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.

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

.

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

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

[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.