Okay, this is kind of inside-ball (but now that the season’s begun and the Rockies are undefeated!*, I’ll go there), but it’s incredibly important:

Net neutrality, as it’s called, is the death-knell for a free and uncensored Internet. In short, it’s an end-run to regulate the entire medium, and it took a good blow today when a 3-judge panel bitch-slapped the FCC, determining it did not have the authority to boss ISPs around.

As we see governments around the US (such as my formerly-feedom-loving Centennial State) enacting tax laws and other onerous regulations at the expense of our right to free and open access to information and communication, the Orwellian-named concept of Net neutrality is not going to die an easy death.

In fact, the panel’s reasoning was that, since Congress hadn’t passed a law yet giving the FCC the authority to issue such regulations, expect a new push in that oh-so-representative body to take up the issue. You know, they’ve been so loath historically to over-regulate us, right?

Vigilance is necessary, my friends. A good place to start educating yourself (if you haven’t already) is—as usual—Cato, and, naturally, the reliable Reason has a lot of good information as well.

Given the lengths to which the Obama Administration and Pelosi/Reid Congress will go to in order to push for their utopian Soviet-style vision for America, don’t be surprised if they make an attempt to sneak through this liberty-crushing measure under the radar. The innocuous-sounding label of “Net neutrality” is likely to assist in that usurpation. It’s a highly-technical issue, and one in which most Americans won’t be very deeply engaged. But this is the way the Net ends, not with a bang.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

*UPDATE: Giambi was unable to save the day, so Rox lose to the Brewers, dropping their record to .500, which is, by the way, still pretty good for this early in the season.

Ah, so what if he once lived in freedom and was stripped away from his American family by President Clinton and shipped to the heart of a Communist dicatorship.  At least Elian and I will soon have the  same socialist-inspired healthcare that Michael Moore so loves.  Meet Comrade Gonzalez.  I’m betting President Obama would love to add him as an advisor some day.   After all, there are enough Marxists in the West Wing now to fill Castro’s palace in Havana.

Elian Gonzalez holds a Cuban flag during the UJC, Union of Young Communists, congress in Havana Sunday April 4, 2010. Gonzalez, the Cuban boy at the center of an international custody battle 10 years ago in April 2000, attended Cuba’s Young Communist Union wearing an olive green military school uniform.(AP Photo/Ismael Francisco, Prensa Latina)

In the late ’90s, a 5-year-old boy named Elian Gonzalez found himself at the center of an international tug-of-war. On Thanksgiving Day in 1999, Elian was found floating off the coast of Florida after the boat that was taking him from Cuba to the United States sank. His mother and 10 others drowned.

Relatives in Miami opened their arms to Elian. Marisleysis Gonzalez, his 21-year-old cousin, became Elian’s primary caregiver. “I guess he saw that mother figure in me,” she says. “He was always attached to me.”

For five months, Elian lived in Florida. Then, one day, his father came to claim him.

With the U.S. government’s help, Marisleysis says she and her family arranged for a psychologist to help determine where Elian should live…but that meeting never happened. One day, Marisleysis says federal agents stormed her house with their guns drawn and took Elian away. “It was terrifying. It was something I never expected,” she says. “[Elian] was begging for nobody to take him.”

The world is a better place with you in it.  Our house is definitely different now!  *grin*

Happy Birthday to the One Year Old!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)