Justin's Political Corner

NEW YORK, NY – Yahoo announced a $1.1 billion deal for blogging site Tumblr early Monday, and said it “promises not to screw it up.”

The deal, which had been rumored since last Thursday, will help Yahoo to tap into the younger, active online user base at Tumblr. But the deal raises concerns among some Tumblr fans that the site could end up being cluttered by the ads that brings in billions of dollars a year to Yahoo. Tumblr CEO and founder David Karp has resisted the use of traditional display advertising on Tumblr to this point.

To answer those worries, Yahoo said that Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business with Karp staying on as CEO. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer posted her own Tumblr post to try to assure fans of the site they need not panic. In a call with investors and analysts Monday, Mayer referred to the deal as a “game changer” for Yahoo. She said there will be no Yahoo branding on Tumblr.

But while she sought to assure Tumblr bloggers and readers that the site will stay the way they like it, she also promised analysts that the deal will give Yahoo a chance to “monetize” Tumblr in a way that “is meaningful … to the user experience.”

Karp also sought to assure Tumblr bloggers.

“Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing,” said Karp in a statement. “Tumblr gets better faster with more resources to draw from.”

h/t: Fox2now.com

The Religious Right went into a frenzy this week over charges that the military was deliberately blocking access to SBC.net, the official website of the Southern Baptist Convention’s, as part of an anti-Christian ploy.

“What we are seeing here, I want to be very clear here, we are seeing under the Obama administration a Christian cleansing underway in the United States military,” Fox News’ Starnes maintained.

David Limbaugh accused the military of acting like a “thought police” who “selectively suppress[es] First Amendment freedoms” that “our armed forces are charged to protect,” and the SBC’s top ethicist Richard Land said it was an “outrageous” move and the person who blocked the website “needs to be fired.”

The American Family Association called the incident an example of the military’s “hostility towards faith and religious freedom” and its spokesman Bryan Fischer claimed it was part of an Islamist-secularist conspiracy to classify the entire denomination as a “hate group that spews nothing but ‘hostile content.’”

SBC.net was in fact blocked, but not as a result of anti-Christian bias, but because of malware on the SBC’s website.

Don’t just take our word for it, the Baptist Press, the news arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, reported that “the military’s software filters detected malware at SBC.net and blocked the website.” Due to malware, not the content of the website, SBC.net was considered “hostile content.”

But don’t hold your breath for Land or Fischer to retract their inflammatory claims.

H/T: RWW

What is making the right-wing mouthpieces angry today? It is the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)’s website was blocked on some military bases.

The Tennesseean:

The website for the Southern Baptist Convention has been blocked from some US Army computers.

That’s caused some conservative activists to accuse the Pentagon of being hostile to religion.

Ties between conservative evangelicals and the military have been strong in the past. But the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and other recent incidents have strained those ties.

A Southern Baptist spokesman said that he spoke to Army officials who confirmed that some computers have blocked access to SBC.Net

Those officials say the problem is a glitch, said Roger “Sing” Oldham, convention spokesman.

Even SBC spokesman Sing Oldham admits the the site’s blocking as accidental, but according to the conservative minsinformation chamber, the incident was viewed as “sinister,” “anti-Christian,” and even “pandering to Islamists.”

Right-Wing Reactions:
Todd Starnes, Fixed Noise Radio:

The U.S. Military has blocked access to the Southern Baptist Convention’s website on an unknown number of military bases because it contains “hostile content” — just weeks after an Army briefing labeled Evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics as examples of religious extremism, Fox News has learned.

The censorship was made public after an Army officer tried to log onto the denomination’s website and instead — received a warning message.
“The site you have requested has been blocked by Team CONUS (C-TNOSC/RCERT-CONUS) due to hostile content,” the message read.
Team CONUS protects the computer network of the Dept. of Defense. The SBC’s website was not blocked at the Pentagon.
It’s unclear what the “hostile content” might have been. The SBC is pro-life and opposed to same-sex marriage.

Bryan Fischer, host of AFA Radio’s Focal Point:

Bryan Fischer has produced the latest anti-Christian conspiracy theory and of course rather than do any research, rather than do anything as simple as picking up the phone or sending an email, he’s decided to go on the air to tell his million or so listeners about this latest “attack” on their religious rights by their government.

In this video, below, Fischer explains that he has “breaking news,” that the U.S. government is blocking access from military or government personnel to the Southern Baptist Convention’s homepage. The SBC is the nation’s second-largest Christian group, after Roman Catholics, and they boast about 16 million members, or about five percent of the nation’s population.

By the end of the video clip, Fischer has convinced himself that this seems like a vast government conspiracy to label the Southern Baptist Convention a “hate group,” making the giant leap from “hostile content” to “hate group.”

“Basically, the U.S. military has classified the Southern Baptist Convention as a hate group — the entire denomination,” Fischer repeatedly cries, adding, “it’s like porn.”

Lucianne Goldberg, founder of Lucianne.com:

Was access to Islamic radical websites also blocked? I would sure be more concerned about that! The DOD is working diligently to investigate what might be causing access issues. Uh huh.

AFA Action Alert:

This is just another example of the Christian faith coming under attack in the military. Earlier this month, an Army email listed prominent Christian ministries like the Family Research Council and American Family Association as “domestic hate groups.”

FreeRepublic:
Here are some of the more out there comments on that site:

Actually, it seems that some U.S. Army officers are hostile to the Southern Baptist Convention. - righttackle44

Muslims good, Christians bad. -  E. Pluribus Unum

Military chaplains and bibles in the foxhole have a long history. Now because sodomites are celebrated by a corrupt culture, sin has been redefined by the government. That is still prohibited by the First Amendment. - a fool in paradise

but not a negative word about Islam.

Time for Christians and conservatives to not join the military and to advise their relatives not to. - GeronL

They’re getting this information from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). A very far Left Wing outfit that labels any and everything conservative a hate group. The SPLC is now a traning contractor for the US government.

Originally hired by “Big Sis” Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, who claimed military veterans were potential terrorists deemed watching by DHS, the SPLC is now training the entire FedGov.

Write your Congressman! The SPLC contract HAS TO GO! - Alas Babylon!

The comments on that page are what you would expect— blaming it on Muslims, gays, liberals, Obama, et al.

Ken Kluklowski at Breitbart.com’s Big Government:

Lt. Col. Damien Pickart insists the Pentagon is not intentionally blocking access for Southern Baptists but has not provided any official explanation for the multiple reports of the military blocking access to Southern Baptist material. On its face, this looks like a brazen show of hostility by the Obama administration against devout Christians in the U.S. military.
Breitbart News legal columnist Ken Klukowski is senior fellow for religious liberty at the Family Research Council.

Today on AFR’s Focal Point, Bryan Fischer hosted Todd Starnes on this topic. As expected, it’s full of complaining that “Muslims have more rights than [Conservative] Christians in this country” crap.

The right will continue to declare this an “intentional sabotage of our Christian freedoms,” but the fact is this: the Southern Baptist Convention’s website getting blocked is more likely to be a glitch. Flip the story for a second: If it was Planned Parenthood, Media Matters, Alternet, pro-LGBTQ sites, or this very site getting blocked on the bases, the right would cheer it.

(cross-posted from Daily Kos) 

In conversation with The Hill, Representative Charles “Dutch” Ruppersberger stated that he intends to re-introduce the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act in 2013.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, known to most as simply ‘CISPA,’ was a lighting rod bill in the House last year, leading to a contentious vote in the lower chamber, and a veto threat the President over privacy concerns. The final vote for the bill was rammed through so quickly that a half dozen of its co-sponsors did not vote for the law in the end.

CISPA passed the House 248 to 168. However, its lack of mandatory standards for critical infrastructure put it into a difficult spot, as the Senate majority was in favor of such standards. In the House they were, and likely remain, anathema. The political climate has shifted some since the last age of CISPA, but probably not enough to convince the House majority to vote in favor of increased regulation. 

Naturally, the updated version of CISPA will attract heavy scrutiny when it is announced. That said, I’m not optimistic that it will have been reformed sufficiently to ensure proper privacy for the average United States citizen.

Clearly, there is a firm need for clear, strong cybersecurity legislation in the United States. This is universally agreed upon. However, after the Senate’sfailure on the larger issue, and the President’s apparent declination of issuing an executive order, to see the next round of legislative work originate in the House isn’t surprising  But, as with the first version of CISPA before it, the House could trip out of the gate, and gum the wheels of progress.

H/T: TheNextWeb.us

During a press conference at the capitol on Tuesday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CN) urged fellow lawmakers to pass his Internet spying bill in order to prevent what he dubbed “a cyber 9/11 or a 9/11 Pearl Harbor.”

“The danger of cyber attacks against the United States is clear, present and growing, with enemies ranging from rival nations to cyber terrorists to organized criminal organizations to rogue hackers,” he said.

The Cyberecurity Act of 2012 represents a compromise version of legislation the former Democrat has been pushing since 2010, which flips his originally proposed mandates and replaces them with a voluntary incentive plan — a move key to securing support from Republicans. It would also open up channels for information sharing between corporations and government agencies, which has many civil liberties advocates very worried about how the nation’s law enforcement and spy agencies will use that private data.

Lieberman’s bill also has the support of President Barack Obama and, according to co-sponsor Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), enough Senate Republicans are on board that it actually has a shot at passing. And though bears some important distinctions between the House’s cybersecurity bill,the Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), civil liberties groups still say that Lieberman’s bill would, at best, make the government work to support corporate cybersecurity while also granting those same corporations immunity for helping the government spy on private citizens.

It also affords some protections to civil liberties by mandating that any information gleamed from corporate information sharing only be used to prosecute criminals — the definition of which specifically excludes copyright and drug offenders — save people’s lives or intercept an ongoing cyber attack. The most important difference between Lieberman’s bill and CISPA is that the Senate compromise would not place the National Security Agency in charge of the nation’s cyber defense, instead handing that responsibility over to civilian agencies

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said he plans to take up the cybersecurity bill after the Senate finishes debating which expiring tax cuts to extend into the next year — a move that’s riled some Republicans, who claim that it places money over America’s national defense. Lieberman’s bill, however, is still vastly different from the House’s cybersecurity bill, and it’s not clear whether the two can be reconciled before the congressional recess in August.

H/T: The Raw Story

The may be the Super Friends of the Internet: A group of prominent web companies including Mozilla, maker of the Firefox Web browser, the social news website Reddit and the blogging service WordPress have teamed up with advocacy groups and lawmakers to form the Internet Defense League (IDL), a coalition dedicated to rallying Web users against government attempts to take over or destroy the world — the world wide web, that is. And they want your help, too.

“The League is about its members fighting for the interests of the Internet,” said Tiffiniy Cheng, a co-founder of nonprofit Web freedom advocacy group Fight For the Future, which is coordinating the formation of the Internet Defense League, in a phone interview with TPM.

“This is a new 21st century battle for some of the same old basic rights like free speech, freedom to assemble, and the League is here to fight and to win and to help Web users stay engaged,” Cheng added.

To those ends, the IDL is first setting up a new Web-based alert system to allow members to warn of new legislation that they think will harm the Internet’s functioning, and is hosting launch parties Thursday night in San Francisco, New York, Washington, DC, London and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

There’s a certain irony, perhaps deliberate, to the IDL’s prominent reliance on a major Hollywood tentpole film to bolster its message, as its many of its members — including Fight for the Future and Reddit — are vocally opposed to the attempts by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to get legislation passed to crack down on online piracy of movies like “The Dark Knight Rises.”

But Fight for the Future and the IDL may no longer be as opposed to each other’s advocacy work as they once were.

Asked if the MPAA or major Hollywood studios were invited to join the IDL, Cheng told TPM: “If they’re willing to play fair, then sure.”

At the same time, as the Internet has grown, it has seen more attempts by government officials, agencies and policymakers to regulate it and clamp down on its more freewheeling practices, such as file-sharing, which facilitate illegal activity. It’s these attempts that the IDL opposes.

Two such recent such instances of U.S. laws designed to crack down on online piracy specifically include the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA), two bills that Congress was considering in late 2011 and early 2012. The MPAA and the Recording Industry Association of America supported both bills.

Wyden, Issa and Polis were all among a small group of lawmakers that opposed the bills from their onset, but they were bitterly outnumbered for a while and the bills looked poised to pass.

SOPA and PIPA abruptly lost support in Congress and were scrapped after a massive online protest by Web users and websites on January 18, in which many sites voluntarily blacked- their homepages to show the censoring effect they argued the bills could have. That protest, known as “Blackout Day,” was spearheaded by Fight For the Future and its allies.

Now those groups have formed the IDL in an effort to create a more permanent, and slightly more organized, campaign in the advent that future bills pop-up.

Part of that effort includes a new alert system: An embed code, which is a few lines of HTML text that website owners can simply copy and paste onto their pages.

h/t: Carl Franzen at TPM IdeaLab

Verizon cites its First Amendment right to free speech as grounds against the FCC net neutrality rules, but it may like the alternative to net neutrality even less.

Verizon originally filed suit against the FCC in early 2011. However, that case was thrown out of court because the FCC had not yet officially defined the rules and the court ruled that Verizon couldn’t sue the FCC over rules that didn’t technically exist yet.

In that case, Verizon simply asserted that the FCC was exceeding the bounds of its authority. However, according to the FCC site, “The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC’s jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions.” That sweeping charter appears to grant the FCC the exact authority Verizon claims it doesn’t have.

This time around, Verizon is playing the First Amendment card. The challenge, essentially, is that by limiting Verizon’s ability to choose which content to block or promote, the FCC is infringing on Verizon’s right to free speech.

There are a couple major flaws in the argument. First, an individual’s right to free speech shouldn’t apply equally to a corporation. I’m not a Constitutional scholar nor a legal expert, but it seems to me that a corporation can say what it chooses as a function of the fact that the people actually saying it have an individual right to free speech. However, the corporation as an entity doesn’t necessarily enjoy that same right, and—in fact—the corporation’s right to free speech is already limited by rules governing false advertising or mandates to include specific text or warnings on products.

Second, the FCC net neutrality rules don’t actually inhibit an ISP’s ability to express itself freely. Under the FCC rules, Verizon is free to publish whatever content it chooses—it simply can’t block or discriminate against other content as a matter of business practice.

The fact of the matter is the vast majority of the data traversing the ISP’s network (like Verizon) doesn’t belong to the ISP in the first place. An argument could be made that by throttling or blocking traffic Verizon is actually the party guilty of stepping on the First Amendment rights of others.

Let’s assume for a minute, though, that Verizon has a First Amendment right to free speech, and that the court agrees this right is somehow violated by the FCC net neutrality rules. There is another approach to the problem that might make net neutrality the lesser of two evils by comparison.

What do you think? Does the Verizon First Amendment claim have merit? Should Verizon and other ISPs be allowed to throttle or block certain network traffic? Or, do you think the FCC net neutrality rules are valid and necessary?

h/t: Tom Bradley at PCWorld.com

Earlier this year, a virus infected millions of computers around the world that caused the infected computers to visit fake websites and prevented owners from visiting security websites to remove it.  In an effort to stop the virus, the FBI set up several clean servers so that those infected would still be able to access the internet and remove the virus from their computers.

So how is Janet Porter and her Faith2Action organization reporting this news? By suggesting that the FBI is trying to take away your internet access.

h/t: Kyle Mantyla at RWW

What is it?

Millions of computers were infected with the so-called “Internet Doomsday” virus used in the hacking scam, which redirected Internet searches through DNS servers used by the scammers. (Who, in turn, allegedly netted $14 million in bogus advertising revenue.) After U.S. and Estonian authorities busted the malware ring last November, a federal judge ordered that the FBI use temporary servers while the malware victims’ PCs were repaired. The temporary servers will shut down at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Monday, meaning anyone using a computer still infected with the virus will likely lose Internet access.

“Connectivity will be lost to the Internet PERIOD,” Symantec, the online security firm, said in a blog post. “If your computer is still using DNS entries that are pointing to the FBI servers on July 9, you will lose TOTAL access to the Internet. No connecting to the office from home, no updating Facebook, nothing until the DNS settings are fixed.”

How many computers have it?

It’s unclear how widespread the “blackout” will be. According to a working group set up by security experts, more than 300,000 computers remained infected as of June 11, including 69,000 in the United States. Last week, 245,000 computers were said to be still infected with the so-called Alureon virus, according online security firm Deteque, including 45,355 U.S. machines.

Wired estimates 64,000 U.S. users and an additional 200,000 users outside the United States are still infected with the malware, “despite repeated warnings in the news, e-mail messages sent by ISPs and alerts posted by Google and Facebook.” According to Internet Identity, another IT security firm, “12 percent of all Fortune 500 companies and four percent of ‘major’ U.S. federal agencies are still infected with DNSChanger malware.”

But it’s also unclear how many of those machines are still in use.

What you can do

According to Reuters, U.S. Internet providers including AT&T and Time Warner Cable “have made temporary arrangements so that their customers will be able to access the Internet using the address of the rogue DNS servers.” And the problem, security experts say, is relatively easy to fix.

h/t: Yahoo! News

David Barton believes that everything should operate under Biblical principles, and according to Barton, the Bible even has a view on rules for Internet service providers like Net Neutrality. Here’s a hint: the Bible opposes it. As noted in People For the American Way’s new report, “Barton’s Bunk: Religious Right ‘Historian’ Hits the Big Time in Tea Party America,” Barton finds that the Bible always has a pro-corporate, pro-GOP message. 

Barton and his partner Rick Green hosted Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) [no relation], a vocal foe of Net Neutrality who has received significant contributions from Net Neutrality opponents like Comcast, Verizon and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. Net Neutrality ensures that Internet service providers can’t charge higher rates for faster delivery of content. The New York Times explains that Net Neutrality allows “Internet users [to] get access to any Web site on an equal basis” and without the policy, service providers can “give preferential treatment to content providers who pay for faster transmission, or to their own content, in effect creating a two-tier Web.” 

But David Barton says that the Bible, Ben Franklin and the Pilgrims all opposed Net Neutrality because it violates the rights of huge corporations to charge higher rates and discriminate on content, calling it a “wicked” policy and “socialism on the Internet.” 

Even though David Barton claims to know that the Bible is decidedly against Net Neutrality, evidently he has no idea what Net Neutrality is, since he is decrying the policy as “redistribution of wealth through the Internet.”

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW