lieberman

Senators propose granting president emergency Internet power

A new U.S. Senate bill would grant the president far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of or even shut down portions of the Internet.

The legislation announced Thursday says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines, or software firms that the government selects "shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.

That emergency authority would allow the federal government to "preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people," Joe Lieberman, the primary sponsor of the … Read more

Lieberman questions accessibility, privacy of court docs

Carl Malamud, the tech activist campaigning to be named head of the Government Printing Office, appears to have the support of at least one Washington politician.

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) sent a letter Friday to the federal court system with concerns about whether court documents are sufficiently accessible to the public and whether private information in those documents is appropriately secured. The letter cites research Malamud conducted showing that personal information is not well protected.

In his letter to Judge Lee Rosenthal, who chairs the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure for the Judicial Conference of the United States, … Read more

Facebook Platinum membership. How much would you pay?

Milton Friedman once told that Free Market Principles depend on, well, nothing being free. (Well, it was some old bloke who looked like Milton Friedman. College. Whatever.)

But the Facebooks of this world seem resolute in refusing to believe that people might decide that if it cost nothing then it can't have been worth anything.

So, and it pains me to utter these words, but what would happen if Facebook led the charging?

What if they created normal, ordinary membership, then, you know, a gradation of colors? Like credit card companies. Where platinum stands for 'person living far beyond … Read more

U.S. climate bill blocked, while IEA calls for action

Attempts to bring a global warming bill up for debate were blocked in the Senate on Friday, derailing what would have been the first federal U.S. climate change legislation.

According to published reports, Democrats fell short of the 60 votes necessary to end a Republican-led filibuster.

Debate on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008 has focused on the cost of throttling carbon dioxide emissions.

"It's a huge tax increase," said Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, from the coal state of Kentucky, according to an Associated Press story. Trading carbon emissions allowances, McConnell said, would produce &… Read more

So now Eric Schmidt is an al-Qaida fellow traveler?

Senator Joe Lieberman earlier today publicized a letter he sent to Eric Schmidt demanding Google remove "content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations from YouTube."

The Connecticut Senator wants all videos mentioning or featuring these groups removed from YouTube--including videos featuring legal nonviolent or non-hate speech.

When I learned that Lieberman wanted Google to pull what he described as "terrorist content" from YouTube, my first thought was that his PR director obviously was incapacitated. But no, this was a team effort in scare-mongering.

Searches on YouTube return dozens of videos branded with an icon or logo identifying … Read more

FBI: Lieberman campaign, not hackers, caused 2006 Web site crash

You may recall that during the heat of the 2006 primary race that prompted then-Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman to go Independent, the Connecticut politician's Web site, as a colleague of mine so eloquently noted, dropped dead.

At the time, conspiracy theories abounded. There was twittering that liberal bloggers who backed Lieberman's antiwar Democratic rival, Ned Lamont (who went on to win the primary, by the way) were responsible for the site's inaccessibility, and Lieberman's own campaign maintained that a denial-of-service attack had occurred.

Now, nearly two years later, we finally know whom to blame: the Lieberman … Read more