In this age of Occupy Wall Street direct action, it should be noted that the campaign that has had the most immediate impact on legislation has come from the clicktivism of the online sphere. The Protect IP Act was well on its way to passage, and it was poised to create a tool for censoring [...]

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo. Today is American Censorship Day. A coalition of Internet activists, joined by some of the largest sites on the Web, invented this day to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, legislation which had its first hearing in the House Judiciary Committee today. [...]

Yesterday, the Senate rejected a resolution of disapproval that would have invalidated the FCC’s net neutrality regulations. Not one member of the Democratic caucus voted with Republicans to overturn the FCC regulations. In the grand scheme, this doesn’t do much. The White House already threatened a veto of the resolution of disapproval back in April, [...]

For months now, Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have spoken out about the Justice Department’s interpretation – wrongful interpretation, in their view – of the Patriot Act, which has led to some unnamed manner of mischief in terms of civil liberties deprivation through mass data collection. Wyden and Udall have implored DoJ to explain [...]

Ron Wyden clearly has a secret, something he cannot tell. But he also clearly wants to tell it, to let Americans know how their privacy has been compromised by the surveillance state. So he had an opportunity yesterday, when he got to question an NSA lawyer in a Congressional hearing. According to the general counsel [...]

It appears that Rand Paul has reached some kind of deal on his insistence to get votes for his amendments to the Patriot Act. There will now be votes on the amendments, with a likely 60-vote threshold. But the expectation is that the amendments will fail, and final passage will be secured Thursday. That will [...]

I don’t want to keep fighting this, but people really want to believe that Democrats and the President didn’t get played on the 2011 budget deal. They’re clinging to this notion that the cuts are mostly smoke and mirrors and won’t affect anyone personally. Kevin Drum exemplifies this take in at least a slightly more [...]

The House Appropriations Committee released the final 2011 continuing resolution text, which reflects the agreement between Congressional leaders and the President. You can view a summary of the CR and the list of final program cuts. Or, if you’re daring, you can read the full text. First of all, there’s a 0.2% across-the-board cut to [...]

President Obama will announce to the National Governor’s Association today that he supports a measure to allow for a faster state opt-out of the health care law, provided that the states meet certain basic minimum coverage requirements. The announcement is the first time Mr. Obama has called for changing a central component of his signature [...]

This was the trade made in the Senate last night; the Dems will get legislative repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a couple judges, and probably the new START Treaty, and the Republicans will get the chance to massively cut spending early in the 112th Congress. If I’m a Republican, I take that trade. This [...]

I’ve had quite a few people email me about the “Internet kill switch” bill that recently rode through the Senate Judiciary committee. Late on Friday, we got word that Ron Wyden was working to stop it. A bill that critics say would have given the government power to censor the Internet will not pass this [...]