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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.
Suspected terrorists. Every single one of these new gun control laws that I'm hearing about (please, correct me if I'm wrong!) has some bullshit about people on "terrorist watchlists" or "no fly lists." These are bullshit blacklists, because there is no due process.
Yes, if some random unaccountable person in the government, without a court, is allowed to put you on some list, then I think that list should have NO POWER. There should not be a single law that causes anyone to have to look at that list before they do business with you. I don't care if you're buying guns, placing ads, collecting bitcoin payments, printing political pamphlets, telling soldiers they can't sleep in your house, or whatever.
No due process? Then no fucking law!
This is barely about gun control at all. For any right, if you create a shadow process for taking it away from "those other people" then I expect any American to be shouting "Fuck you!" and storming The Man's mansion with torches and pitchforks and AR15s. What's wrong with that? Why wouldn't you join up?
If you're going to say "this guy gets a gun, but that guy doesn't" then I want to see a court decision, and where the "doesn't" guy had all the usual abilities as he would if he were accused of a crime. Why not? Someone tell me just what the fuck peoples' objection to due process is. If we were talking about anything other than guns, we'd all be banded together on this.
IMHO, there are only two ways to go. Both are horrifying but have their upsides, and would actually address the problem better than all the recent ideas I've heard.
1) Repeal the Second Amendment. Just go ahead and admit that we think there is no such thing as a right to bear arms. This would be a ballsy approach but I almost wonder if most people would actually support ratification.
It would at least force everyone to face the real issue and maybe secure some other concession from government, to make up for the gradual obsolescence of armed rebellion in the face of modern weapons (your militia simply can't seriously oppose a modern army's weapons). The Second Amendment had a purpose and yet if anything, it's no longer powerful enough to actually fulfill that purpose. It almost needs to be strengthened but that's impractical, so we need some other, new way to have a noose constantly around our government's neck. They should be living in fear of us, but of course they don't. So come up with something stronger and more effective than arms, something that could really work, to truly deal with the problem of government. Remote-control explosive collars or something. I don't know. Nobody in government should ever be even slightly safe from their constituents, yet you and your AR15 are no match for the Secret Service. 2A is effectively obsolete, so replace it.
2) Prosecute people for Thought Crimes (but call it something nicer). Seriously, because it is on this basis, and nothing else, that a person with a time machine actually could legally stop the Orlando shooter in a manner consistent with our country's concept of rights. He hadn't committed a crime before the incident, but obviously he intended to. Certain eggheads might say, "And my algorithm would have predicted it." Fine. But then your algorithm is part of the Though Crime trial, and it will be cross-examined just like any other criminal evidence. NO PYTHONIC WITCH-TESTS. Convict them, fairly, and then you can argue for them having fewer rights than everyone else. Until then: fuck no.
I want to write a lot of interesting and thought-provoking things here, but I'm just stuck on that one thing in the title.
Secret. Government. Proceedings.
Really, guys? Tell me again how your country is a free and democratic nation.
Well, because it's not a proceeding. Anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't understand Congressional proceedings.
The House is in recess. It's not even in the Committee of the Whole... So as far as proceedings go, they could just as easily be having a slumber party in their offices.
The Chairman didn't really have a choice... the Members were out of order. He could have:
a) had the Sergeant-at-Arms "enforce order", meaning kicking them out of the room for not being in their chairs properly,
b) call a recess
On the whole, B seems like a simpler option.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Then maybe the solution is to get rid of the no fly list. That's a much larger infringement of rights than requiring checks before purchasing a gun.