Sunday, March 1, 2015

FCC Tightens Internet Oversight With New Net Neutrality Rules

By Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators dramatically expanded government oversight of the Internet, installing the once-arcane concept of net neutrality as a guiding doctrine for broadband networks that have become essential to everyday life.

To ensure the uninhibited flow of data online, the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along party lines Thursday to reclassify broadband providers as more highly regulated utilities.

The increasingly shrill debate in the last year over network neutrality — the idea that all legal content be treated equally online — has raised more profound issues of free speech, privacy, innovation, capitalism and the role of government in the 21st century.…

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Does The Supreme Court Care That Americans Support Gay Marriage?

By Arit John, Bloomberg News (TNS)

WASHINGTON — As Noah Rothman of the conservative blog Hot Air put it Friday, polls show that “gay marriage is so popular that even Republicans are coming around.” A new CNN/ORC poll found that 63 percent of Americans side with gay and lesbian couples on their constitutional right to marry. That’s up from 49 percent in August 2010. Even 42 percent of Republicans and 43 percent of conservatives said they agree gays and lesbians should be permitted to wed.

“Fortunately for the stability of the republic, the United States Supreme Court’s justices do not take public opinion into account when deciding the cases before them,” Rothman wrote.…

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Guns On Campus: Not An Agenda For Women’s Safety

Allowing guns on campus won’t reduce sexual assault on campus — instead, it will increase the risk of homicide.

Two years ago, Republican leaders released a post-mortem analysis of the 2012 election in an effort to better understand how they lost the single women’s vote by 36 percent. The 100-page report recommended that GOP lawmakers do a better job listening to female voters, remind them of the party’s “historical role in advancing the women’s rights movement,” and fight against the “so-called War on Women.” Look no further than recent GOP-led efforts to expand gun rights on college campuses under the guise of preventing campus sexual assault for evidence that conservative lawmakers have failed to take their own advice.…

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