an unnecessary war that has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives and casualties; exceeding constitutional authority to wage war by invading Iraq; exceeding constitutional authority by Federalizing the National Guard; conspiring to torture prisoners in violation of the ‘Federal Torture Act’ and indicating intent to continue such actions; spying on American citizens in violation of the 1978 Foreign Agency Surveillance Act; leaking and covering up the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, and holding American citizens without charge or trial.”

Koretz submitted amendments gutting AJR No. 39, a resolution unrelated to impeachment, to the Assembly Rules Committee. The Rules Committee may take up the bill this week for referral, allowing him to formally introduce the amended resolution.

AJR 39 is a bill introduced in January by Koretz calling for a moratorium on depleted uranium:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/.....104…

“At both the state and national levels,” Koretz said, “we will be paying for the Bush Administration’s illegal actions and terrible lack of judgment and competence for decades—not only in the billions of dollars wasted on the war and welfare for the rich, but in the worldwide loss of respect for America and Americans. Bush and Cheney must be impeached and removed from office before they undertake even deadlier misdeeds, such as the use of nuclear weapons. There are no bounds to their willingness to ignore the Constitution and world opinion—we can’t afford to wait for the next disaster and hope that we can survive it.”

For more inormation and to thank this American hero, contact Paul Michael Neuman in Koretz’s District Office: (310) 285-5490 paul.neuman@asm.ca.gov or go here:
http://democrats.assembly.ca.g.....ontact.htm

Here is a kit to help with promoting this resolution and with passing others in your towns and cities and states. Also on this page is information on activities in other states and localities:
http://www.impeachpac.org/resolutions

Get organized in California to pass this bill!
http://pdamerica.org/statecaucus.php?s=CA

Illinois Legislators Were First to Introduce Bill for Bush Impeachment

Three members of the Illinois General Assembly have introduced a bill that urges the General Assembly to submit charges to the U. S. House of Representatives to initiate impeachment proceedings against the President of the United States, George W. Bush, for willfully violating his Oath of Office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and if found guilty urges his removal from office and disqualification to hold any other office in the United States.

The Jefferson Manual of rules for the U.S. House of Representatives makes clear that impeachment proceedings can be initiated by a state legislature submitting charges. The state of Illinois is on its way toward forcing on the House what not a single one of its members has yet had the courage to propose: Articles of Impeachment.

The text of the Illinois bill and information on its status are available here:
http://tinyurl.com/nhs3r

The bill takes up the issues of illegal spying, torture, detentions without charge or trial, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, and the leaking of classified information.

Please thank these sponsors of the bill:

Rep. Karen A. Yarbrough, phone (217) 782-8120 or (708) 615-1747; fax (708) 615-1745

Rep Sara Feigenholtz , phone (217) 782-8062 or (773) 296-4141; fax (217) 557-7203 or (773) 296-0993

Rep. Eddie Washington phone (217) 558-1012 or (847) 623-0060, fax (847) 623-6078

Here is a kit to help with promoting this resolution and with passing others in your towns and cities. Also on this page is information on activities in other states and localities:
http://www.impeachpac.org/resolutions

Get organized in Illinois to pass this bill!
http://pdamerica.org/statecaucus.php?s=IL

This article
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/9249

Future updates:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org

BTW Taylor…

THANKS FOR ALL OF YOUR GREAT POSTS

Impeachment update — state efforts. Get your state on board.

http://www.democrats.com/node/8696

Call it what it is.. a modern day protection racket:

A protection racket is an extortion scheme whereby a powerful organization, most often a criminal organization or gang, coerces individuals or businesses to pay protection money which allegedly serves to purchase the organization’s “protection” services against various external threats, whereas usually the actual threat comes from the organization itself. Those who do not buy into the protection plan are often targeted by the organization and are harassed to try to force payment of the protection money.

http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/h

http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/hr2391

Thanks, Larry. It’s been such a pleasure.

More about a developing story from Raw Story that I mentioned in the previous thread:

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2....._0424.html

Retired chief justice for third circuit says Rumsfeld shows ‘disregard’ for military law

Filed by RAW STORY

John J. Gibbons, a former Chief Judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals appointed by President Richard Nixon and a former officer in the U.S. Navy, joined the chorus of critics attacking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Monday, RAW STORY has learned.

“As many distinguished experts have concluded, Donald Rumsfeld has failed in his job as Secretary of Defense,” Gibbons said in a statement released to RAW STORY. “I believe our security, our military and our rule of law have all suffered under his leadership.

“The recent disclosure of testimony from the Army Inspector General’s 391-page report from December 2005 indicates that Secretary Rumsfeld had far more knowledge of and responsibility for degrading and abusive treatment of my client than he previously acknowledged. The Army’s own reports reveal a Defense Secretary showing a disturbing disregard for military law.

“As a retired judge, a lawyer and a veteran, I have the utmost respect for our country’s laws and our commitment to civilian control of the military. Those obligations are consistent with an honest public debate about our country’s leadership and U.S. policy.”

(snip)

“The House Commerce Committee this coming Wednesday is set to vote to hand over the web to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast…. “

..is this the pay back for those pieholes that gave them NSA access?

Taylor,

I love it when women say that

via Raw Story– no details yet; wonder if the fox hole dems will come out now…

New Poll: Americans favor censuring Bush, 48-43%…

the attack on the internet is just gearing up. note abu gonzalez’s ‘child porn’ scare tactics and the resulting hysterical press coverage; the attacks against the hateful, angry leftie bloggers; the debate over 527s (who are heavily dependent on internet activism) — all to begin the marginalization of various groups.

the last thing washington pols want are engaged citizens. they much prefer the disengaged, disenchanted and non-voting citizen.

Hokayyy! You would *think* that the Democrats would see what a wonderful opportunity they have to “stick it to the Man” and oppose this for the “Greater Good”. But somehow, that isn’t working out too well. Would someone with more knowledge than myself please tell me WHY the Deomcrats aren’t out on the Capital steps holding press conferences about this issue? What is in it for them? Would they actually *like* for us to go away?

Taylor,

Sorry, I am just feeling so juvenile this morning

Oh, Larry… ;-)

Ahem, back on topic. This is what happened just last year…

Telus cuts subscriber access to pro-union website

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada.....50724.html

Bush-compliant broadband corporations could make irritants like FDL go away, ‘eh?

Sux.

Sounds like one of those single issue advocacy things to me - like the environment. As long as we all just vote Democratic everything will be all right. When did FDL turn into the Sierra Club?

/snark

Anyway, this was exactly the sort of thing I was talking about in the Sierra Club threads the other day. Can’t always trust politicians to do the right thing. Hope this teaches all of you to keep the aid flowing to groups like the EFF, even if they don’t always back a Democrat …

Portia,

Dem politicos are just as addicted to telco cash as anybody.

Money talks chickidees.

Merely being a Dem doesn’t automatically make you a good guy. Just not a “made” member of the Bush crime family.

AOL blocks e-mails with links to anti-AOL protest site

http://www.politechbot.com/200.....-blocks-e/

http://www.latimes.com/busines.....;cset=true

Attention Virginians, Harris Miller supports the neutral net.

Rush Limbaugh is at it again today. More than usual. Tune in to listen to the lies upon lies.

I think it is getting desperate. Keep attacking!!!

If you’re considering a voip phone plan, preferential packet-tagging will destroy companies like Vonage unless they pay the extortion to the big telcos.
It is legal for them to give priority to their own content,
(not legal to degrade others’ content) but they don’t dare until they have the right to demand payment.
It appears to me that Yahoo, with various partnerships with Verizon and AT&T is already onboard with this,
but where is google and MS?
There are many huge companies
that should be screaming bloody-hell about this.

RJ Eskow had lunch with Senator Feingold, too. A snippet from his piece at HuffPo.

A relaxed Russ Feingold made news when he had lunch with a small group of bloggers on an overcast Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles. Stepping outside the usual stereotype of a politician, he picked up the check. And he pointedly distinguished himself from those he characterized as “foxhole Democrats” who run scared from Republican intimidation tactics.

“They’re not very good at running the country,” he said of the GOP, “but they’re brilliant at intimidating Democrats.” As for his fellow Democratic contenders for the 2008 nomination, he suggested that many of them are still dominated by fear of a Rovian attack on their patriotism or national security credentials.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....19692.html

If anyone thinks this isn’t easy to implement technically, you’re wrong. Most modern routers have the ability to prioritize traffic in many ways, by source or destination address, type of traffic (web, e-mail, etc.) and some can vary this based on time of day.

What I’ve always found bizarre is the idea that the ISPs could actually make money at this, but I think that it might be practical for the long-haul carriers (the Internet equivalent of long distance companies) to do this. Even the large local providers (ISPs) may be able to do this. That they have not done this before is why the Internet is free, as in “freedom”.

It’s also fascinating that Congress has bought into this idea. It must have taken some amazing mental gymnastics to get there. If it weren’t for the large commercial sites that the LHCs want to extort money from, the Internet would still be a few geeks swapping helpful hints on newsgroups, and a few websites run by academic institutions and DARPA. That many of you who are reading this don’t even know what that means is proof that the Amazons, Salons, and Firedoglakes of the world have changed it profoundly.

Good article, Taylor, and it looks like once again we need to write Congress to prevent something stupid from happening.

OMG, I’m watching a live clip of beginning of W’s speech on immigration in Irvine, and straight out of the gate, he’s talking about being the decision maker and WOT and - boom - 9/11. 9/11. 9/11. This has been billed as a speech on immigration, so I guess he’s just greasing the wheels. What a pimp.

A friend of mine, well placed in the industry, slipped me a confidential read of a conference white paper on this very subject a year ago…according to my notes it was entitled-

Pipeline Constrictions-A Contrarian View of Revenue Enhancement

at that time I remember thinking no way would they try this crap…guess I was wrong

meta -

Yeah, Bush is an infinite recursive batch file echoing the same lame shit over & over & over.

Enjoy our FDL while it lasts.

“John J. Gibbons, a former Chief Judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals appointed by President Richard Nixon and a former officer in the U.S. Navy.”

He’s a Clintonista, he’s a liberal, he gave money to Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kenney, Pol Pot, he has a book coming out that was endorsed by Larry Flint, he’s drunk, he’s a bitter ender, loves Saddam, wants to give in to the terrorists, hates America, he’s retired so why listen, opinions are like assholes, blah, friggin’ blah………

Just thought I would save a troll some time and launch a pre-emptive assault on the judges integrity.

-GSD

This sounds like one of those incredibly stupid ideas that will get shot down long before it becomes law. That said, it is important to tell saner lawmakers what to aim at and that we’re watching.

Gotta go … you all have fun…later..

BobbyG - yeah, and the interesting thing is that I think his delivery is getting more and more “aw, shucks” with every passing day. He’s saying the same thing over and over, endless loop, but the Texas twang and the sloppy and butchered English is getting worse, if that’s possible. Maybe it’s the dope?

Thanks, cujo359, you’re right. Write Congress. Sign the petition.

Richard Goblin @ 9:08 am (#20) - This is one of those issues that cut across party lines. Intellectual property law is another. In that case, both liberterianism and consumer rights fall on the same side. A third is the space program, which seems to have more to do with one’s ideas about human progress and the proximity of one’s district to the nearest NASA facility.

Unfortunately, these are usually secondary issues. It would be nice if these were the issues that we elected Congress to decide, and that issues like war, abortion, civil rights, and corruption were handled as they should be. They’re not, of course, and I see very few Republicans these days who feel the way I do about any of those issues.

I don’t assume that electing Democrats will solve our problems. I just wish there were reasonable alternatives at times like this.

meta -

Yeah. Dude makes me ill. Gawd, will we survive this moron?!

Gotta power off and go see my Pop in the nursing home (I’m in my Ma’s hospital room at the moment), then catch a flight back to Vegas. Hope I get home in time to see Da Boyz tonight for some rehabilitative off-the-scale funk:

http://santafeandthefatcityhorns.blogspot.com/

Well, the preznit is preaching to his base I guess, it is Orange County after all… funny nobody’s carrying the speech but faux… heh.

This is less about Congress changing the internet than about Congress once again doing the bidding of corporate America. It’s about money talking, once again, loud enough to drown out the voices of average citizens. There’s already been an unhealthy reduction in smaller companies, which are absorbed into the mega-corporations. Entrepreneurial ventures are no sooner created than they are eaten up by something bigger – the entrepreneur reaps a huge profit, but the competition – which used to keep prices under control – disappears. Lately, I think we are all under the illusion that the things we buy and the services we pay for are provided by individual companies, but a little research will reveal that many of them are subsidiaries of a few ginormous corporations.

This is a battle that cannot be won with letters and phone calls (although I will do my part in that area); this is a battle that has to be won on a legal or regulatory basis, and it seems like the groundwork has already been laid for getting around the laws and regulations. It sure helps to have the kind of clout that affords an industry to write the laws and regs the way it wants them, doesn’t it? So this is an issue that is going to have to leap out of the legislative frying pan, and into the legal fire. I’m sure Alito and Roberts will do their part to ensure that nothing gets in the way of the plan.

Sorry to be so cynical today, but this is what happens when one party controls so much so completely that it gets carte blanche to make changes that will affect people for years to come.

Here is another reason why our Dear Leader, Christian President George W. Bush is so Christlike. There is no room at the inn for him. I hope some poor shepherd can offer him a manger for the night.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/articl.....96,00.html

Can we have some Sympathy for the Devil?

“I stuck around St. Petersburg, when I saw it was time for a change. Killed the czar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in pain. I drove a tank, held a generals rank, when the blitzkrieg burned and the bodies stank.”

-GSD

I wonder if now is the time to ask how long a comment posted by me last night on the ” Image May Not Be Everything….” thread with one link:

http://gorillasguides.blogspot.com

in it got stuck in the moderation queue and is still there.

Does anybody have any pointers to the current practice of “slotting fees” within the cable TV industry?

(in grocery stores a shelf or slotting fee is fees paid by companies so that their products will appear on the stores’ shelves)

I’m sure home shopping channels must pay something to appear but is do fees apply for other “free” non comercial free channels? Is the appearance fee a basic slotting one, an ad revenue sharing one, or is the cable company allowed to insert their own advertisements?

Now in a cable system there may be some slight validity in slotting fees - say the hardware can only handle 128 channels without an upgrade.

I am totally unable to see any justification for a slotting fee in a TCP/IP data stream.

You’re doing a heckuva job, Rummy.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060422/46792049.html

-GSD

From a purely historical point of view I do not believe in the existence of free markets. All markets have been regulated since there were markets. The only question is to whose benefit.

Large communication corporations don’t like the present arrangement so rather than competing with better services, prices, and products they try to freeze out their competition by raising their cost of doing business. We the users of the internet don’t even appear as a blip on their screens.

I think this whole affair should be played up as yet another example of Republicans selling the government to special interests at the price of their constituents.

wow, markfromireland– that post gave me goosebumps. I especially appreciate this:
>>>>>>>>>>>

Remember that those self-same American and British politicians created the conditions that caused this child’s death. Her blood is on their hands quite as much as it is on the hands of those who killed this child directly. Responsibility for this child’s murder rests squarely on the shoulders of the American and European policy makers who were determined to break up Iraq and who did not care then and do not care now what it takes to achieve that breakup or who is killed or maimed as a result.

Iraqi children, American, British, Danish soldiers are all…. little people …. to such as Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or Anders Føgh-Rasmussen. Ignore their crocodile tears for crocodile tears is all they are.

>>>>>>>>>>>
Nice link to the FDL roots project– thank you!

Can anyone connect for us the language of the bill (whoppin’ big PDF here) and the harm it’s supposed to do if enacted?

I’m sure y’all are telling the truth about it, since both supporters and opponents of Net neutrality seem to more or less agree on what the bill would do. But I don’t see it in the language - though I admit I haven’t waded through all 50 pages of the subcommittee print.

But someone has to have done so, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this discussion, right?

on the CA impeachment movement: from TalkLeft

California Assemblyman Paul Koretz “has submitted amendments to Assembly Joint Resolution No. 39, calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney.”

I’ll have to look up that resolution to see what it’s otherwise about.

Nice froomking today. He’s either an FDL reader or channelling it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....00879.html

April 24, 2006, 8:13AM
Judge: Web-Surfing Worker Can’t Be Fired

© 2006 The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Saying surfing the web is equivalent to reading a newspaper or talking on the phone, an administrative law judge has suggested that only a reprimand is appropriate as punishment for a city worker accused of failing to heed warnings to stay off the Internet.

http://www.chron.com/disp/stor.....14753.html

OK, this is AJR39 in the CA legislature:

AJR 39, as introduced, Koretz
Moratorium on depleted uranium munitions.
This measure would memorialize the President and Congress of the United States to establish a moratorium on the use of depleted uranium munitions.

Vint Cerf is one of the ‘pioneers’ who invented TCP/IP (”You’re soaking in it now.”) He is currently employed by Google.

Here’s the statement he gave to Barton’s Commerce Committee back in Nov.:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com.....ality.html

…”My fear is that, as written, this bill would do great damage to the Internet as we know it. Enshrining a rule that broadly permits network operators to discriminate in favor of certain kinds of services and to potentially interfere with others would place broadband operators in control of online activity. Allowing broadband providers to segment their IP offerings and reserve huge amounts of bandwidth for their own services will not give consumers the broadband Internet our country and economy need. Many people will have little or no choice among broadband operators for the foreseeable future, implying that such operators will have the power to exercise a great deal of control over any applications placed on the network.”…

Membership of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet:

http://energycommerce.house.go.....embers.htm

Hearing Transcripts

http://www.access.gpo.gov/cong.....ch109.html

just sharing these resources via House website, haven’t read anything yet.

If anyone wants more background on this subject, Doc Seares of Linux Journal has been blogging about this issue for some time. Here are two links to his writing:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8673
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8910

They’re not all that technical, but go into some of the machinations between the various commercial interests. Searles writes a column called “Linux For Suits”, so he’s used to writing for a non-technical audience.

I don’t know how true this story is regarding the reason for high gas prices….
Article:

Pawnshops see spike in pawning as gas prices rise.
snip

Part of the reason gas prices are spiking right now is because stations nationwide are being required to add ethanol to their gasoline to make them burn cleaner. That’s also reducing the supply as refineries make ethanol from corn.
http://www.kobtv.com/index.cfm.....TOPSTORIES

OfT: MSNBC Question of the Day
Should the oil industry be government regulated?
Yes
79%
No
21%
* 5339 responses

One of the most important people in this fight is David Isenberg, a former AT&T tech manager who wrote a paper for internal consumption about 10 years ago entitled “The Rise of the Stupid Network”, in which he put his finger on the key aspect of the Internet that led to it’s colossal success: it’s stupidity. By that he means that what intelligence there is in the internet, which is in the routers, does only one kind of thing: it routes each packet one step closer to its ultimate destination, which is contained within the packet itself. The simple internal stupidity of the network, in turn, makes it possible for users to innovate intelligence at the edges of the network. It is this freedom to innovate that has given us the likes of eBay, Google, mySpace, and thousands of other creative ideas that only thousands of different people could dream of.
Isenberg saw that to achieve the potential of this truly revolutionary innovation called the internet would at the same time be disasterous for the legacy telephone business model, and thus his paper was greeted as a loud, reverberating fart in the Church of AT&T. Isenberg set up shop as a telecom consultant for the new age soon thereafter. Anyone wanting to follow up on these issues could do well by checking out Isenberg’s writings, most of wihch (including “Stupid Network”) are accessible from his website.
http://www.isen.com/

ot, but i found this quote in today’s froomkin kinda funny. wonder if lobbying is still the opportunistic move it was a few months ago. karma, baby.

‘It’s really weird right now,’ says another senior White House official who likewise asked for anonymity. ‘People are worried about their jobs.’ “

Can we trade Jane Harmon for a chia pet?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....00884.html

COULD THIS BE THE NEXT SCANDAL?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/.....p;refer=us

Senate Vote Inquiry Widens as Democrats Probe White House Link

April 24 (Bloomberg) — To Republicans, the New Hampshire phone-jamming incident is an isolated case of political dirty tricks that took place more than three years ago.

To Democrats, it’s a scandal with echoes of Watergate that may reach all the way to the White House.

Republican leaders are facing questions stemming from a criminal case involving efforts to suppress voter turnout in a U.S. Senate election in the state in 2002. Republican John Sununu won that race over Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, helping Republicans retake control of the Senate.

The facts, on the surface at least, are suspicious: dozens of phone calls to the White House by a man later convicted in the case; the national Republican Party agreeing to pay more than $2.5 million in legal bills; phones jammed on Election Day, not only of Democrats but of a firefighters’ group, in the first U.S. congressional elections since the Sept. 11 attacks. Democrats say that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff may even be involved.

“The calls to the White House and the relationship with White House staff are a real eye-opener and should be a cause for concern on all fronts,” said Sheila Krumholz, acting executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington- based research group. “It calls into question who the person was on the end of that telephone line.”

A chia pet would be preferable, Jane … ugh.

Here’s a snippet from Ray McGovern’s take on Mary McCarthy– the piece is longish, but oh so worthwhile…

This fits in well with a pattern long familiar to senior intelligence officers. And, as Mary McCarthy watched this latest charade, she must have felt affirmed in her apparent conviction that turning to the House “oversight†committee, in present circumstances, would be a feckless enterprise. And who more than she could see the high farce attached to Hoekstra’s hyperbole yesterday on FOX as he parroted (twice) the “McCarthy talking points†from the White House:

“This person in the CIA thought that they were above the law (sic). They thought that the law did not apply to them. They have put America at risk. They have put our troops on the front lines at risk because they broke the law.â€

With all due respect, Congressman Hoekstra, if you would exercise your oversight responsibilities, the system of checks and balances could work, and folks like McCarthy would not have to go to the press.

Equally feckless would be recourse to the Senate intelligence committee chaired by Pat Roberts, R-Kan., patsy for the White House since day one of his tenure. No need to rehearse the evidence here. You may wish, though, to check out Scott Ritter’s comments on the Semper Fi senator from Kansas.

And so, assuming there is substance to press allegations that McCarthy has admitted she talked with the press, small wonder. I was intrigued by a remark the press has attributed to former CIA deputy director Dick Kerr: “I have no idea what her motive was.†Kerr added that McCarthy was a “good, substantive person.â€

Well, Dick, it’s a no-brainer. Is it not clear that she thought the American people should be given the chance to know of the kidnapping, rendition, torture and other indignities being carried out in their name? Is it not clear that Mary McCarthy is one of those unusually courageous officers willing to take considerable personal risk in order to help democracy work, information being the oxygen of democracy?

But what about her secrecy agreement? I have not spoken with Mary McCarthy in 10 years, but it seems clear to me she realized that she was confronted by an unwelcome choice between her oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and the secrecy agreement. Her entire record shows that she did not take such restrictions lightly. None of us did; none of us do.

But agency alumnae, at least those of my vintage, believe we must always give priority to the Constitution. Mary chose well and, in so doing, offers an example to emulate.
http://www.tompaine.com/articl.....choice.php

“It calls into question who the person was on the end of that telephone line.’’
——
yes. And we’re left BEGGING for that question to be answered.

heehee

From a live discussion at the Wapo November 2005, regarding Dana’s article about the black sites.

How do you answer critics who point out this may be a ‘leak’ that could potentially compromise national security, ala the Plame leak?

Dana Priest: I don’t actually think the Plame leak compromised national security, from what I’ve been able to learn about her position. As for my article, we tried to minimize that by not naming the countries involved and, otherwise, no, I don’t believe it compromised national security at all.

A lot more at the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....00907.html

Why are we NOT hearing from the Business sector?

I work in the software industry, working from home as a remote employee (my commute is a killer, 5 ft and a hard right from my bed to desk) using high speed internet to conduct business. I use Oracle servers and applications based on Oracle. Consider my ISP provider is bought off my Microsoft and blocks my access to work?

Why aren’t Corporations up in arms about this?

Increasingly business is handled over the internet, insurance quotes, banking, shopping, shipping, shipping tracking and business email communication. The internet has been the tool that facilitated “Just in Time” shipping and reduced the need for warehousing. The internet helps sites such as Amazon to know their inventory levels.

This is NOT just a freedom of speech or freedom to communicate issue. It is the freedom to compete in the marketplace.

If you ship UPS and the ISP is bought by FedEx then your business might fail because you cannot respond to orders in a timely mannor.

This could be the very tool to create larger and larger monopolies by streaming specific business internet traffic and shutting down others.

Great post Taylor
And there for a while I thought you and Larry needed to find a private chat room ;)

Hugh–a subcommittee version has already passed the House.

If talking to Reps it’s probably useful to point out that the government of China thinks that controlling traffic on the internet is an important power. Might help make it clear to them where the right side is.

This fight became unavoidable the day NSFNET was decommissioned.

OT - Scudrunner

There is no irony.

1. It was an attempt, and fairly successful at that, to hijack the thread.

2. Chicago Tom and any other “conspiracy theorist” is entitled to their views. Doesn’t mean that I or anyone else needs to humor those views. In fact, I think it is very important not to humor those who promulgate such views. Why you may ask? Because it detracts from the very serious points made by Jane, Christy, Taylor, etc., debases their work, and in fact holds all of us up to ridicule, giving the repug commentariat more than enough ammunition to effectively claim and state: “Do you believe that those nutty liberals believe that Bush planned the 9/11 attack? Is there anything that they won’t accuse him of?”

3. Huffpo. Huffpo has an unhealthy fascination with celebrity - half the news stories concern the travails of celebrities, which has exactly what to with politics or opinions?

4. Janeane Garofalo opining on the science concerning 9/11 is no different from Michael Crichton appearing as an “expert” on global warming before Congress. In that regard, there is no other choice than to attack the messenger, b/c whatever they are opining about is not about the message, it is about the messenger.

5. So Jane posts at Huffpo. We laud Froomkin at WaPo and castigate others, yet their work is for the same entity. No difference here. Plus, if Jane has an issue with anything I write, I have no doubt she will let me know either on the thread or via email.

Actually working today, so must run.

Enjoy

Jane, angie - Mary made a good point about all this yesterday that I find very frustrating - the information McCarthy leaked was classified illegally in the first place. Section 1.7 of Executive Order 13292, which defines how classification is supposed to be done, states that it is illegal to classify information to cover up illegal activity. By that standard, what McCarthy did was reveal information that should not have been classified in the first place.

It also seems possible, thanks to the Nuremberg trials, that it was her legal obligation to report this if the normal channels for dealing with such malfeasance weren’t going to work. According to the Larry Johnson article, McCarthy most likely learned about this situation while working at the CIA’s Inspector General’s office. The IG is the place you go in a government agency when your bosses are breaking the law, but the IG reports to the head of the agency. If the head of the agency is the one doing the illegal activity, then it’s pretty clear that’s not going to work. I emphasize that, in all likelihood, McCarthy learned of this while working at the IG’s office. What this implies is that McCarthy knew the investigation into the black prison network was going nowhere.

There are certainly suppositions in that last paragraph, but I think they’re reasonable ones. If they are correct, then McCarthy should be praised for doing the right thing, and the government officials who are now calling her a traitor are the ones who should be in trouble.

CUJO359– yep, that’s what McGovern says too:

>>>>>>
But couldn’t McCarthy appeal to “independent†Inspector General Helgersen? As statutory IG, Helgersen does enjoy some unique prerogatives and autonomy, should he choose to exercise them. Those familiar with his longstanding penchant for sniffing the breezes from the White House and director’s office and trimming his sails accordingly would be shocked to see him actually exercise those prerogatives. Rather, he has obediently acquiesced in denying Congress the particulars of his investigations—the one on the performance of CIA officers before 9/11, for example, which reportedly heaped criticism on Medal of Freedom awardee Tenet and other senior agency officials. And according to today’s New York Times, “independent watchdog†Helgersen recently let himself be talked into submitting to a polygraph exam by those he is supposed to be “watch-dogging.†Remarkable.

It seems likely that Mary McCarthy quickly saw the lay of the land and decided the Helgersen-Goss route held no promise for success in addressing the abuses of torture and rendition. Had she any doubts on that score, they were presumably dispelled as she watched Director Goss trot off with Cheney to the office of Sen. John McCain to plead for an exception for the CIA from his draft amendment banning torture. This particular mission was not accomplished, but the president appended a “signing statement†saying, in effect, that he feels free to disregard the McCain amendment banning torture.

Following the Crooks & Liars policy I’m going to be tightening down on blog whoring so please stop it unless it is relevant to the thread.

If we allow blogging to succumb to that which it has long opposed…mainstream convention…then instead of being an agent for transformation, blogging will transform into that which it purports to revile. The danger of moving towards the mainstream media model is in the potential to usurp the consensus view of the readership that the blogosphere offers something different and more importantly, something more. The backbone of the blogosphere is clearly supported by these serious and thoughtful readers who have been able to find the substance they crave in light of the vacuum that is the media establishment. If we simply become an extension of that establishment, not only will bloggers be devoured by huge news organizations, we will have forsaken our enablers.

Ultimately, the blogosphere is an opportunity to participate in the exponential advancement of communications. Each day our world grows smaller as those connecting on the blogosphere grow closer. Keeping this new frontier chastened is a daunting task but the potential benefits make the effort essential. In the rush for a segment of the audience, we mustn’t pollute the soil from which this cabal of cable germinated…wherein…ever nourished by the pursuit of truth and its application to the events that impact each of us, we sit glaring into our computer screens…ever hopeful that those looking back are similarly motivated. Without question, the stakes are enormous.

read more observations here:

www.thoughttheater.com

katymine, you got it. I also don’t comprehend why on earth the big corps aren’t raising holy hell about this legal disaster coming in to undercut some of their flexibility with respect to Internet use.

Cujo539 - thx for great posts. And Doc Searls is such a great resource ;-)

Amazing to me that the US Senate is so bloody stupid that they can’t see the telecoms are feeding them political poison. How on earth they’re going to explain to their own relatives, let alone their constituents, that Grandma’s going to have to pay an extra $40/month in her phone bill to get the same level of service she now has for emailing her Garden Club gals is just… it speaks volumes about the absolute stupidity of Congress at present.

The Internet is fundamentally BIOLOGICAL. That’s the paradigm that needs to be used for letting it grow. The telecoms came out of the railroads and phone lines, which was basically about ’scarce resources’ in an era of MECHANICS.

I have to say, any Senate staffers dumb enough to get smoked by the telecoms on this one, and stupid enough to recommend their own Senators vote in favor of the telecoms ought to get fired.

What was that NRA meme about ‘keep your hands off my guns?” Needs to be revived for this issue and online freedom.

Assuming that a 2006 digital technology should be legally constrained by 1860s railroad rules speaks volumes about the idiocy in DC (and the desparation of the telecoms).

Can this issue be framed as the Internet version of “payola?” It seems to me to raise the same ethical issues - distributors of content bribing said providers to get preferential “airplay.”

Um - I just Googled “net neutrality” & “payola.” Should have done that first - not an original idea of mine after all…

What happens under this proposed law to the rest of the countries on this planet? It’s one thing for the Congress to pass a law that affects the internet use of US citizens but so much internet traffic goes through routers here, what implications are there for those located outside the US?

Wouldn’t it theoretically be possible to reverse this if they passed it, by holding demonstrations and making it a campaign issue?

This affects millions of people. If they mess with my blogs, ooooo am I gonna be mad!

Evil Parallel Universe,

Even though you’re right that it was OT I think you owe it to yourself to read up a bit on what really happened on 9-11.

I agree that this is not the thread for the conversation. What I do understand is that people feel that this is an incredibly important issue - like the Internet being controlled by private corporations - and that once you have read up on 9-11 you realize that the government’s version of things really doesn’t make sense!

Nuf said …!

#56 katymine says:
April 24th, 2006 at 10:57 am

The company I work at runs on internet-intranet. I have to assume at some point in the network it’s on telco lines. Could they then slow down our access to places like Google (which we do use as a resource) until the co forks over more money? — Probably it’s one of the things they’d like to try, but I hope it doesn’t come to that.

it is time to set washington adrift

PJ Evans, As I understand this legislation, that is exactly the risk at present. I sent a shout to Adobe, BTW, who you’d think would be interested… nada.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is distracted with EU hearings…

And educators, BTW, are under strict rules about how much hell they can raise. So it’s up to corporations to stop this one, and they don’t seem to ‘get it.’ Wells Fargo, Citybank… you’d think they’d be hollering to put a stop to this. But perhaps their lobbyists fail to grasp the technical soft belly of what’s at risk here?

That’s the best that I can figure.

I’m willing to lay bets that the companies, like Wells Fargo, Amazon, etc, are just planning on passing the higher costs of bandwidth access on to their customers in the way of higher fees for their services.

PS… or will be able to get a ‘volume’ discount (also known as sweetheart deals) from the ISP carriers.

Whoa…where did this come from? The Telecom and Antitrust Task Force of the House Judiciary Committee is slated to hold a hearing tomorrow on net neutrality. The line-up of witnesses is evenly divided between pro- and anti-net neutrality reguations:

IPDemocracyA little competition, anyone?

Taylor,

below was posting by this guy at Macworld on www.publicknowledge.org/news

it reads like the opposite of what you and mydd and others are saying, but he’s citing art brodsky and I’m wondering if something else isn’t going on here. Like have a couple of reps put up a counter-corporate bill..?

too important to get folks confused over.. yes?

As U.S. Congress debates on major telecommunications legislation, lawmakers are considering proposals that would prohibit large telecom providers from charging fees to online content companies that use their broadband networks.

The measures would prevent the vendors from blocking services or providing slower download times for other vendors’ services.

By Grant Gross, MacWorld

=============

it reads like the telcos already have these powers.. ??

Net Neutrality is more important than bush impeachment. It is literally the survival of independent discourse which is at stake here. The screaming must be loud to stop the train tomorrow, and this issue should remain under constant surveillance at the top of every bloggers page for the rest of our lives. This is Norquists Hill Mary, but he won’t give up if he loses. Look at the MPAA constant copyright legislation.

roman eos - thanks for the link - I know this thread is EPUd but since there’s also a call for action out, I just wanted to add that the bill is not through committee workup yet. That process will be done tomorrow and Wednesday apparently - and the current text of the bill is unstable. Apparently a number of republicans pulled their support on April 3 so we may (may) be “reacting” to an older version of the bill. I’m going to call my congressman, Bobbie Rush, who is one of the sponsors tomorrow am to try and find out what is what. His one statement on the proposed bill includes a comment stating that it will clarify the FCC’s authority to protect net neutrality - and since he’s not a republican, I’m not sure he’s crafty enough to outright lie that way (though I’m making no $ bets at this point). I’m a bit uncomfortable with the very hype-y language being used on this. Many of us have seen the “death of the internet” many times before - and I want to make sure we know what we’re supporting before jumping into action.

If the telecoms succeed at getting this law passed, it will turn out to be their own undoing in the long run.

As the real Robert X. Cringley (on PBS.org) said last week, Google owns a lot of dark fiber. They may be preparing to bid for a big chunck of wireless spectrum. Google certainly has enough money to win this bid, as they have 8 billion in the bank, and as a S&P 500 member, they can easily get more institutional investment to come up with yet more money.

It would be very easy for Google to install transmitters connected to the dark fiber and make a high speed link to each of us with an inexpensive wireless receiver. They could easily get speeds that EXCEED cable and DSL to serve each an every one of us in the country this way without having to build the expensive “last mile” connection that the telecoms have been so loathe to invest in, preferring to milk their consumers as long as they can on the existing outmoded analog lines.

The telephone and cable companies would be left holding a bag of nothing. Google could take over their entire business, including TV and telephone.

#88: And then Google would control what you get access to. Do you really put that much faith in Google?

These telecoms companies make money by charging you, the end user, for access over ‘the last mile’ to the distributed entity that is “the internet”. Where do they get off saying that they are supporting other people’s business models “for free”?

Are they talking about the infrastructure beyond the last mile?