Monthly Archives: February 2015

On “net neutrality”

AllYourInternetAreBelongToUsImpeach and imprison…that’s the only thing that will stop this lawless cabal:

Lawless: Having Been Shot Down by Federal Courts Twice In Attempting to Vote Themselves Powers Not Granted Them By Congress, Obama’s FCC Violates the Law a Third Time and Once Again Pronounces Themselves Lords of the Internet

The left has been agitating for this endlessly, and twice before — in 2010, I think, and then again in 2014 — the FCC acted unconstitutionally to assert power over the Internet, bequeathing upon themselves a jurisdiction never delegated to them by Congress.

In 2014, the last time a Federal Court told the FCC it was acting unconstitutionally, there were suggestions that it would try again a third time, this time by using a different tactic.

It has now in fact used that tactic. The internet is an “information service” over which the FCC has no power. So the FCC has decided, on its own authority, to declare the Internet a “telecomunications service,” over which it does have authority.

Note that Congress did not make this important change in definition. An agency charged with executing the law as Congress passes it has decided that it itself would change the law.

We are no longer a democracy, and as there is no longer even a fictive consent of the governed in our laws, there no longer exists any philosophical basis for obeying the government. Now obedience is simply required by practical considerations: because they will kill or imprison you if you don’t obey.

Backdoor Gun Control

Having failed in their schemes to take your guns, they’ll next try to make your guns about as useful as paperweights by imposing draconian ammo restrictions. Crap like this is why friends don’t let friends vote Democrat:

A Pincer Movement on Ammunition

As it wanes, the Obama administration grows bold, and even reckless, on matters that send a thrill up the leg of its most leftward supporters. Its new attack on so-called armor-piercing ammunition — which is, in reality, a very broad attack on ammunition across the board — is a dangerous and destructive example of the administration’s late-days slide into rule-by-decree.

[…]

The upshot of all this maneuvering is that the ATF intends to revoke the sporting exemption for certain popular kinds of .223 ammunition, allowing it to be reclassified as armor-piercing and therefore banned, even though it is not designed as armor-piecing ammunition and has no special armor-piercing characteristics. The reason for this is that the feared and hated AR-style rifle has been enjoying a new career as a handgun. This is yet another consumer response to federal regulation: Some people prefer short-barreled rifles, particularly for home-defense situations when they will most likely be used indoors, but federal law makes short-barreled rifles a special category of weapon that requires additional permits and taxes, and some jurisdictions ban them outright. But if you remove the shoulder stock from an AR-style rifle, it’s not a rifle — it’s a handgun, albeit one of the clumsiest and goofiest handguns on the market. But the fact that there is a multi-shot handgun commercially available for those non-lead .223 rounds means that such ammunition can be banned as armor-piercing, even though it is not armor-piercing ammunition, by use or by design.

So, everybody goes back to lead, right?

Wrong. Environmental groups have been pressuring the EPA to begin regulating — or to ban outright — lead ammunition under the Toxic Substances Control Act. They lost their most recent round when the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the EPA lacks statutory authority to regulate lead ammunition, but when has statutory authority stopped the Obama administration? The FCC has no statutory authority to enact net-neutrality rules — that’s why it has reached back to a 1930s, New Deal–era law for justification. You can be sure that the campaign to use the EPA or other federal agencies to ban lead ammunition is far from over. The U.S. Humane Society already is petitioning the Interior Department to ban lead ammunition on public lands.

Overcriminalization Is a Problem in America

Using Sarbanes-Oxley against a fisherman who threw back some of his undersized catch?  The Supreme Court smacked down that ridiculous notion:

Overcriminalization Is a Problem in America

It’s not the first time such a miscarriage of justice has been attempted (the article also describes a jilted wife charged with violation of a chemical-weapons treaty when she tried to get back at the homewrecker), but until the size and scope of the government is drastically rolled back, it’s unlikely to be the last time.

On the bright side, they’re being somewhat honest with their intentions

useful-idiots-journalists-for-obama1-265x300…not that that makes those intentions any better:

DNC’s DC Media Arm To Scott Walker: “We’re Gonna Straight Up Lie About You, And There’s Nothing You Can Do About It”

Quote pulled from the Politico article in question (no links for liars…click through if you want it):

But if he runs for president, the national media may not be so careful to make such distinctions–between Walker and his associates, and between allegations that have stuck and those that haven’t–that Wisconsinites have grown used to.

Execrable, but not unexpected

…and they wonder why they’re perennially the lowest-rated cable news channel:

MSNBC host hopes Trayvon Martin ‘whooped the s–t out of George Zimmerman’

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry said during an address at Cornell University this week that she hopes 17-year-old Trayvon Martin “whooped the s–t” out of gunman George Zimmerman during their fatal encounter in 2012.

[…]

Harris-Perry’s address, which was captured and uploaded to YouTube by the university’s conservative group, the Cornell Review, continued: “And I hope he whooped the s–t out of George Zimmerman. And it’s not disreputable because he encountered a stranger who was prepared to kill him, and you know how I know? Because he killed him.”

Neither Harris-Perry nor a spokesperson for MSNBC responded to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.

Quote of the day

Politifact and Me

On the bogus pseudomedical practices that 404care funds, and the licensure of their practitioners:

I once encountered a Whole Foods with a yoga studio inside it, and thought that if one could only get Chris Hayes to broadcast from there (there’s still time, Chris!) it would have constituted a turducken of lifestyle liberalism upon which there would be no improving, but losing your California acupuncturist’s license to the Sacramento taxman surely surpasses that.

Jonathan Gruber Sacked

truly-great-ways-for-movie-villains-to-die--20110815044542268Perhaps lying about 404care to get it rammed down our throats wasn’t such a great idea after all:

RomneyCare/ObamaCare Architect Jonathan Gruber Is Having A Bad Week

First, the State of Vermont stopped paying him when it came to light he held Americans in such low regard. The state’s auditor has found some fishy items in Gruber’s billing and has asked the state’s AG to investigate the matter.

Now comes word that the new Republican Governor of Massachusetts has fired him from the state’s exchange board.

Still, I suppose it beats what happened to Hans Gruber. :-)