By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 3rd at 02:30 AM  | 

Hey La-Mulanites! I’m Neil, and let’s play Tech at Night.

Anyway. Yeah, I took a break, as you may have noticed. It turns out between Christmas, New Year’s and the Fiscal Cliff, not much happened for me to cover, anyway! So let’s get started.

Two legislative notes: the outmoded video privacy law passed, while the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act is dead in the water. I always said its best chance was President Romney and a Republican Senate, but now that’s not happening. Poor Amazon, bargaining with states on the assumption this would happen.

And in case you forgot, a Cybersecurity executive order would be a bad thing, per Marsha Blackburn and Steve Scalise.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  December 8th at 10:30 AM  | 

Gotta love it: I go to take a nap before Tech at Night but… oops, somebody forgot to press the Start button on that 2 hour timer. So, suddenly it’s Tech at Saturday Morning!

So yeah, we’ll start with a story that actually got me mad: the ongoing story of that now-famous RSC paper on copyright. There are conflicting reports out there, but most I’m seeing suggest there’s a real change going on at RSC, the same way there’s been a purge of a certain wing of the party elsewhere in the House.

I’m disappointed by all of this. If the RSC is going to oppose copyright reform the same way most of us oppose anarchic anti-copyright views, then the RSC is aligning itself with the most extreme perpetual-copyright views held by groups like MPAA. If there is to be no compromise, then I cannot work with them either, since my views have been declared to be in opposition to RSC.

Purges have consequences. It’s time we stopped pretending RSC is anything but an organ of the RSC establishment now. They’re clearly not speaking for the conservative reform wing of the GOP, as they once did long ago.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 11th at 02:00 AM  | 

Out of control. It seems like only defeating Barack Obama in an election will truly stop this administration. Sure, for now they’ve been scared off of the Internet Tax, but with Net Neutrality and the Cybersecurity Executive Order still brewing, the Obama administration has more power grabs up its sleeves than we should ever have allowed.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 30th at 03:30 AM  | 

Why Mitt Romney must win the election: Dianne Feinstein is urging Barack Obama to defy the Congress, which refused to pass the Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity Act, and rule by decree on the matter.

And I know it’s a lot of inside baseball, some of the details of which I’m not entirely up on, but the FCC has been making hay before the election, and it’s not even pretending to make sense. Much as I’ve previously noted the left-wing advocacy groups do, the FCC uses whatever argument it must for the immediate issue at hand. Consistency across issues is not required.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 18th at 12:30 AM  | 

Sorry if you missed Tech at Night on Friday. I was under the weather. But I’m back, and with so much to review. How about legislation, good and bad? Well, mostly bad. Senate Democrats continue to push for senseless regulation of 4G Internet speeds, hindering vital new technology to increase high-speed Internet competition in America. Worse, Democrat Anna Eshoo is piling on in the House. | Read More »

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  September 27th at 12:45 PM  | 

We’ve seen this show before.  Republicans propose grand ideas to cut spending and implement free-market reforms; they speak ebulliently about their new ideas, and …they summarily scuttle them and cave to the Democrats. Earlier this year, Republicans proposed a commendable plan to end the bipartisan pork fest of surface transportation spending.  Instead of continuing the inexorable expansion of transportation spending, House Transportation Committee Chairman John | Read More »

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  August 19th at 12:42 PM  | 

Earlier this month, Senate Democrats brazenly forced a two-week partial shutdown of the FAA.  They were willing to hold 4,000 employees hostage and forgo millions in revenue from airline tickets, all for the purpose of securing their inveterate pork projects.  Democrats refused to pass the House extension bill because Republicans inserted minor limits on a rural pork program, better known as Essential Air Service (EAS).  | Read More »

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  August 2nd at 04:04 PM  | 

Update: Despite admitting that his demands are extreme, Harry Reid refused to approve the stopgap funding measure for the FAA, thereby ensuring a partial shutdown until September. Throughout the debt ceiling fight, Harry Reid purported to be the only true compromiser, while painting the Tea Party as extreme hostage takers.  However, unlike most hostage takers, tea partiers made no demands of government for their own | Read More »

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  July 22nd at 07:58 AM  | 

Amidst the circus surrounding the looming debt ceiling deadline, there is another deadline that is coming due tonight at midnight; funding for the FAA.  The Democrats in the Senate are obdurately refusing to pass either a short-term or long-term extension of the FAA reauthorization, threatening to furlough 4,000 precious union workers beginning Saturday.  Their rationale?  Saving Harry Reid’s rural pork. Much like highway and surface | Read More »

By: LaborUnionReport (Diary)  |  March 29th at 09:00 AM  | 

On Monday, the International Association of Machinists won an election to represent 2,900 employees at AirTran. The union (the same union calling for airline re-regulation) won despite the fact that 1,906 (nearly 66%) of AirTran’s employees did not vote for unionization. In fact, 36% of the employees did not vote at all. The union’s victory is a good example of how President Obama’s union appointments | Read More »

By: Brian Darling (Diary)  |  September 25th at 09:00 AM  | 

For-profit education is under assault from elitists who hate the idea of free market educational institutions.  It is also under attack from bureaucrats at the U.S. Department of Education who are trying to make it hard for students to arm themselves with the education needed to find a job.  Elitism is alive and well at the Department of Education. The Department of Education announced yesterday that they are “on | Read More »