Gagging the Web

By Capt. Fogg

What's a COICA? Not an anatomical term, but yet another government-sponsored acronym for the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act. According to some, it's needed to protect intellectual property, a term which often provokes cynicism regarding the intellectual properties of some intellectual property, but I'll save that for another post.

According to others, like Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, quoted at Raw Story this morning, it's 

almost like using a bunker-busting cluster bomb, when what you need is a precision-guided missile. 

As I read it, if any state AG finds something you wrote last year was insufficiently attributed or a thought or picture that belonged to someone else -- you're off the air along with everything else you've written. Is it just me, or does that sound as if it had been designed for misuse? Will any website critical of government or government officials or members of the same party as a state attorney general be sifted for some infraction that can justify it's obliteration or postpone publication indefinitely? Is this bill far too broad to be safe? Were we all born yesterday?

The Senate Judiciary Committee passed this bit of poorly digested legislation yesterday. (There's a metaphor here. Look for it.) It was passed unanimously and yet it won't be hanging over the heads of bloggers like some bloody sword just yet and we owe it to Wyden who used his senatorial option to place holds on pending legislation to force proponents to re-introduce the bill in the next session. I hope that by then the opposition will have made its case and shed enough light on the potential for politically-based government censorship.

Ron Wyden is a Democrat, but Democrats should perhaps avoid crowing about being the defenders of freedom of the press since the bill was co-sponsored by Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, who described it as a bipartisan effort to protect property rights. Obviously there's no lack of support for putting such things above freedom of speech by Democratic senators.

A group calling itself Demand Progress is circulating a petition it hopes will make a difference, and now that we have a brief reprieve, perhaps it will. Perhaps you will agree.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Quote of the Day

By Creature

"This is the most partisan decision since Bush v. Gore. That decision by the activist conservative bloc on the Supreme Court intervened in a presidential election. This decision is broader and more damaging in that they have now decided to intervene in all elections." -- Senator Patrick Leahy, on the Senate floor, slamming last week's dreadful Supreme Court decision.

Sen. Leahy preparing to investigate Bush crimes

By Michael J.W. Stickings

HuffPo:

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and White House Chief Counsel Greg Craig discussed on Tuesday the Senator's proposal to set up a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate potential crimes of the Bush administration.

"I went over some of the parameters of it and they were well aware at the White House of what I'm talking about," Leahy told the Huffington Post. "And we just agreed to talk further."

Obama may or may not be on board -- he has said he wants to look ahead, not back, but also that crimes will be prosecuted -- but it may not matter, at least not at first:

Congress will likely proceed with investigations regardless of whether Obama is on board.

"Oh yeah," Leahy said when asked if he would go forward without Obama's endorsement. "I think the Senate and the Congress as whole has an oversight responsibility that has to be carried out here anyway. Now it is much easier with the cooperation of the administration. A lot of things with the subpoenas I issued the past few years, we got a lot of information but a lot of it was held back."

TNR's Jason Zengerle: "Of course, in a way, this might not be such a bad outcome for Obama. Let someone else do the dirty (and politically polarizing) work of investigating; then, if such an investigation turns up particularly egregious instances of illegality (which, depending on how egregious they are, could presumably stoke public outrage), his Justice Department can step in and prosecute."

Needless to say, stay tuned.

Tuesday at the bar

By Carol Gee

My Glass Runneth Over with blog material today. The Tuesday's-about-Congress blog theme often makes for a slow party at my keyboard. But not today. I have more than I can manage and the nation's road ahead is slick, so a "digest" will have to do.

United States Senate

Former Senator Barack Obama will make a fine President of the United States, with great potential to restore civil liberties, to restore checks and balances, and to restore the rule of law. One of his most admirable themes is bipartisanship, already cautiously welcomed by the GOP leadership. According to a Yahoo! News story:

The Democratic-dominated Congress convenes Tuesday to confront perhaps the worst Great Depression and to grapple with a hugely ambitious agenda set by President-elect Barack Obama.

. . . This year, . . . with the economy in a worsening recession, Democrats are promising swift action on an as-yet-unveiled $775 billion economy recovery program that is the first order of business for the Obama administration.

. . . With their numbers bolstered by last fall's elections, congressional Democrats are well-positioned to dominate the session.

Senator Joseph Biden may not have cast his last Senate votes, despite his being the vice president-elect due to take office January 20. And he is taking advantage of the expertise available by raiding Rep. Steny Hoyer's staff for his legislative affairs director.

Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid is just too weak to fill his job description. He drives many in the blogosphere virtually "to drink," though I have no clue as to what to do about it.

Senator Hillary Clinton will make an excellent secretary of state, a shoo-in for confirmation, will be strong enough to fill the job description.

Senator Chris Dodd will be a very, very busy chairman of the Senate's Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee in the 111th Congress, looking to assist the auto industry and the financial and housing sectors of our ailing economy.

Senator Al Franken will have to wait to be sworn in as the Democratic Senator from Minnesota, though he has won the race. Even though his opponent, Norm Coleman, will challenge the results in court, Franken will be the 59th Democratic Senator, bring the body close to a tantalizing "filibuster-proof" majority.

Senator Roland Burris (he says) will also be sworn in at some point, speculates Politico, and I agree. Yahoo! News says, "Senate Democratic leaders need to work out a looming confrontation with Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who faces charges of having attempted to sell the seat." And I believe he will run for reelection in 2010.

Senator Ken Salazar's successor, "unknown" Michael Bennet from Colorado, was an early Obama supporter. Bennet has headed the Denver school system, will probably do well enough to get reelected in 2010 as well. Salazar has been tapped to be the new secretary of interior.

Senator Diane Feinstein has no standing to judge Leon Panetta, according to The Reaction's "Creature." And I heartily agree. Nor does Senator Jay Rockefeller, nor Senator Kit Bond, because of their record of caving in time after time to the Bush administration's unlawful and unconstitutional demands regarding warrantless wiretapping, military tribunals, etc. Must the CIA be headed by a spy? Can the director of national intelligence be an ex-admiral? CQ's Jeff Stein, who writes the blog "Spy Talk," makes a very powerful and reasoned argument that Panetta is an excellent choice to lead the CIA, headlining that he "could be the cure for the CIA's ills."

Senator Patrick Leahy, D-VT, will be the very capable chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It will be this committee that holds the hearings to confirm President-elect Obama's top nominees for key Justice Department posts. McClatchy reports that the naming of the most recent nominees (David Ogden, Elena Kagan, Tom Perelli and Dawn Johnsen) signals "An End to Bush Terror Tactics."# To quote:

President-elect Barack Obama signaled that he intends to roll back Bush administration counterterrorism policies authorizing harshinterrogation techniques, warrantless spying and indefinite detentions of terrorism suspects. The most startling shift was Obama's pick of Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen to take charge of the Office of Legal Counsel,

. . . Obama said that he hoped that the four appointees would restore "integrity, depth of experience and tenacity" to the lead federal law-enforcement agency, which has been battered by scandal.

"This is a superb set of appointments," said [Walter] Dellinger, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel from 1993-96 and then served as U.S. solicitor general. "These four are highly accomplished in the profession and bring a stature to the job that will allow them to say no to the president when no is the correct answer."

United States House of Representatives

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is strong enough to fill her job description, and she will have the help of a 20 seat Democratic gain in the House to move legislation forward quickly. According to Yahoo! News, "'We will hit the ground running ... to address the pain being felt by the American people,' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., promised Monday as she welcomed Obama to her office."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has done a good job since his election to that post, and even though he was always a strong conservative, he is also a realist.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) plans to introduce a constitutional amendment to curtail presidential pardon powers, according to TPM Muckracker.

Rep. Charles Rangel's ethical problems remain, leaving the door of his powerful committee chairmanship a bit up in the air. House Democrats are contemplating a set of rules changes, strongly opposed by the GOP, that will have the effect of markedly consolidating their power to legislate, as well as keep Committee chairs in their seats without term limits.

"Cleaning up the mess" is what we elected Barack Obama to do. But it is also the job of Congress. We cannot let them off the hook, expecting that President-elect Obama will "come in on a big horse" and clean up the town gone bad. Our entire economy has gone bad and it is rapidly getting worse. Upcoming issues are serious and imminent. Legislation will be required in addition to executive orders and leadership. Hearings cry out to be held, bipartisanship is yet to be learned. We look to the individuals named in this post, along with many others not named, to step up and do their jobs.

Reference: A look at the work of the 110th Congress -- Congressional Quarterly (12/30/08)

Hat Tip Key: Regular contributors of links to leads are "betmo"* and Jon#.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

What to do about Joe Lieberman? (update 3)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Or, in praise of Patrick Leahy.

Via Greg Sargent at TPM, here's what Sen. Leahy said today about the upcoming Democratic caucus vote on Lieberman:

Every Senator will have to vote the way he or she believes they should. I'm one who does not feel that somebody should be rewarded with a major chairmanship after doing what he did... I felt some of the attacks that he was involved in against Senator Obama... went way beyond the pale. I thought they were not fair, I thought they were not legitimate, I thought they perpetuated some of these horrible myths that were being run about Senator Obama. I would feel that had I done something similar, that I would not be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Congress.

In other words, no Homeland Security chairmanship for Lieberman. Let's hope Leahy's colleagues agree.

Think Progress has the audio of Leahy's remarks, which were picked up by Kos diarist terjeanderson.

For more, see MyDD's Josh Orton: "Leahy nails it: in any normal world, it makes perfect sense for Lieberman to lose his chairmanship of such a powerful committee. But this is Lieberworld, where comity always comes first, and bad faith is ignored willfully."

I don't know about you, but I've had more than enough of Lieberworld.