That’s Elbert With An E

I posted a link in a previous post regarding some rules House Democrats wish to pass restricting free speech of House members on the Internet. As reported on The Next Right:

In typical fashion, House Democrats are trying to pass rules that stifle debate and require regulation. Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA) sent a letter to the Chairman of the Committee on House Administraion Kevin Brady. The letter is a response to a debate about whether the House should allow members to use YouTube, first raised by Rep. Kevin McCarthy back in April. From that story:

The reason is simple enough: The Franking Commission frowns on official links to campaign-related Web sites, political parties, advocacy groups and “any site the primary purpose of which is the conduct of commerce.”

Well, Capuano’s proposal is a disaster. It creates a list of sites, maintained by the Committee on House Administration that members are allowed to post material.

House Republican Leader John Boehner released a statement on July 8, Which I’ve reprinted below:

I’m writing to alert you to an attack on free speech that is making its way through Congress. This attack, which should concern activists of all political affiliations across the ideological spectrum, comes in the form of a new congressional rule that would prohibit Americans from viewing content published by Members of Congress on websites that are not “approved” by the Committee on House Administration, the panel that creates rules governing the internal operations of the U.S. House.

Millions of Americans today utilize free, unregulated and uncensored websites like YouTube on a daily basis to not only obtain information from their elected leaders about what’s going on in their government, but to also give feedback and easily share that information with others. The advent of new media technology has empowered American citizens with real-time information about the policy debates and actions being undertaken by Congress. This has increasingly forced Congress to become more transparent and made it easier for American citizens to hold their elected leaders accountable.

The Committee on House Administration is considering a new rule that could bring this trend to a screeching halt. The Committee is considering the adoption of new rules that would require outside websites such as YouTube to comply with House regulations before Members of Congress could post videos on them. Under the proposal, the House Administration Committee would develop a list of “approved” websites, and Members of Congress could post content only such websites. The rule has been proposed by the Democratic chairman of the Commission on Mailing Standards, Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA), and is being considered for adoption by the Committee on House Administration, chaired by Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA). A copy of Rep. Capuano’s letter is available at http://gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/Capuano_letter.PDF.

If the proposed rule is adopted, the free flow of information over the Internet between Americans and their representatives will be significantly curtailed. Americans who currently use free websites like YouTube to obtain uncensored daily information about congressional policy debates will instead be forced to go to websites “approved” by the House Administration Committee in order to continue getting such information. This would amount to new government censorship of the Internet, by a panel of federal officials that is neither neutral nor independent.

House Republicans, led by Reps. Vern Ehlers (R-MI), Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and Tom Price (R-GA), have expressed their opposition to this attack on Internet freedom and proposed an alternative solution that would allow Members of Congress to continue posting content at sites of their choosing.

In response to this situation The Sunlight Foundation has started a campaign on Twitter called Let Our Congress Tweet. If you’ve got a Twitter account, stop by and take a look. A post on their blog says it simply:

If Members can use whatever brand of inkpen, or any brand of paper, or buy whatever shoes they want, they should be given radically expanded freedom to use the Internet, and make the same empowering discoveries that their constituents are. Even if that same pen was once used to scribble a ransom note.

It appears that House Democrats wish to control the debate and stifle political speech. Honestly, between their support of the Fairness Doctrine and this mess, these guys have more in common with Castro or Ahmadinejad or Stalin than our founding fathers.

Happy Monday! This morning I found out that AT&T cell phones are not able to send or receive phone calls to land line phones or other cell phone providers. This is effecting customers in Delaware, parts of Pennsylvania, and south New Jersey. I’ve heard nothing about an estimated time when everything will be working again. Updates on this blog later.

UPDATE 12:44pm: Got this from another blog:

Apparently, the company is suffering “tower issues”

I haven’t found any more information. If you visit the blog linked above, remember it is opinion and the blogger uses profanity. I’m only using it because I can’t find anything else.

UPDATE 1:43PM: Michael Crook’s blog is a good place to keep up with information about the outage.

UPDATE: The Conservative Geek weights in on the outage.

UPDATE: The News Journal is now reporting what Michael Crook has already said: two fiber lines have been cut. And this thought crosses my mind: are AT&T customers going to get a credit for the outage?

UPDATE: Michael Crook’s phone started working at 6:28. I didn’t notice mine was working until 7:45 but a friend on AT&T said he was working at 7:12. Nice that we are back on.  It will make life at work much easier tomorrow.

There are a couple of things to share with you all. First, I am selling a printer on eBay. This is an office printer,  Xerox Phaser 8860 Solid Ink Printer. The link to the auction is here. It ends on Wednesday.

In addition, I am looking for a part time job, some evening or weekend technology work. Any leads or ideas are appreciated.

And now back to your regularly scheduled blog…

Microsoft is supposed to be releasing Service Pack 3 for Windows XP today, April 29. It will be the final major update for this version of Windows. PC Magazine reports:

Windows XP SP3 is really an accumulation of updates for compatibility, security, and performance. It doesn’t contain new features found in Vista…

So the average user won’t see much of a change to their OS, unlike Service Pack 2 which introduced a lot of new and annoying features. That is not to say that SP3 is unnecessary. Adding those security updates to your computer is an important exercise.

If you want to grab the update yourself, go to Microsoft Download Center. PC Mag reports that the full installation is 580MB. If you have your computer set for automatic updates, you can wait and get it there sometime around the beginning of June.

UPDATE: I’m behind on this. They delayed the release. PC Magazine story.

Stumbled across this today: slideshare. This site allows you to share Power Point presentations with anyone. The site looks like it could be useful if I’m looking for information about a topic or maybe if I want to utilize someone else’s creativity for my own presentations.

To title this post “around the horn” just sounds so much like… everybody else, so why not tell you what kind of horn?

Delaware Liberal waxes juvenile with Top “Mike Castle and John McCain are so old…” Jokes (To Date).

Howard at Delmar Dustpan has a post about Joshua Hopkins Marvil, former governor of Delaware who passed away on April 8, 1895, one of several governors from Laurel.

Michael at Monoblogue is being stalked by another local blogger but he seems to be handling it well. Oh, and if you are reading this Michael, I will respond to this post as soon as possible. I’m still thinking.

Jeff The Baptist has found out you can get real classic Coke in the US. I haven’t had the chance to look yet, but I will!

Hube points out a publicly-funded religious school in Minnesota, and oh yeah, it’s not a Christian school either.

Brian at PonderMints has just been having a crappy week month. Between his health and driving problems, he has been stressed. Let’s offer up a prayer for him. He could use some relief.

Mike Mahaffie found an odd word in Outlook’s dictionary.

Uh… that’s all I’ve got.

This is purely a shameless plug. If you’ve read this blog for a while or if you look through the previous posts, this is not a habit or reason I do this blog.

I do computer repairs during my day job but I also do it in my off hours. I service all types of problems including hardware replacement, software troubleshooting, setup, removal of viruses and adware/spyware, and nearly anything else related to the computer. I do residential and business repairs. I’m CompTIA A+ Certified and having been doing computer services professionally for 6 years. If you live in the greater Laurel area or even further (or even further than that) and could use my help, drop me a note at thatselbert [at] gmail [dot] com.

And now back to your regularly scheduled blog…