Pun Salad

Come on inside:

• Comment from me is unnecessary. Here's a graphic from Keith Hennesey:

  

  Click on it for a bigger version and Hennesey's analysis.

• Jim Harper weighs in on the so-called "Internet Kill-Switch", an attempt by Your Federal Government to grab itself some additional power over the USA bits of the Internet. Harper observes that folks like Declan McCullagh are doing a pretty good job of pointing out how broad and arbitrary the proposed new powers are.

  Which would bescary enough, but Harper goes on to point out that by framing the issue in that way, the civil libertarians have already given up way too much ground. Instead we should be getting answers to questions like these:

  1) What authority does the government have to seize, or plan to seize, private assets? Such authority would be highly debatable under any of the constitutional powers kill-switchers might claim. Indeed, the constitution protects against, or at least severely limits, takings of private property in the Fifth Amendment.

  and

  2) Would it be a good idea to have the government seize control of the Internet, or parts of it, under some emergency situation? A government attack on our private communications infrastructure would almost certainly undercut the reliability and security of our networks, computers, and data.

  Get ready for the quote: "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it."

• If you can stomach the story of a different government Internet power grab, read Milton Muleller's call to action. Specifically:
  a shocking and dangerous turn in U.S. policy toward the global domain name system. It is a change that would reverse more than a decade of commitment to a transnational, bottom-up, civil society-led approach to governance of Internet identifiers, in favor of a top-down policy making regime dominated by national governments.

  Mueller provides a link to an online petition. Can't hurt.

• GOP Cowardly Weasel Watch: the House of Representatives had a chance to derail Davis-Bacon "prevailing wage" enforcement for projects funded by the huge spending bill under consideration, via an amendment offered by Iowa's Steve King. This would result in lower taxpayer costs, and more competition for unions. In short, a good idea; unsurprisingly every Democrat voted Nay. It lost, unfortunately, due to 48 Republicans joining with them.