OK...taxes and a budget cannot make it through the Senate, but a web censorship bill does...why

Anyone who loves liberty loves the Internet (Thanks ALGORE ;<)  ). How else would you have gotten message out from Iran when it had its recent troubles or Dan Rather would have gotten away with his plot to pull the 04 election to John F Kerry, the Haughty French looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam.

Now this Congress is full of oxygen thieves who cannot do anything required of them by the Constitution and law, such as pass a budget or oversee the actions of the Executive Branch. But for some reason they can seize multiple industries (auto, health care, student loans) and now can give this president and his Attorney General the power to shut down web sites

Web Censorship Bill Sails Through Senate Committee Epicenter Wired.com
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a bill that would give the Attorney General the right to shut down websites with a court order if copyright infringement is deemed “central to the activity” of the site — regardless if the website has actually committed a crime. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) is among the most draconian laws ever considered to combat digital piracy, and contains what some have called the “nuclear option,” which would essentially allow the Attorney General to turn suspected websites “off.”


COICA is the latest effort by Hollywood, the recording industry and the big media companies to stem the tidal wave of internet file sharing that has upended those industries and, they claim, cost them tens of billions of dollars over the last decade.


...Many people opposed to the bill agree in principle with its aims: Illegal music piracy is, well, illegal, and should be stopped. Musicians, artists and content creators should be compensated for their work. But the law’s critics do not believe that giving the federal government the right to shut down websites at will based upon a vague and arbitrary standard of evidence, even if no law-breaking has been proved, is a particularly good idea. COICA must still be approved by the full House and Senate before becoming law. A vote is unlikely before the new year.


Among the sites that could go dark if the law passes: Dropbox, RapidShare, SoundCloud, Hype Machine and any other site for which the Attorney General deems copyright infringement to be “central to the activity” of the site, according to Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group that opposes the bill. There need not even be illegal content on a site — links alone will qualify a site for digital death. Websites at risk could also theoretically include p2pnet and pirate-party.us or any other website that advocates for peer-to-peer file sharing or rejects copyright law, according to the group.


In short, COICA would allow the federal government to censor the internet without due process.

And that is its purpose.  Hopefully this won't get anywhere near the floor before the Republicans take the house.  This administration has shown itself completely untrustworthy and it will use power to punish enemies (why is it auto dealerships that were making money were shut down…wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact they gave money to the Republicans would it?) and reward its friends (Black Panthers really didn’t intimidate anyone at the polls did they).  But more to the point could this Just Us Department or a legitimate Justice Department be trusted with this kind of power?  The answer is not no but hell no.  An administration that falsified data to a judge to keep their drilling ban going would lie in an instant to get Rush Limbaugh or Foxnews.com shut down.   Would it be out of the realm of possibility that they would go to a pet judge and say “The Drudge Report is full of copyright infringements and needs to be shut down…” just before a critical legislative vote or election.

Let us pray this bill dies the disrespectful death it needs…and with any luck the authors of this abomination of law and abuse of people’s liberty are some of the soon to be unemployed in the capital.