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The story of net neutrality as an Obama-led takeover of the Internet has been a key Republican talking point for months, a talking point which has been refuted by internal FCC documents obtained by Motherboard using a Freedom of Information Act request. These findings were made by the independent, nonpartisan FCC Office of Inspector General an Inspector General. However, the findings were not made public prior to Thursday’s vote.
[...] First, some background: The FCC is an independent regulatory agency that is supposed to remain “free from undue influence” by the executive branch—it is not beholden to the White House, only the laws that Congress makes and tells it to regulate. This means the president cannot direct it to implement policies. In November 2014, President Obama released a statement saying that he believed the FCC should create rules protecting net neutrality, but noted that “ultimately this decision is theirs alone.”
[...] Since 2014, Republicans have pointed to net neutrality as an idea primarily promoted by President Obama, and have made it another in a long line of regulations and laws that they have sought to repeal now that Donald Trump is president. Prior to this false narrative, though, net neutrality was a bipartisan issue; the first net neutrality rules were put in place under President George W. Bush, and many Republicans worked on the 2015 rules that were just dismantled.
What happened, then, is that Republicans sold the public a narrative that wasn’t true, then used that narrative to repeal the regulations that protect the internet.
Internal FCC Report Shows Republican Anti-Net Neutrality Narrative Is False
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @09:59PM (5 children)
That is a commonly-repeated myth. Treaties cannot override the Constitution; it is the highest law of the land.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @11:52PM (3 children)
Perhaps you should read the constitution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @12:20AM (2 children)
It is simply incorrect. While a treaty may give the federal government some power, it cannot override the Constitution itself. If a treaty's terms required that the government blatantly violate the first amendment. that would not suddenly be constitutional.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday December 20 2017, @03:26PM (1 child)
There are a number of things that are blatantly unconstitutional, but they aren't legally so unless the Supreme Court says so.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @07:17PM
An unconstitutional law is null and void from its inception, and must be resisted fiercely at every turn and by any means necessary. The People should ignore such laws. Juries should refuse to convict people who violate such laws. Police should refuse to arrest people who violate such laws. And so on. If the Supreme Court upholds such a law, then they are traitors. It's too bad the Constitution doesn't include enough measures to deal with those sorts of traitors, even after the courts finally do recognize a law's blatant unconstitutionality. We need more legal methods of dealing with domestic treason committed by judges, politicians, and others who swore to defend and uphold the highest law of the land.
And I don't see what that has to do with what was said anyway. Even our foolish courts would not claim outright that treaties can override the Constitution, even though they often incorrectly judge unconstitutional laws as constitutional.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday December 20 2017, @05:27PM
Read the Constitution. Search for "law of the land". In fact search for "Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land".
Here's a place to look: https://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A6.html [usconstitution.net]
I'll grant that there are ways of reading that which place the US Constitution on the same level as treaties, but I can't come up with a reading that doesn't place treaties as high as the constitution, and the simple reading places them higher.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.