Recently, JtC had posted "Federal Judge Says Embedding a Tweet Can Be Copyright Infringement." That was a very interesting post, and I had commented on that, but, to me, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was blowing the situation out-of-proportion. And just the other day, a commenter on reddit said something like, "Sometimes the EFF makes mountains out of molehills, but they are right in "How Congress Censored the Internet". Here I agree with the reddit commentator, and with the EFF article. This is bad, very bad.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate voted to begin floor debate on a bill (S. 2155) that would weaken regulations of banks, large and small, and grease the skids for the next bank crash. After the severe bank crash of 2008, in order to guard against future such crashes, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank law, which enacted the regulations the bill would now weaken. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scored the bill for budget costs, and figured $671 million over ten years. But the CBO said its estimate was "subject to considerable uncertainty" due to a "slightly greater" "probability in any year that a systemically important financial institution (SIFI) will fail or that there will be a financial crisis." However, in 2008, we saw what some of the real cost to the country could be: $821 billion to the federal government, plus $3.4 trillion in real estate wealth and 5.5 million jobs lost.

The House Freedom Caucus of the U.S. Congress has built a reputation for bullheaded pursuit of far-right policy, but not for pursuit of freedom, as its name would indicate. It has pushed federal government shutdown, caused the speaker of the House to quit, and scuttled the Republican bill to cut health care for not cutting enough. But, measured against the four freedoms once set down by President Franklin Roosevelt, the caucus seems more in pursuit of serfdom than freedom.

In his "Four Freedoms" speech, given eleven months before the nation's entry into World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt set down a standard of freedom:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world.

Let's see how the caucus measures up to those four essential human freedoms.

From The Intercept:

https://theintercept.com/2017/10/02/using-an-arcane-maneuver-bipartisan-...

BIPARTISAN GROUP TO FORCE VOTE ON U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN YEMEN WAR
Zaid Jilani
October 2 2017

One thing we can do is try to shake things up, at least let them know we're watching and we know what they're really doing. Subject them to the real truths and see what they say. Make them respond and get on record their lies and obfuscations. Maybe even make them nervous.

There are a lot of ethical guidelines with regards to proper conduct in our highest levels of government. For the most part, these are formalities that allow the proper flow of business. However, there are some unwritten rules which are the highest authority within the hallowed halls of congress.

Therefore, I present to you, the ACTUAL rules of Order that our representatives observe, and obey with almost slavish devotion.