The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
The Allegation That Congress Destroyed
Your Internet Privacy Is Fake News
by Tom Giovanetti
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Top Headlines
White House to unveil new liar-nObamaCare repeal deal Tuesday. (Washington Examiner)
Democrats are applying litmus tests to Gorsuch their favorite justices wouldn't pass. (The Federalist)
Newspaper editorials pan Democrats' attempt to filibuster Gorsuch, encourage confirmation. (The Washington Free Beacon)
Trump ready to tackle North Korea alone. (RealClearDefense)
Reversing another liar-nObama policy, Trump pulls funding for UN Population Fund. (CNS News)
California Senate OKs statewide illegal immigrant sanctuary bill. (The Washington Times)
NCAA lifts ban on hosting events in North Carolina over "bathroom law." (Mediaite)
Number of people who owe over $100,000 in student debt has quadrupled in 10 years. (Market Watch)
New Yorkers shocked to find that people are fleeing their city in droves. (Hot Air)
Trump donates 1st quarter salary to National Park Service. (Hot Air)
Policy: The god that failed: Communism & socialism then and now. (The Center for Vision & Values)
Policy: If Nuclear Deterrence Fails, What's The Plan? (RealClearDefense) ~The Patriot Post
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Whoever Released Susan Rice, Unmasked Flynn,
Trump Names Committed A Felony
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Judge Andrew Napolitano addresses the question of when is it right and when is it wrong to unmask the identity of an American. Susan Rice is not going to like what he’s got to say... Napolitano points out that the key points are what “Rice did with the name once unmasked and why she unmasked it.” He says, “The government surveils conversations and she believes that the conversations involve a foreign power so she asks for a transcript of the conversation. She gets it immediately, and she sees American person 1, foreign agent, American person 1, foreign agent. She feels knowing who the American person 1 is will help her understand the conversation, the NSA gives her the name. That is called unmasking. That’s legal – unmasking for the purpose of developing a further understanding of the national security reason for the conversation.” Napolitano continues, “Unmasking for another reason – politics, vengeance, curiosity, embarrassment; that is profoundly illegal. So if the conversation, instead of between foreign agent and American 1 is between American 1 and American 2, and number 1 is Donald Trump and number 2 is Paul Manafort, and she sees what they’re talking about, she whispers in the ‘president’s’ ear, ‘guess what Trump and Manafort talked about tonight, and we’re back in July, that’s called espionage.”... http://rickwells.us/napolitano-whoever-released-susan-rice-unmasked-flynn-trump-names-committed-felony/
liar-nObama’s Top 10 Betrayals
of the American People
by Truth Revolt
{truthrevolt.org} ~ On this new special edition of Anni Cyrus’s “Top 10”, Anni discusses liar-nObama’s Top 10 Betrayals of the American People, unveiling the treacherous record of a Radical-in-Chief. Don’t miss it! http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/glazov-gang-obamas-top-10-betrayals-american-people
.Rice Didn’t Randomly Choose To Do This –
Stinks To High Heaven
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Reflecting on how different the leftist propaganda media’s posture and conduct would be if it had been President Trump spying on liar-nObama coming in, she understates it as “Watergate times ten... There would be people staked out at the Brookings Institution, where Susan Rice has a cushy job, they’d be at her house, they’d find her. If the shoe was on the other foot there wouldn’t be this appalling lack of curiosity on the part of the mainstream media about what was going on here.” Ingraham asks, “Who directed her to do this? This was just a random thing she was thinking because, uh, Donald Trump’s name was mentioned in some intercept? I mean, Donald Trump’s name would have been mentioned in hundreds, if not thousands of foreign intercepts. So she just happened to choose these ones? The whole thing stinks to high heaven.” Hannity asks her, as a lawyer, if there’s any situation in which Susan Rice would need to unmask a Trump transition team member or either candidate Trump or President-elect Trump... http://rickwells.us/laura-ingraham-rice-didnt-randomly-choose-to-do-this-stinks-to-high-heaven/
.Defector: Only One “Real Solution”
to North Korean Threat
{fixthisnation.com} ~ In an interview with NBC News, North Korean defector Thae Yong Ho said the mad dictator Kim Jong Un is “desperate” to hold onto his failing regime, and he sees the development of nuclear weapons as crucial to his continued rule... Thae, the highest-ranking North Korean official to defect in more than twenty years, said the U.S. should be prepared for anything when it came to Kim Jong Un’s aggression. “Once he sees that there is any kind of sign of a tank or an imminent threat from America, then he would use his nuclear weapons with ICBM,” he said in the interview. Thae warned that the Kim regime had “reached a very significant level of nuclear development.”...
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White House Officials Divided on
Islam, ISIS, Israel and Iran
by Soeren Kern
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ The people U.S. President Donald J. Trump has chosen to lead his foreign policy team may complicate efforts to fulfill his inaugural pledge to eradicate "radical Islamic terrorism" "from the face of the Earth"... a Herculean task even under the best of circumstances. An analysis of the political appointments to the different agencies within the U.S. national security apparatus shows that the key members of the president's foreign policy team hold widely divergent views on the threat posed by radical Islam — and on the nature of Islam itself. They also disagree on approaches to Iran, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the European Union, Russia, globalism and other national security issues. The policy disconnect is being exacerbated by the fact that dozens of key positions within the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies remain unfilled... https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10158/white-house-islam-isis-israel-iran
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One clear message from the last election is that voters want a clean break from the heavy-handed regulatory overreach of the Obama administration. Congress intends to overturn as much Obama administration overreach as possible, and it’s in that context that Congress overturned the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) pending privacy regulation. But there’s been a lot of confusion, so let’s explain.
Originally, consumer internet privacy was handled by the federal agency specifically designed and empowered to protect consumers: the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC has legislative authority and decades of agency expertise in consumer protection, including privacy protection.
That is, until the FCC under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler usurped the FTC’s authority as part of its ideological campaign to heavily regulate the internet.
One of Wheeler’s first moves was to hire Gigi Sohn, who has spent the better part of her career crusading for the de facto nationalization of broadband providers. Gigi seems to see ISPs as the root of all evil in the communications marketplace, and once Wheeler hired Sohn as his special policy advisor, the regulations came fast, furious and unhinged from empirical data or marketplace considerations.
As part of their crusade, Wheeler and Sohn went far beyond the net neutrality demands of most activist groups and completely reversed previous FCC policy by reclassifying broadband under the same regulations governing the old analog phone networks, which themselves barely exist anymore.
This ill-advised move had the effect of calling into question much of the FTC’s ability to enforce its privacy regime over broadband providers. So the FCC, not Congress, was responsible for disruptions in federal privacy protections.
Then the FCC doubled down on its mistakes by creating its own new, poorly designed privacy regulations that were inconsistent and uncoordinated with existing FTC rules and practices. And the FCC regulations focused on ISPs rather than on edge providers—i.e., companies that people interact with directly, such as Facebook—even though edge providers gather far more personal data than do ISPs. This, of course, was consistent with Wheeler’s and Sohn’s view that ISPs are somehow inherently culpable for every imagined or perceived problem in the communications industry.
The FCC’s privacy regulations also departed completely from long-established “opt-out” privacy expectations and instead adopted an onerous “opt-in” standard, which would completely preclude innovation and experimentation in making advertising more tailored and personalized for consumers.
This is why groups like IPI urged both Congress and the FCC itself to throw out the Wheeler privacy regulations, which Congress did.
Importantly, as the Competitive Enterprise Institute has pointed out, there remain numerous and overlapping federal and state privacy protections for consumers. And, of course, the FCC regulations were pending—they had not yet even come into effect themselves. How does it feel to have been lied to?
As a participant on the internet, your privacy is at no greater risk as a result of Congress’ actions. But freedom and innovation were at risk, because of out-of-control, power-grabbing agencies like the FCC under Wheeler. Thankfully now we’re on the path to restoring sanity in internet regulation.
The Allegation That Congress Destroyed
Your Internet Privacy Is Fake News
by Tom Giovanetti
{ipi.org} ~ You have been lied to about “your browsing history being sold to the highest bidder.” That was fake news pushed by special interest groups taking advantage of easily duped social media.One clear message from the last election is that voters want a clean break from the heavy-handed regulatory overreach of the Obama administration. Congress intends to overturn as much Obama administration overreach as possible, and it’s in that context that Congress overturned the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) pending privacy regulation. But there’s been a lot of confusion, so let’s explain.
Originally, consumer internet privacy was handled by the federal agency specifically designed and empowered to protect consumers: the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC has legislative authority and decades of agency expertise in consumer protection, including privacy protection.
That is, until the FCC under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler usurped the FTC’s authority as part of its ideological campaign to heavily regulate the internet.
One of Wheeler’s first moves was to hire Gigi Sohn, who has spent the better part of her career crusading for the de facto nationalization of broadband providers. Gigi seems to see ISPs as the root of all evil in the communications marketplace, and once Wheeler hired Sohn as his special policy advisor, the regulations came fast, furious and unhinged from empirical data or marketplace considerations.
As part of their crusade, Wheeler and Sohn went far beyond the net neutrality demands of most activist groups and completely reversed previous FCC policy by reclassifying broadband under the same regulations governing the old analog phone networks, which themselves barely exist anymore.
This ill-advised move had the effect of calling into question much of the FTC’s ability to enforce its privacy regime over broadband providers. So the FCC, not Congress, was responsible for disruptions in federal privacy protections.
Then the FCC doubled down on its mistakes by creating its own new, poorly designed privacy regulations that were inconsistent and uncoordinated with existing FTC rules and practices. And the FCC regulations focused on ISPs rather than on edge providers—i.e., companies that people interact with directly, such as Facebook—even though edge providers gather far more personal data than do ISPs. This, of course, was consistent with Wheeler’s and Sohn’s view that ISPs are somehow inherently culpable for every imagined or perceived problem in the communications industry.
The FCC’s privacy regulations also departed completely from long-established “opt-out” privacy expectations and instead adopted an onerous “opt-in” standard, which would completely preclude innovation and experimentation in making advertising more tailored and personalized for consumers.
This is why groups like IPI urged both Congress and the FCC itself to throw out the Wheeler privacy regulations, which Congress did.
Importantly, as the Competitive Enterprise Institute has pointed out, there remain numerous and overlapping federal and state privacy protections for consumers. And, of course, the FCC regulations were pending—they had not yet even come into effect themselves. How does it feel to have been lied to?
As a participant on the internet, your privacy is at no greater risk as a result of Congress’ actions. But freedom and innovation were at risk, because of out-of-control, power-grabbing agencies like the FCC under Wheeler. Thankfully now we’re on the path to restoring sanity in internet regulation.
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