Congress, With Nothing Important On Its Hands, Seeks To Rush Through Nomination Of Anti-230 FCC Commissioner

from the no-other-priorities? dept

You might think that Congress has more important issues on its hands, with a pandemic still going on, issues around disinformation and the election, massive fires still burning in parts of the US, a record number of hurricanes pounding the south... but it appears that Congress thinks the most pressing issue is gutting Section 230. As you'll recall, right after FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly made some generally straightforward statements about how the 1st Amendment wouldn't let the government interfere with social media platforms, Trump informed O'Rielly that his nomination to stay at the FCC had been rescinded.

It seems pretty clear that in the world of Trump, all that he wants out of his FCC is to act as his own private speech police. To that effect, he not only put in place the obviously unconstitutional executive order pushing NTIA to petition the FCC to "reinterpret" Section 230 of the Communications Act -- the law that enables social media to exist in its current form -- but has since put pressure on the FCC to move forward with that effort. While some had hoped that maybe Ajit Pai would find a backbone and his long-stated principles in his giant Reese's mug, he has proven he has neither, and moved forward with the process to make the FCC the internet speech police.

Of course, there remains a problem. O'Rielly is still there, and both the Democrats on the FCC have made it clear they disagree with this plan. When the announcement was made that O'Rielly's nomination had been pulled, I heard from multiple FCC experts who told me there was "no way" that a new Commissioner could be nominated, vetted, paraded before the Senate, and voted on before January 20th. However, it appears that a Senate that has decided it can rush through a candidate for an open Supreme Court seat rather than deal with the actual problems of the country can also do the exact same thing for an FCC Commissioner.

Last month, Trump nominated the guy who wrote the unconstitutional executive order, Nathan Simington, to the seat, and again I was told that his nomination was unlikely to be reviewed by the Senate before the new session began next year. Not so, apparently. As Politico reported last week, the Senate Commerce Committee has agreed to rush through his nomination in "near record time" with a hearing set for November 10th.

It's going to be fascinating to watch all those Senators who spent years claiming they were absolutely, 100% against the FCC regulating anything to do with the internet do total 180s and make sure that Simington is ready to become the speech police for the internet.

Filed Under: fcc, free speech, michael o'rielly, nathan simington, nomination, section 230

After Using Promise Of Drone Memo Release To Push Its Appeals Court Nominee Through, Administration Returns To Dragging Its Feet

from the bait-and-switch dept

The American government has killed four Americans with drone strikes since 2009, all of which were completely detached from any notion of due process. At best, the DOJ builds a case against the foreign-located citizen and, if the target resides in a nation where the US can get away with utilizing weaponized drones, the American citizen is sentenced to death via push-button operator.

The administration has never released its legal justifications for the extrajudicial killing of American citizens. The DOJ has fought any demands for this document's release, but a recent decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the agency to release "key parts" of the secret memo.

The administration declared that it would honor the court's order and used the supposedly imminent release of the drone killing memo as leverage to push through its nomination for an appeals court seat. This nominee, David Barron, was a controversial pick due to his status as the principal author of the still-unseen drone memo.

Now that the administration's nominee has been approved, it's gone back to its standard m.o. of dragging its feet over the release of the memo.

One week after the Obama administration said it would comply with a federal appeals court ruling ordering it to make public portions of a Justice Department memo that signed off on the targeted killing of a United States citizen, the administration is now asking the court for permission to censor additional passages of the document.

Not only does the administration want to remove more information from the memo, but it apparently hoped it could do so in secret.

The Justice Department asked to keep its entire motion seeking additional redactions secret, but on Wednesday the court issued a five-page order denying that request and saying that as much of the motion as possible would have to be made public.

The order also recounted new details about several previous rounds of then-secret negotiations between the court and the government, dating back to February, over what would be redacted.

Some of the information the administration was hoping to redact is already public knowledge -- like the agency (CIA) that worked with the Defense Department to carry out the strike on Anwar al-Awlaki -- a killing that was carried out even though the DOJ had yet to complete its case against him.

The administration now has the judge it wants and a court order it doesn't. Judging by the hurry-up-and-wait treatment of the so-called "Torture Report" (which also involves the CIA), there's little reason to believe this document will be publicized any time soon, or with very much of it left intact. When it does finally make its way into the open, I'd be surprised if it contained anything more than the usual "terrorism renders most laws and civil liberties void" rationale.

Filed Under: david barron, doj, drone memo, drones, extrajudicial killing, nomination