C-SPAN Uses Periscope and Facebook Live To Broadcast The House Sit-In (washingtonpost.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Washington Post: C-SPAN has made history for resorting to Periscope to live stream a sit-in on the House floor. C-SPAN spokesman Howard Mortman said: "This is the first time we've ever shown video from the House floor picked up by a Periscope account." C-SPAN had to rely on Periscope for a direct feed to House proceedings because these proceedings aren't exactly official. The Washington Post reports: "Earlier today, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) led a sit-in on the House floor to push for action on gun control, following the failure of four gun measures earlier this week in the Senate. According to an official at the House Recording Studio, the cameras that C-SPAN commonly uses to broadcast House business are 'in recess subject to the call of the chair.' No approved video feed, no problem: C-SPAN has been piping in the Periscope feed from Rep. Scott Peters, a California Democrat." The feed hasn't been as reliable as C-SPAN's official House-proceedings feed. "Well, the Periscope video froze up again," said a C-SPAN anchor. And a bit later: "We're still having some issues with that video feed." At around 3:30 p.m., C-SPAN switched to a Facebook feed where viewers could hear and watch Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) rip the "cowards who run this chamber" for failing to turn on the microphones.

Comments

Nothing is proceeding. Few Dems won't be bipartisa

[raymorris]

Nothing is proceeding. A minority faction of the minority party (Democrats) decided they didn't like the compromise bill, so they shut down the House entirely.

The bipartisan bill that the speaker planned to take to vote would prevent the ~10,00 citizens** and 90,000 foreigners on the terrorism "no-fly"* list from buying firearms without approval, and allow them to appeal the denial in court.

Rather than accomplish SOMETHING that's maybe somewhat reasonable, these 60 or so Democrats decided to shut down Congress until they get their way and ban scary looking guns.

* The "no-fly" list doesn't stop people from flying. It means they can't fly into or out of the country.

** The US has about 300 million citizens, meaning that on in 30,000 is on the list.

Re: Secret government proceedings?

[Anonymous Coward]

The constitution does not grant any rights to the people, the people already had them.

Re: Secret government proceedings?

[ncc74656]

The militia was, and is, every able bodied male between the ages of 17 and 45. The National Guard is not the militia.

Actually, the National Guard is part of the militia. It is, however, not the entire militia; the rest of the militia is made up of the rest of us.

Re: not Secret government proceedings?

[Obfuscant]

And the argument about what constitutes a militia is irrelevant, because the clause in the 2nd Amendment that uses that word is descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words, it is a subordinate clause that lists one of many possible reasons why the founders thought it important to enumerate the right to keep and bear arms, not the ONLY reason they thought so.

The subject on this thread is asinine. There is nothing secret about what's going on. The cameras are turned off because the house is not in session. That's something that benefits BOTH sides at various times.

Re: Secret government proceedings?

[Obfuscant]

The US Constitution does not give us our rights, it enumerates specific rights that were assumed to already belong to the people but were considered important enough to be explictly documented in the Constitution. The rights listed in the Bill of Rights and additional amendments were limits put upon the government to keep those inalienable rights from being restricted by future generations of government abuse.

It's not working very well, but that's the concept and the purpose. To claim that the Constitution gives rights is patently absurd and profoundly ignorant.

Re: Secret government proceedings?

[Atomic Fro]

Exactly.

The bill of rights is a limitation on the powers of Congress.

"The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any matter dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second Amendment means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress, and has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the National Government." - 92 U.S. 542 (1875)

Re: Secret government proceedings?

[dwillden]

Regulation in the terms of the time, as Scalia pointed out in the Heller decision, had a far different meaning than it does today. Well regulated meant properly functioning or working. And that definition makes total sense. A functional militia requires the citizens to show up with their arms. A disarmed populace cannot form a functional militia. Therefore to maintain the militia needed to protect the state, the people must not be disarmed.