Quotulatiousness

April 18, 2013

Slowing down the urge to “do something” is a feature, not a bug

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:23

David Harsanyi discusses the (limited) mechanisms the US constitution put in place to prevent the whims of temporary majorities being imposed on the country:

To begin with, whether Democrats like it or not, this issue concerns the Constitution — where stuff was written down for a reason. That’s not to say that expanding background checks or banning “assault rifles” would be unconstitutional (though you may believe they both should be). It’s to say that when you begin meddling with protections explicitly laid out in the founding document, a 60-vote threshold that slows down stampeding legislators is the least we deserve.

The Founding Fathers worried that “some common impulse of passion” might lead many to subvert the rights of the few. It’s a rational fear, one that is played out endlessly. Obama, who understands how to utilize public passion better than most, flew some of the Newtown families to Washington for a rally, imploring Americans to put “politics” aside and stop engaging in “political stunts.”

[. . .]

I’m not operating under the delusion that any of this is good national politics for Republicans — though the arguments about obstructionism’s dooming the GOP are probably overblown. No doubt, when the next disaster hits — and it will — Democrats will blame the overlords at the National Rifle Association and Republicans for the act of a madman. That’s life.

But generally speaking, it’d be nice if Congress occasionally challenged the vagaries of American majority “instinct.” Though it might seem antithetical to their very existence, politicians should be less susceptible to the temporary whims, ideological currents and fears of the majority. Theoretically, at least, elected officials’ first concern is the Constitution. And if the need for gun control is predicated chiefly on the polls taken immediately after a traumatic national event, they have a perfectly reasonable justification to slow things down. In fact, if Washington internalizes the 60-vote threshold as a matter of routine, voters should be grateful. Considering Washington’s propensity to politicize everything and its increasingly centralized power (what your health care looks like is now up for national referendums, for instance), this might be the only way left to diffuse democracy.

March 11, 2013

Democratic supporters still hoping Rand Paul will shut up and go away

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:52

In the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald rounds up the reactions on the left to Rand Paul’s filibuster last week:

Last week’s 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan’s confirmation as CIA director by GOP Sen. Rand Paul was one of the first — and, from the perspective of media attention, easily among the most effective — Congressional efforts to dramatize and oppose just how radical these Terrorism-justified powers have become. For the first time since the 9/11 attack, even lowly cable news shows were forced — by the Paul filibuster — to extensively discuss the government’s extremist theories of power and to debate the need for checks and limits.

All of this put Democrats — who spent eight years flamboyantly pretending to be champions of due process and opponents of mass secrecy and executive power abuses — in a very uncomfortable position. The politician who took such a unique stand in defense of these principles was not merely a Republican but a leading member of its dreaded Tea Party wing, while the actor most responsible for the extremist theories of power being protested was their own beloved leader and his political party.

[. . .]

Meanwhile, a large bulk of the Democratic and liberal commentariat — led, as usual, by the highly-paid DNC spokesmen called “MSNBC hosts” and echoed, as usual, by various liberal blogs, which still amusingly fancy themselves as edgy and insurgent checks on political power rather than faithful servants to it — degraded all of the weighty issues raised by this episode by processing it through their stunted, trivial prism of partisan loyalty. They thus dutifully devoted themselves to reading from the only script they know: Democrats Good, GOP Bad.

To accomplish that, most avoided full-throated defenses of drones and the power of the president to secretly order US citizens executed without due process or transparency. They prefer to ignore the fact that the politician they most deeply admire is a devoted defender of those policies. After stumbling around for a few days in search of a tactic to convert this episode into an attack on the GOP and distract from Obama’s extremism, they collectively settled on personalizing the conflict by focusing on Rand Paul’s flaws as a person and a politician and, in particular, mocking his concerns as “paranoia” (that attack was echoed, among others, by the war-cheering Washington Post editorial page).

[. . .]

The reality is that Paul was doing nothing more than voicing concerns that have long been voiced by leading civil liberties groups such as the ACLU. Indeed, the ACLU lavishly praised Paul, saying that “as a result of Sen. Paul’s historic filibuster, civil liberties got two wins”. In particular, said the ACLU, “Americans learned about the breathtakingly broad claims of executive authority undergirding the Obama administration’s vast killing program.”

March 7, 2013

Rand Paul’s filibuster and the Obama administration’s drone strike policies

Filed under: Government, Law, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:08

Nick Gillespie has three important points to take away from Senator Rand Paul’s filibuster yesterday:

For all of the late-night punch-drunkiness that eventually ensued on Twitter (well, at least on my feed), yesterday’s 12-hours-plus filibuster led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is among the most electrifying and insipiring events in recent political memory. The point of the filibuster — which derailed a confirmation vote on John Brennan as Barack Obama’s CIA head — was to call attention to the president’s insufficient answers to questions about his policy of targeted killings via drones and, one assumes, other methods.

Here are three takeaways from yesterday’s epic event:

1. It shows what one man can do to call attention to a hugely important issue that nonetheless is largley ignored by the mainstream media and the political establishment.

Elected in 2010, Rand Paul has rarely been the Republican — or the Democrat’s — media favorite. He’s been heckled big time from his own side (which initially worked against his election) and across the aisle as an irresponsible ideologue (he’s a dirty tea-bagger don’t you know!). Among a good chunk of his father’s most devoted followers, he’s been assailed as a neo-con war hawk who was willing to trim his libertarian bona fides to win favor with the D.C. party crowd. His sad-sack opponent in the general election the GOP primary, Jack Conway, set new lows with the infamous “Aqua Buddha” ad that accused Paul of everything short of devil worship; his general election opponent in the GOP primary, Trey Grayson, had already trotted out many of the same pathetic lines.

[. . .]

2. It shows the power of transpartisan thought and action. Make no mistake: Despite the presence of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), yesterday’s filibuster was a GOP-conducted orchestra. But what was most bracing and ultimately powerful thing about the filibuster was that none of the speakers exempted the Republican Party or former President George W. Bush, whose aggrandized view of executive power still roils the sleep of the Founding Fathers, from withering criticism and scrutiny. How else to explain that hard-left groups such as Code Pink were proud to #standwithrand yesterday on Twitter? The same with reliable Rand and GOP critic Eugene Robinson and many others who up until yesterday thought little of Rand Paul.

[. . .]

3. It ties a direct line between the abuses of power and the growth of the state.

Despite using various self-identifiers over the years (he’s called himself a libertarian, a conservative, a constitutional conservative, etc.) Rand Paul has always been rightly understood as an advocate of sharply limited and small government. During his Senate race, for instance, he said questions about drug legalization should be pushed back towards the states, where different models could be tried in accordance with the wishes of the people most directly affected. He presented a budget that was heavy on spending cuts that would have balanced the budget in five years. He has called for either actually declaring war on countries such as Iraq and Libya or getting the hell out. What unites his positions is a default setting against giving the federal government a free hand to do whatever it wants irrespective of constitutional limits.

February 27, 2013

Parliamentary Budget Officer conducting “constitutional vandalism”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:58

Senator Anne Cools is displeased by the PBO’s ongoing legal and media campaign against the Federal government:

An independent senator says the parliamentary budget watchdog, Kevin Page, overstepped his mandate by taking the government to court in a battle for spending figures, and the Senate should force Page to withdraw the legal proceedings.

In a speech to the Senate Tuesday, Sen. Anne Cools argued that Page’s regular comments to reporters and more recent comments to his international counterparts about his battles with the government over spending figures were “provocative and inflammatory public statements” that are “intolerable and unacceptable.”

Page’s actions, Cools argued, were tantamount to contempt of Parliament, were a breach of parliamentary privilege and were affecting the Senate’s credibility to carry out its functions.

“Contemptuous and un-parliamentary,” she said of Page’s actions and comments, “they are constitutional vandalism.”

“They are inappropriate conduct from a Library officer under the direction of the Speakers of the Senate and the House of Commons. This Senate cannot accept this and should take some ‘shock-no-more’ actions.”

February 11, 2013

Senate report calls for tariff cuts

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:57

In the Financial Post, Terence Corcoran looks at the good and not-so-good aspects of a recent Senate report on the reasons Canadians pay so much more for goods than Americans (even when the goods are identical and the currencies are trading at par):

Retail prices in Canada, seemingly across the board, are higher. Even with the Canadian dollar at par, the price of everything from running shoes to televisions and Chevy Camaros to books is said to be above U.S prices. One bank report once put the Canada-U.S. price gap at 20%.

Somebody’s gotta do something, everybody agrees. Enter the Senate committee with one of the most hard-nosed, market-driven overviews of how and why Canadians pay more for goods at retail. The report dodges and fudges some key issues, especially farm product supply management, which was seen by the committee and the retail industry as too politically hot to handle.

[. . .]

Even in this, however, the committee pulls its first punch. The recommendation to “review” such tariffs — watery phrasing in itself — also suggests “keeping in mind the impact on domestic manufacturing.” Sorry, folks, but you can’t have it both ways. Tariffs are protectionist devices for manufacturers that consumers pay for. If you want to reduce the price to consumers, the $3.9-billion in protection for manufacturers has to go. End of discussion.

What makes The Canada-USA Price Gap even more valuable is its compact insights into the many causes of higher retail prices in Canada. The economy is a complicated and often unfathomable series of market and price relationships beyond the power and even understanding of policy makers. The report recognizes that fact time and again.

January 20, 2013

Corporate welfare — it’s the American way

Filed under: Business, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

Sheldon Richman on the amazingly inefficient US tax code and some of the ways it got that way:

When Congress and President Obama came up with their beyond-the-last-minute deal to put off addressing the coming fiscal crisis, The Wall Street Journal turned the spotlight on a little-noticed, yet too typical aspect of Washington’s machinations: “The bill’s seedier underside is the $40 billion or so in tax payoffs to every crony capitalist and special pleader with a lobbyist worth his million-dollar salary. Congress and the White House want everyone to ignore this corporate-welfare blowout,” the Journal reported.

So a bill that was represented as the first steps toward fiscal responsibility (try not to laugh too hard) contained billions of dollars in corporate welfare. And it was a bipartisan affair.

[. . .]

Manipulating the tax code to benefit particular interests has obvious appeal for politicians — it’s a source of power and influence — and a code that did not permit such manipulation would be much less attractive to them. Outright cash subsidies from the taxpayers, while not unheard of, smacks too much of cronyism and is more likely to alienate taxpayers. But complicated exceptions written into the tax laws can be presented as creative governance on behalf of the public interest. But it is cronyism as offensive as outright subsidies.

[. . .]

Corporate welfare is not primarily about lowering taxes. That would be a worthwhile goal, of course, and could be achieved simply by slashing tax rates and simplifying the code. But when taxes are lowered selectively by writing complicated exceptions into the law, the goal is to bestow privileges on cronies, not to reduce the burden of government on all. Corporate welfare, among its many sins, violates equal protection under the law.

January 4, 2013

On politicians needing to kick their own asses

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:58

Nick Gillespie responds to a recent Bob Woodward column:

In sort-of documenting the dysfunction of a government that can’t even trim chump change from its petty cash drawer, much less write and pass a goddamned budget, Woodward manages to also illustrate why press solons are pretty useless in this whole process too. Sequestration cuts aren’t odious, except to congenital pants-wetters on both sides of the aisle (such as the neo-con defense hawks at the American Enterprise Institute and Leon Panetta, who can’t abide a single dollar ever being cut from any military budget, even after the Second Coming of Christ and the beating of swords into non-voting GM shares). We’ve been racking up trillion-dollar annual deficits for years now, and the idea of cutting $3 trillion from future deficits over a 10-year period causes things to explode? That shouldn’t be a reach under any circumstances, but especially under one in which both parties agree that we need to stop spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need. If the leadership of both parties couldn’t agree to $3 trillion in deficit trims over a decade in which they expect to spend between $40 trillion and $47 trillion, they weren’t going to agree to cuts of $1.2 trillion anyway. That’s the the real story, and it’s one that need to be retold every single day.

Woodward’s invocation of today’s “vulture politics” and his by-comparison invocation of the good old Reagan days is ridiculously ahistorical, especially coming from one of the guys who presided over the past 40-plus years of American history. Today’s political situation isn’t unique in its “demonization” of the opposition. Jesus Christ, George McGovern likened Nixon to Hitler and Reagan was attacked in similar terms. As was Clinton (by Jerry Falwell, who credited the Man from Hope with multiple murders in Arkansas). And then there was also the Bushitler stuff and novels and faux-documentaries about Dubya’s assassination. Somehow, both sides somehow managed to pass budgets (as awful as they were). The fact that Boehner takes a lot of man-tan heat and Obama is called a socialist is light fare by comparison. What is different is the inability of our top men to freaking complete the most basic tasks required of them: to hash out what they government is going to spend each year according to basic and simple-to-understand legislative rule.

In the end, that is not something mystical or overly complicated or tough because they belong to different parties. It’s the easiest thing in the world to get done and while of course “staffers” will do most of the grunt work, Boehner and Obama — and Harry Reid, the hugely incompetent Senate leader who is arguably the single-most responsible villain in the whole dramedy, need to be running the show.

And when it comes to kicking their own asses, our triumvirate of leaders — Obama, Boehner, and Reid — should get in line behind the rest of us. In the end, we pay their tab, so we should be at the front of the line.

December 30, 2012

“We Have Passed The Point Of No Return”

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:22

Zero Hedge recommends that everyone listen to outgoing Congressman Ron Paul’s analysis of the fiscal cliff negotiations:

In a little under three minutes, Ron Paul explains to a somewhat nonplussed CNBC anchor just how ridiculous the charade that is occurring in D.C. actually is. This succinct spin-free clip should be required viewing for each and every asset-manager, talking-head, propagandist, and mom-and-pop who are viewing the last-minute idiocy of the ‘fiscal cliff’ debacle with some hope that things will be different this time. “We have passed the point of no return where we can actually get our house back in order,” Paul begins, adding that “they pretend they are fighting up there, but they really aren’t. They are arguing over power, spin, who looks good, who looks bad; all trying to preserve the system where they can spend what they want, take care of their friends and print money when they need it.” With social safety nets available to rich and poor, there is no impetus for change and “the country loses,” but Paul concludes, the markets are starting to say “there is a limit to this.”

May 5, 2012

The “Fauxcahontas” affair

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:44

Mark Steyn on the controversy swirling around Massachusetts senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren over her on-again-off-again claim to having First Nations ancestry:

How does she know she’s a Cherokee maiden? Well, she cites her grandfather’s “high cheekbones,” and says the Indian stuff is part of her family “lore.” Which was evidently good enough for Harvard Lore School when they were looking to rack up a few affirmative-action credits. The former Obama Special Advisor to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and former Chairperson of the Congressional Oversight Panel now says that “I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group, something that might happen with people who are like I am,” and certainly not for personal career advancement or anything like that. Like everyone else, she was shocked, shocked to discover that, as The Boston Herald reported, “Harvard Law School officials listed Warren as Native American in the ’90s, when the school was under fierce fire for their faculty’s lack of diversity.”

So did the University of Texas, and the University of Pennsylvania. With the impertinent jackanapes of the press querying the bona fides of Harvard Lore School’s first Native American female professor, the Warren campaign got to work and eventually turned up a great-great-great-grandmother designated as Cherokee in the online transcription of a marriage application of 1894.

Hallelujah! In the old racist America, we had quadroons and octoroons. But in the new post-racial America, we have – hang on, let me get out my calculator – duoettrigintaroons! Martin Luther King dreamed of a day when men would be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their great-great-great-grandmother’s wedding license application. And now it’s here! You can read all about it in Elizabeth Warren’s memoir of her struggles to come to terms with her racial identity, Dreams From My Great-Great-Great-Grandmother.

Alas, the actual original marriage license does not list Great-Great-Great-Gran’ma as Cherokee, but let’s cut Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Crockagawea Warren some slack here. She couldn’t be black. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. But she could be 1/32nd Cherokee, and maybe get invited to a luncheon with others of her kind – “people who are like I am,” 31/32nds white – and they can all sit around celebrating their diversity together. She is a testament to America’s melting pot, composite pot, composting pot, whatever.

Just in case you’re having difficulty keeping up with all these Composite-Americans, George Zimmerman, the son of a Peruvian mestiza, is the embodiment of endemic white racism and the reincarnation of Bull Connor, but Elizabeth Warren, the great-great-great-granddaughter of someone who might possibly have been listed as Cherokee on an application for a marriage license, is a heartwarming testimony to how minorities are shattering the glass ceiling in Harvard Yard. George Zimmerman, redneck; Elizabeth Warren, redskin. Under the Third Reich’s Nuremberg Laws, Ms. Warren would have been classified as Aryan and Mr. Zimmerman as non-Aryan. Now it’s the other way round. Progress!

May 2, 2012

We must make internet freedom the new “third rail” of politics

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:05

L. Neil Smith on the most recent attempt by the US government to get formal control over the internet:

After many previous attempts on the part of different groups for a variety of reasons, the United States House of Representatives has passed a bill that could result in the destruction of freedom on the Internet.

And the erasure of the First Amendment.

I won’t bother you with this week’s misleading acronym for such an atrocity. This specimen is likely to fail in the Senate — because it doesn’t go nearly as far in muzzling each of us as that “parliament of whores” wants it to. The Faux President declares he will veto it, but we’ve heard that before from a criminal imposter who couldn’t move his mouth to speak the truth if his life depended on it — because he couldn’t recognize the truth if it came up to him and pissed in his ear.

What I will tell you is what a lifetime of fending off similar assaults on the Second Amendment — and the unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right of every man, woman, and responsible child to obtain, own, and carry weapons — has taught me. I know what has to be done now, and what will happen if we don’t do it.

First, don’t be relieved or satisfied if this particular bill doesn’t pass this time. Others will be introduced, one after another, until they wear down our resistance, unless we make every attempt cost them something they can’t afford to lose. We must make our freedom to communicate a political “third rail” and aim for nothing less than total eradication of the very notion of censoring the Internet in any way.

April 24, 2012

Colby Cosh on the “Alberta surprise”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

From his most recent column at Maclean’s:

An Alberta astronaut returning from Titan and seeing the result of last night’s election would say “Meh, so what else is new? The PCs carried 61 of 87 seats? Kind of an off year for them, I guess.” Yet the ostensibly boring, familiar outcome wrong-footed much of the media and absolutely all the pollsters. Even PC insiders, correctly detecting a last-minute shift away from the Wildrose Party heirs-presumptive, envisioned a much smaller vote share than the 44 per cent Alison Redford’s party achieved. The public polling firms all botched the job, with none forecasting anything but a Wildrose majority even on the final weekend.

The Wildrose Party’s final count of 17 seats must surely leave its braintrust, heavily stocked with Conservative Party of Canada veterans, obliterated with horror. The CPC has built a pretty good electoral machine, but as old Ralph Klein hand and Wildrose supporter Rod Love reminded CBC, the Alberta PC brand is the most successful in the country. He probably could have gone even further afield if he wanted to. (On August 24, 2014, the PCs will officially become the longest continuously serving government in the annals of Confederation.) In 1993 the PCs were in trouble late, but succeeded in outflanking a popular Liberal opposition and running against their own record. They did it again in 2012. Redford succeeded in making herself the “change” candidate — though not without help from the Wildrose insurgents, who suffered late “bozo eruptions” of the sort the CPC itself has long since succeeded in extinguishing.

Update: Even Colby can’t seem to avoid the “Ten things” meme:

1. Proportional representation just won itself a whole passel of new right-wing fans.

2. Alberta Liberal morale remained high throughout an election in which pollsters warned continually of disaster. And the pollsters proved to be almost exactly right about this (if nothing else). Yet even as the mortifying results rolled in, Alberta Liberal morale still remained high. Then their egomaniac not-really-Liberal disaster of a leader, Raj Sherman, won his seat by the skin of his teeth. This means he will not have to be replaced unless an awful lot of people smarten up fast. Alberta Liberal morale after this event? Easily, easily at its highest point in ten years. “Please, sir, may I have another?”

[. . .]

5. Those who did boycott the Senate election seem awfully proud of themselves, because it was a “meaningless” election. Why, one wonders, does it have to be meaningless? The “progressive” parties could have agreed on a single Senate candidate in advance; if they had done so, that candidate would certainly have ended up first in the queue, and provided an excellent test of Stephen Harper’s integrity, which I am told is much doubted.

The problem is that Harper might pass the test, you say? Then what’s the harm? You get some smart, popular left-wing independent speaking for Alberta in the Senate? That’s bad for “progressives” how?

I’m still waiting for the definitive post-election analysis of why all the polls were so far off: I didn’t see a single poll in the last two weeks of the election that didn’t have Danielle Smith’s Wildrose Party in clear majority territory. Nobody was predicting another PC victory in that time period (or if they were, the national media wasn’t picking it up).

January 24, 2012

Sorting out the proper terms of address, American style

Filed under: Media, Randomness, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:44

In an lengthy aside in his weekly NFL column, Gregg Easterbrook provides a useful summary about how to address current and former holders of various offices (answering a few questions I had about this topic):

In the Republican debate just before the South Carolina primary, John King of CNN addressed the candidates as “Governor Romney,” “Senator Santorum,” “Speaker Gingrich” and “Congressman Paul.” Only Paul actually holds the post connected to the title. [. . .]

Should the news media use titles such as Governor and Speaker for candidates who are not in fact governors or speakers? The authority here is The Protocol School of Washington, which teaches etiquette and, name aside, is located in Columbia, S.C. It maintains a lengthy website on terms of address; the section on addressing former officials is here. The basic rule is that if there are many persons in a category then a former official keeps his or her title when being addressed, while if there is only one of someone, the former person to hold that job does not keep the title.

Since there are many governors and senators, “Governor Romney” and “Senator Santorum” are correct terms of address. But there is only one Speaker of the House, so Gingrich should not be addressed as “Speaker Gingrich.”

The one-or-many rule is the reason judges, generals, admirals, governors, mayors and members of Congress keep their titles for life — but presidents, speakers and cabinet secretaries do not. The Protocol School notes that former president Bill Clinton should not be addressed as “President Clinton,” though having been a governor, he may be addressed as “Governor Clinton.” Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should not be addressed as “Secretary Rice,” she is addressed as “Dr. Rice.” When Dwight Eisenhower left office, he asked to be addressed as “General Eisenhower,” because addressing him as “Mr. President” would have been disrespectful to the sitting president, John Kennedy. Dick Cheney and Al Gore, the Protocol School notes, should not be addressed as “Vice President Cheney” or “Vice President Gore,” because there is only one vice president, though they may be addressed as “Congressman Cheney” or “Senator Gore.”

Thus addressing Next Gingrich as “Speaker Gingrich” is improper and disrespectful to the sitting speaker, John Boehner. As a former member of the House of Representatives, Newt should be addressed as “Congressman Gingrich.”

Considering Gingrich frequently proclaims his great knowledge of history, and considering he misses no chance to savage the media, why doesn’t he correct journalists who improperly address him as “Speaker Gingrich”? Perhaps because being called “Speaker Gingrich” makes him seem more important.

Why do members of the news media address Gingrich improperly? Because it makes them, by reflection, seem important. When news types call him “Speaker Gingrich” or “Mr. Speaker,” it sounds like someone of power and standing is in the room. A relationship of mutual phoniness is established — Gingrich and any journalist addressing him as “Speaker Gingrich” both pretending to be more important than they are.

We don’t have as many different ways to refer to our politicians: they’re generally either “The Honourable” (cabinet ministers, MPs, and senators — they retain the title after retirement if they are members of the privy council, and former cabinet ministers are always members) or “The Right Honourable” (Prime Minister, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and former Governors General). The current Governor General, as personal representative of the monarch, is addressed as “Your Excellency”.

January 19, 2012

SOPA delenda est!

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:17

Matt Peckham on the results of yesterday’s blackout:

On Wikipedia’s SOPA Initiative/Lean More page, the site notes that over 12,000 people commented on the Wikimedia Foundation’s post announcing the blackout — ”A breathtaking majority supported the blackout.” On Twitter, Wikipedia says the hashtag topic #wikipediablackout “at one point…constituted 1% of all tweets,” and that SOPA-related Twitter posts were popping off at a rate of a quarter-million every hour. And finally: Wikipedia says over eight million visitors used the site’s zip code tool to look up their elected representatives.

All the traffic to Congressional websites definitely had an impact: At one point Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) tweeted “Anti- #PIPA, #SOPA traffic has temporarily shut down our website.” Other Congressional websites were reportedly slow to load throughout the day or returned error messages for visitors.

And then, the political dominoes began to fall: Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) renounced his support for SOPA (he co-sponsored the bill) yesterday on Facebook, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) used Twitter to tell the world he now opposes the bill and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) told his Facebook followers “better to get this done right rather than fast and wrong.”

The New York Times reports “then trickle turned to flood,” noting that Senators Mark Kirk (R-IL), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) as well as Representatives Lee Terry (R-NE) and Ben Quayle (R-AZ) announced their opposition to the bill. The Times adds that “at least 10 senators and nearly twice that many House members announced their opposition.”

My own tiny contribution wasn’t particularly conclusive: traffic to the blog (in spite of the anti-SOPA clickthrough page) was up by about 20% over the previous week’s average.

January 18, 2012

Why the rent seekers have been pushing for SOPA and PIPA

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:41

Max Titmuss at the Adam Smith Institute summarizes the key points that make SOPA and PIPA so attractive to rent seekers:

The provisions put forward in SOPA and PIPA enable the closing down and harassment of websites (not even necessarily located in the US) on the flimsiest of pretences: government censorship masquerading as copyright protection. But what exactly makes the laws so odious? There are four key, objectionable provisions, all of which are ripe for manipulation by rent-seeking parties (summarised from this link):

  1. The Anti-Circumvention Provision, allowing the US government to close sites who offer advise on merely circumventing censorship mechanisms;
  2. The “Vigilante” Provision, which would grant immunity from prosecution to internet service providers who pre-emptively block potentially offending sites, leaving them inherently vulnerable to pressures from a host of interested parties;
  3. The Corporate Right of Action, enabling copyright holders to obtain an unopposed court order which would cut off foreign websites from payment processors and advertisers;
  4. Expanded Attorney General Powers: therein giving the Attorney General the power to block any domain name and have their results barred from search engines: they would effectively cease to exist.

You don’t need to be a rabid libertarian to realise both SOPA and PIPA are anathema to a society which readily proclaims its commitment to spreading liberal democracy; an integral part of which is the freedom of expression. After all, western nations have waged war purportedly in support of ‘freedom’ and regularly (this time rightly) criticise those nations which continually suppress freedom of expression online.

Mother Jones puts on the rose-coloured glasses over SOPA

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:07

In an otherwise good summary of the SOPA/PIPA issues in Mother Jones, Siddhartha Mahanta and Nick Baumann start the touchdown celebration prematurely:

Late Thursday, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the lead sponsor of the House bill, announced that he would consider dropping the DNS-blocking provisions from the bill. Late on Friday, Smith, SOPA’s sponsor, did Leahy one better, removing the provision altogether. Not long after, six Republican senators — including two co-sponsors — released a letter they wrote to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), asking him to hold off on a January 24th vote to end debate on PIPA and move to passage.

By this weekend, the writing was on the wall. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House Majority Leader, announced that SOPA would not come for a vote in the House before the controversy over the bill is resolved — essentially killing it for the time being. The White House issued a statement opposing significant portions of the bills. And Issa cancelled the hearing planned for Wednesday, saying he’s “confident” the bill is dead in the House.

Big Hollywood isn’t entirely beaten yet. PIPA, the Senate legislation, could still get a vote and move closer to becoming law, and a modified version of SOPA could conceivably come to the House floor at some point in the future. Wikipedia, Reddit, MoveOn.org, Mozilla (the maker of the Firefox web browser), the blogging platform WordPress, and others are still planning to go dark on Wednesday, just in case. But as of right now, a combination of grassroots activism, blogging, tweeting, boycotts, and the mere threat of having to scroll through 1500 LOLCats without Icanhazcheezburger (another boycott supporter), seems to have beaten an avalanche of money and lobbying. Those 1950s onion farmers would be proud.

Keep your powder dry, boys: the battle is far from won. This is just the latest skirmish in an ongoing campaign, and premature celebration of the victory is just what we don’t need.

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