The Big Think

Lawmakers seem intent on approving SOPA, PIPA | The Industry Standard – InfoWorld: “Lawmakers seem intent on approving SOPA, PIPA
So far, strong opposition to the controversial copyright bills hasn’t changed many minds in Congress”

“The US presidential race is a prime example of the poor judgment and poor use of resources that legacy news media coverage displays — at least from the standpoint of the serious student of world events. The coverage begins much too early, contains much too much fluff and spin, and provides the reader with next to no serious insight about where the country is headed.

There are good economic and competitive reasons why the media covers the presidential race in mind numbing detail, but just because they write it doesn’t mean we have to read it.

Many people follow politics the way sports buffs follow sports news, or supermarket shoppers read People magazine and there is nothing wrong with this. Apart from the schadenfreude and love of gossip, it is an innocent human pastime and a perfectly reasonable leisure activity. But it is not the same as a serious interest in events, and people who really want to understand what is happening in the world and help build a better future need to spend less time following horse race chit chat and more time both following the real news and carrying out the historical, economic, cultural and intellectual study programs that will enable them to understand the news in greater depth.”

The “News” That Isn’t News

via ABC.com:

“In his last official act of business in 2011, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act from his vacation rental in Kailua, Hawaii. In a statement, the president said he did so with reservations about key provisions in the law — including a controversial component that would allow the military to indefinitely detain terror suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States, without charge.

The legislation has drawn severe criticism from civil liberties groups, many Democrats, along with Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, who called it “a slip into tyranny.” Recently two retired four-star Marine generals called on the president to veto the bill in a New York Times op-ed, deeming it “misguided and unnecessary.”

“Due process would be a thing of the past,” wrote Gens Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar. “Current law empowers the military to detain people caught on the battlefield, but this provision would expand the battlefield to include the United States”

I haven’t heard anyone outside of government defending this, not even the war-hawk right who you’d think would be okay with anything that strengthens our government’s ability to protect the poor defenseless population (cough, Todd Beamer, cough). If this had happened under the previous administration we all know that there would have been an unholy racket about the president “shredding the Constitution” and setting up a Fascist government. Now? Not so much.

Don’t misunderstand me. I do not think that the President is going to use this bill to start pulling political opponents off the street and disappearing them. Emphatically NO. I’m not all conspiracy-theory about this. Saying it’s a horrible bill and goes against our ideas of due process and rule-of-law isn’t the same thing as saying the president is eeeevill and Fascistic. It’s terrible law, and shockingly bad in light of the fact that the President held himself up as such a strong constitutional scholar–and convinced so many people to vote for him based on that claim. But we all know how laws that get passed now with the promise that they won’t be abused by the current administration (cross our hearts… just give us this power now and everything will be okay) will be reinterpreted, stretched, and applied with a far wider interpretation by a future administration (hey, the law is there and has been on the books for a while). So the slippery slope argument definitely applies.

Even members of his own party have publicly acknowledged that this bill was badly written and allows this very thing to legally be interpreted from the document. So they proposed language that would remove the possibility without defanging the legislation in general. That language was stripped from the final bill.

This cartoon on Instapundit says it well:

There is no more damning evidence of the failure of this administration to live up to their campaign promises of open government, trustworthy government, and fair government than this. In light of the Change we were told would happen, the passing and signing of this bill (by both parties) is indefensible.

Pretty much sums it up. Long, long read, but worth it.

“The depressing part is how safe a bet it is that [people will] go back to being oblivious the moment their direct interests aren’t threatened. They’ll cheer for the next tax hike, the next round of environmental feel-goodism, the next political “fix” for the next transient market failure – and never notice that by doing so they’re creating the political conditions in which malignant growths like SOPAs inevitably flourish.

So here’s a clue: the only way to keep your freedom – on the Internet or anywhere else – is to defend everyone else’s freedom as well, by keeping your government tiny and starved and rigidly constrained in what it can do. Otherwise, the future you’re begging for is SOPAs without end.”

worth reading.

*UPDATED*

Congress passes the Indefinite Detention Powers act. (aka the “National Defense Authorization Act”, but hey, let’s call a spade a spade…).

Just ask yourself what the reaction would have been if the previous president had passed this the previous congress had passed this. Thanks to friend Sean for pointing out that it is Congress, not Presidents, that actually pass laws. I know this, but when was the last time that an unpopular bill wasn’t laid at the feet of Congress? Technically, congress passed the recent Health Care bill, but there’s a reason that it is called (even at the President’s own insistence), Obama-care.

Still, I agree with Sean that the NDAA is a horrible bill. Shame on both parties for this stinker. But evidence pretty strongly suggests that it doesn’t matter what we think any longer.

I actually called my Representative’s office in Washington this morning to voice my unhappiness with the SOPA bill that’s in markup today. I mentioned sotto-voce “not that it matters what a constituent says”. Her attitude, pretty plainly, was of course not!. Have a nice day!

“I’d just as soon get rid of the Commerce Clause and have a simple constitutional principle: “The Federal government can do anything a state government can do, and if there’s a conflict the Federal rule wins.” It would shorten legal textbooks considerably. Unfortunately, it’s not what the document at issue says.

Nevertheless, in the course of arguing for the constitutionality of Obamacare’s “individual mandate,” Einer Elhauge pretty much rules out the possibility that limiting the federal government to the regulation of “commerce … among the several states” inhibits the feds from doing anything. To counter the charge that then Washington could make you buy broccoli, Elhauge argues … um, Washington could make you buy broccoli! But don’t worry, there are other limitations . . . Well, OK then! As long as we can just leave it rotting in the fridge. … But it’s a little suspicious–-and surely not a selling point–-that under Elhauge’s argument the only limits on government would be the rights — like “bodily integrity” and privacy — that liberal lawyers have dreamed up but not the limits — i.e. whether or not something is “interstate commerce” – the Founders dreamed up.”

link

Heh

A rather dark and depressing essay on the state of things. Very in line with my feelings of late.

Something indeed feels ready to snap, and nobody knows what the result will be. Personally, I feel that there is a race with decaying nation-states staggering toward a Leibowitzian retelling on one hand and the Kurzweilian forces of positive technological change on the other. Which will win? If the last century has taught us anything it’s that the smart money has always been on dumb humanity.

Not really funny, but eye opening to see it in context.

• U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
• Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
• New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
• National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
• Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000

Let’s remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:

• Annual family income: $21,700
• Money the family spent: $38,200
• New debt on the credit card: $16,500
• Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
• Total budget cuts: $385

“The Tea Party, perhaps more than any other contemporary movement, brings out the ‘Yeah, but what they’re really saying…’ tendency. The ‘tea’ stands for ‘Taxed Enough Already’ but, if you relied on the BBC and the Guardian for your information, you might not know it. Many Lefties pretend – or perhaps have genuinely convinced themselves – that the Tea Party is clandestinely protesting against immigration or abortion or the fact of having a mixed race president; anything, in fact, other than what it actually says it’s against, viz big government. The existence of a popular and spontaneous anti-tax movement has unsettled the Establishment. They’d much rather deal with a stupid and authoritarian Right than with a libertarian one. Hence the almost desperate insistence that the Tea Partiers have some secret agenda.”

via

But dealing with a Libertarian Right would mean they would have to argue their position on the merits instead of demonizing their opposition.