I was listening to The Dana Show Podcast, and Dana Loesch brought up the FCC/Comcast decision, in which the court decided that the FCC did not have the power to regulate Comcast regarding the latter’s restrictions on certain types of Internet traffic (BitTorrent traffic in this specific case).  On the show she had Michelle Moore from Smart Girl Politics, who explained “net neutrality” simply as the federal government trying to control the Internet.  Since I’ve seen some similar comments from others in recent months, I think it’s important that we look at the different facets of this issue.

As far as Ms. Loesch and Ms. Moore go, they are correct.  The FCC’s attempts to gain more power for itself (outside of Congress’s mandate) and the calls for more government regulation of the Internet are a bad thing.  Unfortunately, their description of net neutrality in just these terms mischaracterizes the issue.  I’ve been following this for years, and I think we need to spell out the issue completely to understand it.

We can approach net neutrality in two different ways.   Loesch and Moore look at this way: companies should treat every application (Skype, http, bittorrent, whatever) exactly the same.  So from this perspective, an ISP cannot give more priority to Skype (which uses a lot of bandwidth) than it does to a basic webpage.  From this perspective, net neutrality doesn’t make any sense, because ISPs would be unable to manage their network to give users a smooth experience.  And they’re right; this doesn’t make any sense.

But this isn’t the only way to look at it.  Now imagine that an ISP (say, Comcast for instance) buys a TV network (crazy, I know), and that they decide, “Hey, you know that competing TV network?  What if we slow their traffic down so that users have a bad experience on their website, but we give more priority to our own offering?”  So Comcast buys NBC, and then shapes their traffic so that visitors to CBS or ABC have their traffic slowed, while traffic to NBC or Hulu is prioritized.

I’m all for companies making their own business decisions, and if they feel they need to do traffic-shaping, that’s  cool.  I also understand the idea of giving themselves an advantage.  But there’s a couple problems with all this.

First, this all needs to be done upfront.  I’m not that interested in the traffic-shaping for network stability, but if Comcast is going to give priority to something, we need to know that upfront.  Second, there’s very little real competition in the ISP space.  What this means is that if I, as a customer, don’t like what Comcast is doing, I have very few choices about going somewhere else.  And without choice, the customer cannot put pressure on the company to get what they want.  This situation, by the way, was created by government intervention, a legacy of the old monopolies of the cable and phone companies.

So what’s the answer?  For the conservative, I think it’s clear.  We cannot trust the government to regulate net neutrality, but we also need to expand competition by further getting the government and corporate welfare out of the way.  This way companies will be forced to compete, and the Internet can remain truly neutral.

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Note: I thought I had already written this up and posted it, but apparently I never got around to it.  So, this is now a month out of date as I first saw Alice in Wonderland on opening day.  Oh, well, here it is anyway.

Alice in Wonderland brings together three of my favorite creative people: Lewis Carroll, Tim Burton, and Johnny Depp, so I was understandably excited about this movie.  So much so, in fact, that I went to see it on opening night, which is something I rarely do because of the crowds and smelly teenagers (both of which were in force Friday night).  Until I can see the movie again on DVD, I can’t really write a full review, but here are my quick thoughts on the movie having just seen it last night.

First, the design, music and performances were great.  It is true (but no surprise) that Johnny Depp’s Hatter steals the shows; in fact, that’s generally true of any adaptation of Carroll’s books.  I have been involved in two productions of play adaptations of the books (my wife and I directed one together, and I later directed it on my own), and in each the Tea Party was my favorite scene.  Hatter, with the March Hare and Dormouse, is just such a crazy character that toning it down would, I think, miss the point.  While some people have criticized the amount of screen time Depp gets, I have no problem with it.

Second, I love that this movie recognizes that some of us are big Lewis Carroll nerds.  There are in-jokes throughout that only someone who’s actually read the books (rather than just seeing the film adaptations) would get.  For example, in the opening scenes, Alice has to dance a quadrille with her potential fiance, a nod to the Lobster Quadrille in the books.

Finally, the movie is not entirely even.  I feel like things move a little too quickly once Alice gets to Wonderland; I think there should have been a few more things happening before the Red Queen is introduced.  Also, the whole dance the Mad Hatter does was, to my mind, entirely useless.  Yes, I understand that this sort of nonsense (in the bad way) is meant to appeal to children, but I think it breaks the feeling of the film, especially the modern dance music.  This sort of thing should be put out on some separate DVD that’s used to gouge parents rather than thrust upon us in the theater.

So, overall I enjoyed it very much and will get it on DVD.  I think it works nicely as a modern companion to Carroll’s original works.

So, Rep. Phil Hare (D – IL) got caught on camera saying “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this…” referring to the health care bill.

The general interpretation on this, including my own and the dude filming (who says, “Gotcha!” in response), is that here was another Democrat with no regard for constitutional limits on the federal government.  Recently, Rep. Hare released a video on his own YouTube channel as a response to it.

His basic point is that when he said he doesn’t “worry about the Constitution on this”, he meant that there were no constitutional worries for him, that he felt the health care bill was perfectly constitutional.

Now, the funny thing is, I don’t know which would worry me more: a general disregard for the Constitution or a wrong interpretation of it.  Judging by his own words in both videos, I honestly think he really doesn’t see a constitutional problem with health care, and that while he claims to want to uphold the Constitution, he doesn’t know what’s in it.  In fact, he cannot point to a constitutional basis for federally-mandated health care.

Having watched the whole original video, I also find Rep. Hare’s justification of the bill interesting.  He says (and I believe he’s being honest here) that he cares more about the people impacted by health problems than he does about the constitutionality of the bill.  I point this out because it’s an interesting parallel to other constitutional issues, in particular the right to privacy and the rights of criminals.  Proponents of greater government surveillance and harsher punishments for criminals often make the same claims: they care more about the safety of our citizens than they do about terrorists and criminals.  Yet those on the Left are quick to point out that the Constitution guarantees certain rights and protections.  I find it interesting that those claiming to uphold the Constitution (such as the ACLU) in those matters turn such a blind eye to it in this case.

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This isn’t going to be some long anti-Apple treatise, or even that profound. It just struck me that anyone seeing the iPad as “transformative” (a word I’ve heard bandied around for the last several months) has missed one huge, gaping hole (and no, I don’t mean a lack of Flash support).

When the iPad was announced, many (myself included) were amazed that the starting price was only $499. Most estimates were putting the price at $800-1000, which, given how much Apple charges for relatively underpowered computers was very likely. I believe, however, that this price, combined with the device’s limitations, will prevent it from being as revolutionary as its proponents make it out to be.

The iPad, quite simply, is not a need. This isn’t a new criticism, of course. Even those most wanting one will acknowledge that everything you can do on the iPad can be done on a much cheaper netbook, or a much-more powerful laptop. However, given Apple’s penchant for elegant design, most of us acknowledged that doing those things on the iPad would be a better experience.

The catch, however, is that price. I have a fairly powerful desktop-replacement laptop (a Dell Studio 1735) that I use for the majority of my mobile computing. It’s big, heavy, hot, and the battery life sucks. The iPad would be so much better for so many things. But I can’t do without my laptop. I use it for too many resource-intensive activities: it’s a video editor, a music studio, a game console, and a photo editor. The iPad will be be able to do some of this in a basic way, but it will never replace my laptop.

At $499, I would need something that could reasonably replace my laptop. In fact, I can buy a laptop for that price. Thus, until the iPad comes down in price, the choice is going to be to get the iPad and a laptop, or just a laptop. It’s a pretty clear choice.

Connected with my recent discussion of the States relationship to the federal government (specifically the 10th Amendment) is this quote from The Federalist No. 33, by Alexander Hamilton.  It’s rather long, so I’ll break it up and discuss each part individually:

If a number of political societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which the latter may enact , pursuant to the powers intrusted it by its constitution, must necessarily be supreme over those societies, and the individuals of whom they are composed.  It would otherwise be a mere treaty, dependent on the good faith of the parties, and not a government, which is only another word for POLITICAL POWER AND SUPREMACY.

Here Hamilton lays out the basic reasoning for the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.  Essentially, his main point is that the supremacy of the Constitution is assumed by its very existence.  I would also point out that we have here a strong argument against secession.  Hamilton continues to explain how the supremacy of the federal government is still a limited supremacy:

But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the larger society which are not pursuant to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land.  These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such.

So, the Supremacy Clause does not give supremacy to every law passed by Congress and signed by the president.  A law outside of the powers delegated to the federal government is an “[act] of usurpation… to be treated as such.”  Such a law does not deserve to be followed by the people (i.e. civil disobedience).

Hence we perceive that the clause which declares the supremacy of the laws of the Union, like the one we have just considered, only declares a truth, which flows immediately and necessarily from the institution of a federal government.  It will no, I presume, have escaped observation, that it expressly confines this supremacy to laws made pursuant to the Constitution; which I mention merely as an instance of caution in the convention; since that limitation would have been understood, though it had not been expressed.

I find it interesting that Hamilton takes these ideas as understood.  In fact, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was acting with “caution” by including a supremacy clause in the first place, and understood that clause to only apply to laws “pursuant to the constitution.”  In other words, the Supremacy Clause, like the Necessary and Proper Clause, is limited in its scope.  We would do well to remember this.

Introduction

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-dickens/2010/03/29/chris-matthews-gets-schooled-tea-partier

As I mentioned in the previous post, this exchange on Chris Matthews’s Hardball raised two important issues.  The first is the Left’s obsession with race, gender, and sexual orientation.  The second, and I believe more important issue, is the place of the 10th Amendment in our federal system, and why it’s important in all issues of federal power.

In the exchange, Melissa Harris Lacewell, a professor at Princeton, says:

Well, well let me just suggest this. That the tea partiers by using the language of tea party have asked us to draw a parallel between their movement and the Revolutionary War movement. But I think if we look more carefully we’ll see that in many ways the tea party movement resembles more closely the kind of secessionist feelings that were both part of the Confederacy before the Civil War and then also remained in the post-civil war Reconstruction era. So in other words-

At which point she is cut off by Dana Loesch (a conservative radio talk-show host) with”

It’s about state sovereignty not secessionism. It’s about 10th Amendment principles.

This is a great exchange, and demonstrates why the 10th Amendment has been so much maligned.  First, we’ll look at the text of the amendment, and then we’ll take a brief look at the history of state sovereignty.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was going through The Federalist (which I think should be required reading for anyone in government) in looking at the the “necessary and proper” clause as well as the 10th Amendment and found this wonderful quote from The Federalist No. 33, composed by Alexander Hamilton in 1788:

If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.  The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded. [Emphasis mine.]

This quote struck me for several reasons.  First, we should always remember that the government is our “creature.”  This is the concept of Popular Sovereignty.  The government is ours, not a few politicians in Washington, not large corporations, not foreign meddlers, but our own, and we should remind those we have graced to be our representatives of that on a regular basis.

Second, what the federal government can and cannot do should always be determined by the Constitution.  Objections to a law can be formulated in terms of political expediency, pragmatism, ethics, or any number of approaches, but support must always  include the constitutionality of the law to be enacted.

I have another great quote from this particular passage of The Federalist which I will post separately.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-dickens/2010/03/29/chris-matthews-gets-schooled-tea-partier

The above exchange, from Chris Matthews’s Hardball, has brought two topics to mind, both of which I will cover in different posts. The first is the Left’s use of race and gender as a means to steer debate away from the issues and instead instigate ad hominim attacks on their opponents.  Now, I want to point out from the beginning that this isn’t a case of “this side does this, while the other is blameless.”  We know that there are people on the right who do similar things.  But the abundance of these sort of attacks on the Left, and their spread through the mainstream media, shows that they are systemic on the Left.

The discussion Matthews initiates begins from this very premise.  He states, “Is this fight, from the tea party side, aimed at the, or ignited by the health care defeat last week they suffered, about ethnicity and gender and orientation, sexual orientation or is it about the substance of the issue?”  The very fact that this is the premise of his discussion demonstrates his position.  If Matthews believed that the tea partiers were concerned with the substance of the issue, he wouldn’t even raise this question.  So, from the start we know what Matthews’s biases are.  Of course, by focusing attention on the idea that tea partiers only oppose federally run health-care, bigger government, and higher taxes because they are racist-sexist-homophobes, he can ignore the substantive issues being raised by the tea party movement.

An important question, however, is why leftists are so quick to raise the spector of racism-sexism-homophobia at the drop of a hat?  If we look at the focus of leftist politics, we can easily see the reason.  If you spend all your time focusing on people’s race, gender, and sexual orientation, you will often project the same on to others.  Many leftists just cannot believe that everyone is not obsessed with gender, with race, with sexual orientation.  Furthermore, there is an air of superiority, a “How dare you?!” attitude to any opposition to their policies.  They see themselves as enlightened despots who hold the answers to society’s ills, and if we oppose them, there must be something psychologically wrong with us.

Unfortunately, there’s little we can do to convince hardcore leftists that we conservatives are not the way they see us.  On the other hand, they are far in the minority, and we don’t actually have to convince them at all.  If we focus our message on the majority of Americans (and 40% already self-identify as conservative), we can institute real change in our country.