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Can the FCC's 'Net Neutrality' Decision Be Overturned in Congress? (newsweek.com)
"Cancel the funeral and get ready to fight: Net neutrality is far from dead," argues Evan Greer, the campaign director for the pro-net neutrality group Fight for the Future in Newsweek:
Our elected officials in Congress have the power to reverse what is swiftly becoming one of the U.S. government's most unpopular decisions ever. And if they don't, they'll pay for it come election season... 26 senators have already signed on to a Resolution of Disapproval under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), a vehicle to overturn the FCC's net neutrality repeal with a simple majority vote in both the Senate and House. [UPDATE: 28 Senators have now co-sponsored the resolution]. It's not going to be easy, but it's increasingly within reach with Democrats in lock step against the FCC rollback and half a dozen Republicans already publicly criticizing the move.
Outside of Washington, DC, net neutrality is not a partisan issue. Voters from across the political spectrum overwhelmingly agree that they don't want their cable companies controlling where they get news, how they stream music and videos, or which apps they use to pay for things, get directions, or communicate with friends and family. Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T poured money into misleading advertisements, ghost written op-eds, and astroturf campaigns, to fool customers into thinking that they would voluntarily abide by the principles of net neutrality... But after all of that, they've completely failed to build any real grassroots support for their attack on net neutrality, from the left or the right. And every member of Congress knows that. 75 percent of Republican voters support the net neutrality protections the FCC just slashed... No matter how hard they try, telecom lobbyists will just never convince a meaningful number of Republican voters that killing net neutrality, and ending the internet as a free market of ideas, is a good thing. And that's what gives us a unique chance to get our normally gridlocked Congress to take action and overrule the FCC's politically toxic order.
Lawmakers in every state have been getting hammered for months with millions of phone calls, emails, protests, constituent meetings, media requests, and pressure from small businesses at volumes that just never happen. Net neutrality is becoming one of the most talked about political issues in recent human history... The FCC did something that a supermajority of people in this country oppose. Our elected officials have to decide whether to rubber stamp that betrayal or overturn it. The internet makes the impossible possible. If we harness our anger and direct it strategically, we can get the votes we need to restore the net neutrality protections that should never have been taken away in the first place. Any lawmaker who refuses to listen to their constituents will have to go on the record right before an election as having voted against the free and open web. They would be wise not to underestimate the internet's power to hold them accountable.
Outside of Washington, DC, net neutrality is not a partisan issue. Voters from across the political spectrum overwhelmingly agree that they don't want their cable companies controlling where they get news, how they stream music and videos, or which apps they use to pay for things, get directions, or communicate with friends and family. Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T poured money into misleading advertisements, ghost written op-eds, and astroturf campaigns, to fool customers into thinking that they would voluntarily abide by the principles of net neutrality... But after all of that, they've completely failed to build any real grassroots support for their attack on net neutrality, from the left or the right. And every member of Congress knows that. 75 percent of Republican voters support the net neutrality protections the FCC just slashed... No matter how hard they try, telecom lobbyists will just never convince a meaningful number of Republican voters that killing net neutrality, and ending the internet as a free market of ideas, is a good thing. And that's what gives us a unique chance to get our normally gridlocked Congress to take action and overrule the FCC's politically toxic order.
Lawmakers in every state have been getting hammered for months with millions of phone calls, emails, protests, constituent meetings, media requests, and pressure from small businesses at volumes that just never happen. Net neutrality is becoming one of the most talked about political issues in recent human history... The FCC did something that a supermajority of people in this country oppose. Our elected officials have to decide whether to rubber stamp that betrayal or overturn it. The internet makes the impossible possible. If we harness our anger and direct it strategically, we can get the votes we need to restore the net neutrality protections that should never have been taken away in the first place. Any lawmaker who refuses to listen to their constituents will have to go on the record right before an election as having voted against the free and open web. They would be wise not to underestimate the internet's power to hold them accountable.
Isn't this a basic US Government question?
The FCC's operates under the Administrative branch, and it's charter was created by an act of congress in 1934. The net neutrality repeal is just a application of it's authority to make rules, not laws.
Congress can enact laws to direct it's behavior, so long as those laws are constitutional. Which, I imagine would be a pretty straightforward application of the interstate commerce clause?
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
I give you the same answer I gave you before: Try this and watch Facebook, Twitter et al move abroad where you cannot control them. To them it does not matter where they offer their service, Facebook is just as useful to the average US citizen if it hailed from Iceland or the Philippines instead of the US. An ISP in Norway is kinda useless if you live in Albuquerque.
Also, if I don't like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and so on, I can simply use the internet without even touching them. Now please tell me how to do this without an ISP. Note that most Americans can't simply move to another ISP because their ISP got the de facto monopoly, usually state sponsored.
So please excuse me if I say that these problems are not even remotely comparable.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There's still nothing in the Constitution that remotely protects that right, total fabrication by the court to reflect the changing views of Americans.
The Constitution explicitly says enumerated rights are not meant to interfere with other rights retained by the people. Think about all our other non-enumerated rights; the right to vote, the right to privacy in the bedroom, the right to travel, and the right to certain medical decisions over our own body... are you really suggesting that the government has the authority to ban all of those outright, because we only have the rights explicitly mentioned? Ultra-authoritarianism is all the rage these days huh?
Actually, life does not begin at conception, not even human life. Life began roughly 2 billion years ago, human life maybe 200,000, and has existed as a continuum ever since. The cell that leads to a new individual is formed at conception, and a new individual comes into existence at birth.
Whether it is right to impose legal restrictions on terminating a pregnancy is a valid question, but the discussion is not helped by defective definitions.
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