Dick Armey's Freedom Page

trinitishwar writes "House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.) has a site where you can vote to express your opinion on Carnivore: http://www.freedom.gov/vote/vote4.asp. Just let him know how you feel." The poorly-worded poll is for political purposes (TexasCowboy23 points out the House putting pressure on Reno at this exact moment) but it doesn't hurt to vote anyway. What I want to know is, where in RFC 2146 does it say a politician can own FREEDOM.GOV?! Complete with 468x60 banner ads promoting Deep Thoughts by Dick Armey ("Cloning is the way amoebas reproduce") and his other site FLATTAX.GOV. I guess this started when nobody made serious complaints about GOP.GOV (see Jim Warren's comments and an Armey staffer's response back in December) ... did someone change the rules when I wasn't looking?

Comments

Hello...

[pb]

Protest slashdot not putting their new stories on the main page! :)

Yeah, I think they shouldn't allow just anyone to get a .gov site, but he is a *politician*, after all. I mean, he can sign a letter and just send it if he wants to.

Heck, he should buy up slashdot.gov and yahoo.gov while he's at it! Start selling .gov sites to the lowest bidder, this is America!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Slanted survey

[www.sorehands.com]

Yes. It's worth risking a loss of my privacy to fight crime.

Sounds a little inflamatory to me. Though, I agree that the government should not be doing this, this type of poll terminaolgy makes for a bad poll.

Re:Slanted survey

[Dievs]

It rather should say 'It's worth losing privacy for a small chance to improve fighting crime'

Time to protest?

[tagishsimon]

RFC 2146 is abundently clear; your Mr. Armey seems to be getting a little above himself. If his "office" is not listed in The United States Government Manual - it isn't ... and if it is not listed in Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 95-1 - it isn't ... then it should not have a .gov domain.

Could I suggest someone protests to the delegated naming authority, which is listed as:

Federal Networking Council
4001 N. Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22203
Phone: (703) 522-6410
EMail: execdir@fnc.gov
URL: http://www.fnc.gov

.

Re:Time to protest?

[loik]

----- The following addresses had delivery problems -----
(unrecoverable error)
----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to hpccpublic2.hpcc.gov.:
>>> RCPT To:
... User unknown
550 ... User unknown

And the same thing, formatted (yes, I know...)

[tagishsimon]

RFC 2146, Freedom.gov, Flattax.gov

Here's a standard form email ...

To: execdir@fnc.gov
Subject: RFC 2146, Freedom.gov, Flattax.gov

Sirs

You are listed in RFC 2146 as the delegated naming authority for the .GOV domain.

RFC 2146 sets out rules for naming eligibility under this domain. (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2146.txt)

I note the existence of two domains: Freedom.gov, Flattax.gov.

I should be grateful if you would:

a) Explain under which term of RFC 2146 such names have been allowed

b) Consider withdrawing these domain names if you are unable to substantiate their legitimacy in terms of either of:

B1) FIPS 95-1 - http://www.nist.gov/itl/fipspubs/fip95-1.htm
B2) US Government Manual - http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/browse-gm-99.html

yours sincerely

Hmmmm...

[don_carnage]

But can we trust a guy named 'Dick Armey'? tee hee

sorry...couldn't resist
--

You need to look a little harder

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom.gov is the website for the Office of the House Majority Leader. Where in RFC 2146 does it say that is allowed? Where it says entities listed in the government manual are allowed. Page 27 of the current U.S. Government Manual (1999-2000 edition) lists the Office of the Majority Leader. That RFC was written with the executive branch in mind, not the legislative branch. If a Cabinet agency can get its own TLD, then so can a Congressional leadership office. This is because the three branches of our government are coequal. Think of it this way, the Speaker of the House is third in line to the presidency, and has a greater Constitutional claim to his own domain than any appointee of the president. On a Consitutional level, the Department of Justice website is nothing more than Janet Reno's website.

Re:You need to look a little harder

[Booker]

Hrm... but are entities listed in the government manual allowed to make whatever domains they want under the .gov TLD? I mean, if Armey is the Majority Leader, then make majorityleader.gov, or something.

If Mr. Armey happens to like naked clowns, is he allowed to register "nakedclowns.gov" just because he happens to be majority leader, and "majority leader" is an entity listed in the government manual?

Re:You need to look a little harder

[tagishsimon]

Freedom.gov is the website for the Office of the House Majority Leader. Where in RFC 2146 does it say that is allowed?

Okay, well, we could try the section on page 2:

"A domain name should be derived from the official name for the organization (e.g., "USDA.Gov" or "AGRICULTURE.GOV".)"

and ask how Freedom is derived from "Office of the House Majority Leader"

Or, we could try the section on page 2 which says:

"Only ONE registration and delegation shall be made for the purpose of identifying an agency"

and wonder about how Armey has wound up with Freedom.Gov and Flattax.Gov

IMHO, the same problem pertains to GOP.GOV. And, after some more digging, I find that it is nowadays nic.gov that administers your GOV namespace, and one Daisy Bhagowalia who is the Domain Registrar. Sadly, she does not seem to respond to email enquiries about why she has allowed RFC 2146 rules to be broken. Perhaps she needs more emails from others concerned with partisan pollution in that namespace.

Re:You need to look a little harder

[Skald]

That RFC was written with the executive branch in mind, not the legislative branch.

The notion that we should be guessing at authors' intentions, rather simply reading the RFC, is unworthy of a distinguished forum like Slashdot, and should be relegated to regions of low intellectual climate... like the Supreme Court. ;-)

This is because the three branches of our government are coequal.

I'd be very much interested in hearing this claim justified... I frankly believe it to be untrue, either in theory or in practice.

The US Consitution neither declares them coequal nor unequal, it simply delineates the powers of each. You could perhaps argue that said powers are equal, though that would be a tough argument to make, IMHO. I certainly don't think you can argue that the folks at the constitutional convention intended us to understand that the branches should be kept equal. Most foresaw a relatively weak judicial branch; their unpleasant experience with English magistrates effectively acting as legislators was pretty fresh on everybody's mind. I would strongly argue that the legislative was intended to be most powerful... but I won't, unless anyone cares. :-)

Think of it this way, the Speaker of the House is third in line to the presidency, and has a greater Constitutional claim to his own domain than any appointee of the president.

The Speaker can lay no constitutional claim to a domain name, for the simple reason that the constitution doesn't grant him any such privilege. Nor can he lay statutory claim to a domain name, unless there's a law on the subject I don't know about. According to the conventions laid out by RFC 2146, we may regard his office as warranting an appropriately-named domain. But as tagishsimon points out, Rep. Armey is actually in violation of RFC 2146. His actions, whatever the intentions, are uncouth and show poor netizenship. We should tell him so, and hope he makes amends.

Web polls; Armey

[sulli]

Yes, but most Web polls are slanted, as /. shows so clearly, whether or not CmdrTaco stacks the numbers with Who fan votes.

But if you click through, you'll see a nice letter to Janet Reno complaining about Carnivore. Even if the domain name is suspect (and I think it is), at least Armey is on the right side of this issue, from the YRO point of view.

sulli

2 thoughts...

[ripicheep]

1. Mabe Congress should have its own tld. .con anyone?
2. Does a .gov tld automatically go to a Unites States of America governmental office?

There are definately other governments out there, and I would hazzard a guess that there are bigger, and better governments than the US gov.

"Damn world! Stealing my internet." --Al Gore.

"dot con"

[arthurs_sidekick]

Heh ... well, .con is appropriate for some members of congress. But political jokes aside, I can think of two reasons why this isn't the best proposal, one of which is specific to the proposed tld (and is thus trivial) ".con" is, on most keyboards, less than a centimetre away from ".com"

Secondly, It'd be easy enough to generate listings under the .gov domain for the various congressional districts (ny-dist12-houserep.gov) and you could, I suppose, route requests for bob-etheridge.gov to nc-dist5-houserep.gov so the folks who remember their house rep's name but not their district can find them. I like this because I think it should be explicit that these domains are for congressfolk in their official capacities.

jamie....

[Eric S Gaymond]

You're stupid partizanship is really annoying. How do you exspect people to take 'YRO' stuff seriously if you use it as a platform to attack Coke while heralding Pepsi (the diffrences between the reps and dems is about the same as the diffrences between coke and pepsi).

Well, I for one certanly won't, thats for sure.

A reply from Dairy which sucks

[tagishsimon]

Daisy Bhagowalia - the new .gov Doman manager, has replied to my email enquiring why the FREEDOM.GOV, FLATTAX.GOV and GOP.GOV domains were issued. Her reply was:

I am the new .gov domain manager and these names were approved by the previous manager, so I cannot say exactly what his judgement call was, but I'm sure he had good justification. Thanks, Daisy.

IMHO, that sucks. Whilst it is the case that the Office of the House Majority Leader is indeed noted in The United States Government Manual, the fact remains that Domain Names should be derived from the Agency (or in this case, Office), and only a single Domain Name should be issued per Agency/Office. So, for what it is worth, my response was:

Come off it, Daisy. If you've read RFC 2146 (and I'm sure you have) then you know there can be no way that any of the three Domains can be justified under the terms of the RFC; as such, you are somewhat abrogating your responsibility as registrar, and your response brings the .GOV domain into disrepute. If you are happy with this situation, well, then you are exercising much lower standards than I would hope would be enforced by a government registrar.

Her email address is daisy.bhagowalia@gsa.gov