California Labor Union That Fought for $15 Minimum Wage Now Wants an Exemption

The labor union that led the charge for a $15 minimum wage hike in cities across California is now moving to secure an exemption for employers under union contracts.

The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor buried the exemption on the eighth page of its 12-page proposal for the Santa Monica City Council to review Tuesday while deciding whether to follow Los Angeles and increase the minimum wage.

The loophole would allow employers with collective bargaining agreements to sidestep the wage hike and pay their union members below the proposed $15 per hour minimum wage.

James Sherk, a research fellow in labor economics at The Heritage Foundation, said the exemption is a union attempt to encourage businesses to unionize by making themselves the only low-wage option as union membership continues to drop-off.

“This proposal would force any worker in Santa Monica whose labor is worth less than $15 an hour to purchase union representation in order to hold a job,” Sherk said. “Unions should not be able to selectively exempt themselves from the harmful consequences of the minimum wage hikes they lobby for.”

The move in Santa Monica is not the federation of labor’s first attempt to compound a collective bargaining exemption into a minimum wage increase.

The federation received an outpouring of criticism when it attempted to push the same carve-out for unionized employers after Los Angeles decided to increase its minimum wage from $9 to $15.

“This is hypocrisy at its worst,” the Los Angeles Times wrote in a blistering editorial. “It plays into the cynical view that the federation is more interested in unionizing companies and boosting its rolls of dues-paying members than in helping poor workers.”

Rusty Hicks, the head of the federation, released a statement in May saying that businesses and employees under collective bargaining agreements should have the ability to negotiate a wage below the law’s mandated minimum in exchange for other benefits.

“This provision gives the parties the option, the freedom, to negotiate that agreement. And that is a good thing,” Hicks said.

Hicks told the Los Angeles City Council to thwart the measure’s passage unless the exemption was included, but he ultimately lost the battle after receiving significant backlash for the request.

In Santa Monica, where council members ordered a rewrite of the minimum wage proposal Tuesday night, the exemption stirred no controversy among members. Council members told a local paper the exemption would remain in the final minimum wage proposal.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/30/california-labor-union-that-fought-for-15-minimum-wage-now-wants-an-exemption/

4 More Cases of Voter Fraud in America

Obama and Hillary and his Clowns said that this don't happen?

The 2016 election year is almost upon us, and Americans of all stripes are preparing for a drawn-out political season. Republicans and Democrats will be going to the polls in droves to select their parties’ nominees – and eventually to select the nation’s most powerful political figure.

With so much on the line, the integrity of the electoral system must be ensured. Voters have to be confident that the results reflect the will of the people, or the whole democratic system is undermined.

Unfortunately, there are those who are happy to undermine it. The Heritage Foundation’s voter fraud database documents nearly 300 examples of thieves and fraudsters convicted of forging absentee ballots, diluting legitimately cast votes, and effectively disenfranchising whole communities – all to serve their own ambition or advance their ideological agendas.

Here are some of the latest cases to grace the list:

1. Adam Kane Easlick pleaded guilty to a felony charge of voting in a place where he was not a resident. During the 2012 presidential election, Kane lived in Ypsilanti, Mich., but illegally voted in Tuscola County after registering at a post office there. In fact, Easlick had registered to vote at multiple addresses outside his home town – even brazenly placing an ad on Craigslist seeking an address in nearby Ingham County so that he could obtain a fraudulent driver’s license there. The serial fraudster now faces a sentence of six month’s probation.

2. In 2013, Wisconsin resident Leonard K. Brown pleaded guilty to 5 felony counts of illegally voting in West Milwaukee, when in fact he did not reside there. Then, in 2014, a jury found him guilty of voting twice in the 2012 presidential election. Brown voted in person on election day, but he had already cast an absentee ballot several days earlier in a different jurisdiction. Brown was given a nine month jail sentence and ordered to pay a $1,750 DNA testing charge.

3. Eugene Gallagher was the top vote getter in the 2013 Taylor, Penn., race for borough council. It was later revealed that the newly-elected councilman had persuaded nonresidents to register for absentee ballots using a Taylor city address. Gallagher was forced to resign, and later pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors, including forgery, stemming from the vote fraud, and a separate charge of driving under the influence. A judge sentenced him to a maximum of ten months in the county jail, two months of house arrest, 200 hours of community service, and five years of court supervision. His guilty plea will bar him from ever holding public office again.

4. In 2011, Jenny Wanasek was going door-to-door soliciting signatures for a petition to recall Wisc. Governor Scott Walker. When Wanasek arrived at Caitlin Haycock’s home, Haycock signed the petition – and then told Wanasek that she also wanted to sign for both of her parents, who were out of the country. Wanasek literally looked the other way as Haycock committed her forgery. Haycock pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor election fraud charge and was fined $500 and ordered to serve 40 hours of community service. Wanasek also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge, and received the same sentence.

These stories, and the others in Heritage’s database, are just a sampling of the broader universe of vote fraud. No doubt many instances of fraud – from forged absentee ballots and duplicate votes to coordinated efforts by candidates to buy their way to victory – are never detected, much less investigated and prosecuted.

In a recent report, Does Your Vote Count?, Heritage’s Meese Center laid out not only the scope of the problem, but steps which governments can take to secure the ballot box against criminal activity. And contrary to the oft-repeated myth, these policies would not prevent eligible citizens from casting their votes.

With 2016 right around the corner, states must take seriously the task of protecting the sanctity of the ballot. The core of America’s great democratic experiment is an electoral system that is free and fair; it is only through proper vigilance that our elections will remain that way.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/30/4-more-cases-of-voter-fraud-in-america/

http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/dissing-voter-id-us-obama-green-lights/

How Senate GOP Leadership Is Silencing Americans’ Voices With Procedural Tricks

Here is a good Reason that MCconnell  should go!

As you may have heard, bad things are happening on Capitol Hill.  

Here’s the really bad news: it’s even worse than you probably think.  

In addition to GOP leadership caving on issue after issue, they are also stripping other members of Congress, and therefore the American people, of their ability and rights to have their voices heard.

My colleague Rob Bluey wrote here about how GOP Senate leadership blocked Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, from offering amendments this week to defund Planned Parenthood and stop the Iran nuclear deal. But this goes deeper than just a cheap shot against Cruz.

To understand what’s really going on, I spoke with Rachel Bovard, a veteran of the House and Senate, and now Heritage Foundation’s director of policy promotion.  

As you’ll learn from our Q&A, the season of trick or treat is alive and well in Washington.

Q: Exactly what happened with the Cruz amendments?

A: The Senate vote on Monday was a cloture vote to proceed to a “clean” continuing resolution–meaning it included taxpayer funds for Planned Parenthood. It passed 77-19. In the process of filing the bill, Sen. Mitch McConnell “filled the tree,” meaning he himself inserted various amendments to then block out all other senators from offering their own amendments.

By the way, this was the same tactic used habitually by his Democrat predecessor Harry Reid to stifle debate and block senators from offering amendments.

After the cloture motion passed, Cruz sought to use the tools of the Senate to remove the amendment tree to offer his own amendment. He was then denied a sufficient second, and thus denied an opportunity to offer his amendment. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, was the only one who rose in support.

Q: OK, but what about those who say one senator, such as Cruz, shouldn’t be allowed to hold up the business of the Senate?

A: To understand the significance of what happened, you need to know a few rules about the Senate.

First, the Senate is unique in that each senator has equal power. Unlike the House, which operates on seniority, each senator has equal authority under the rules of the Senate to offer bills and amendments for votes on the floor once they are recognized by the chair. It is a sacred right of all senators, unique to the institution.

Second, a sufficient second is required for a member to offer a bill or amendment up for a vote. The most important thing to note here is that, out of respect for each member¹s institutional rights, sufficient seconds are nearly always given as a matter of custom, regardless of whether individual senators agree.  For example, consider that Cruz and Lee gave Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., a sufficient second on his amendment to reauthorize the Export-Import bank, an amendment both of them oppose.

It’s simply what’s done out of senatorial courtesy and respect for the chamber.

Q: What does a “sufficient second” mean and why couldn’t Cruz get one?

A: Technically, a sufficient second is one-fifth of the quorum, or 20 senators, if all members are present. The Senate generally operates in a “continuous quorum.” That is, for the purposes of doing business, they pretend that there is always a quorum present. That’s why members can go to the floor to conduct business, sometimes without any other members present. The Senate generally operates in a way where it is assumed that a quorum is present and members can have their sufficient second.

But in this case, McConnell decided that the way the Senate has historically operated no longer applies. As he did with Cruz this week, and as he did when Cruz and Lee tried to secure votes to repeal Obamacare and to defund Planned Parenthood on a transportation funding bill in July, he orchestrated other members not raising their hands and offering a second, and then required the chair to enforce the regular order (which, historically, is not enforced for this purpose).

So, when Cruz wanted to offer his amendment, suddenly he had to have one-fifth of the members physically present and consenting to give him a sufficient second. Basically, McConnell is applying one set of rules to everyone else, and one set to Cruz and Lee, and in a completely arbitrary way in that he doesn’t tell anyone he’s suddenly going to enforce these rules.

Q: Clearly this was not helpful to getting an amendment introduced to defund Planned Parenthood, but you believe this has a much longer-term and poisonous effect on the Senate. How so?

A: I would classify it as an extraordinary centralization of power by the Senate majority leader, and an extremely heavy-handed and unprecedented move.

Again, unique to the Senate is the idea that each senator has the right to call up their bills and amendments to be deliberated in full on the floor. That is an institutional right of all senators, and a principle on which deliberation in the Senate has operated for hundreds of years.

To suddenly decree yourself the arbiter of what “deserves” a vote and what does not overturns years of precedent and sets a dangerous new standard for both the Senate and representative democracy.

Now one man, the majority leader, gets to decide what issue is worthy enough to get a vote, and who is worthy enough to offer it. Not only is McConnell diluting the historical right of each senator (regardless of party) but he is also silencing the people that those senators represent.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/30/how-senate-gop-leadership-is-silencing-americans-voices-with-procedural-tricks/

BREAKING: World Leader Drops MAJOR Bombshell… Accuses Obama Of TREASON Live At The United Nations

A bombshell claim by Argentina’s President Christina Fernandez de Kirchener should have the Obama administration in deep trouble. The Argentina President has revealed that her nation had been approached by an Obama administration official and attempted to convince Argentina to “provide the Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear fuel.”

Kirchner revealed that Gary Samore, a former White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction, visited Argentina and tried to persuade the nation to provide Iran with nuclear fuel back in 2010.

Kirchener said that Argentina requested this request in writing, as  that is protocol, and said she never heard from Samore again.

Samore admits to travelling to Argentina in 2010 but he is downplaying the importance of Obama’s attempt to get nuclear fuel for Iran.

Conservative Tribune adds:

In fact, Samore went on to explain how after Argentina balked at the deal, he subsequently approached France and Russia with a similar proposal in which Iran would send their low-enriched uranium to Russia, which would further enrich it before sending it along to France.

France would in turn finish converting the enriched uranium into nuclear reactor fuel, sending it back to Iran for its own use, ostensibly preventing the Islamic republic from weaponizing its uranium stockpiles.

This deal fell through as well, according to Samore, leading to the 2010 U.N. resolution that increased economic sanctions on Iran, ultimately bringing them to the bargaining table for the horrible deal Obama eventually worked out with them this year.

The White House has not responded to the potentially treasonous allegations.

Share this on Facebook and Twitter and help us spread this incredible accusation by the Argentine President that the Obama administration wanted to provide enriched nuclear reactor fuel to the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2010.

(H/T The Blaze)

http://www.americasfreedomfighters.com/2015/09/30/breaking-world-leader-drops-major-bombshell-accuses-obama-of-treason-live-at-the-united-nations/#

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/09/30/president-of-argentina-launches-bombshell-iran-claim-against-obama-admin-official-on-the-floor-of-u-n-general-assembly/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/22/argentine-prosecutor-nisman-is-dead-but-his-case-against-iran-isn-t.html

A Few More Facebook Post

This PP breaks down where the taxpayer dollars are going. So what money are they making on selling the body parts, and not claiming, dowe really need to keep sending them taxpayer dollars?

Obamacare’s Largest Co-Op Collapses, Marking 4th Failure of the Year

We Keep hearing that Obamacare is Working........Really?

New York state and federal regulators ordered the U.S.’s largest nonprofit health insurance provider established under the Affordable Care Act, the Health Republic Insurance of New York, to shut its doors by the end of the year as it continues to trend toward insolvency.

The announcement Friday disrupts health coverage for more than 200,000 people.

The Health Republic Insurance of New York received more than $265 million in taxpayer-funded loans, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It is too early to know how much the company will be able to repay.

“While we are deeply disappointed with this outcome, we believe it is in the best interests of our members,” the group said in a statement Friday, adding that the structure of ACA’s co-op program created challenges “too difficult to overcome.”

Despite becoming the second largest provider of health coverage on the state’s ACA exchange, Politico reported the insurer lost $130 million during its first 18 months of operations.

The Department of Financial Services said individual coverage and small group plans would continue through the end of December, but customers will have to find coverage through other health insurance providers for 2016.

Health Republic has about 210,000 members, making it the largest of the 23 nonprofit co-ops created under ACA to promote competition in state marketplaces.

The co-ops received $2.5 billion collectively in federal loans, but have struggled to compete with larger insurance companies that have greater financial stability.

Robert Moffit, a senior fellow at the Center for Health Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, said Health Republic’s failure is not surprising given a recent report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general that found 22 of the 23 co-ops experienced financial losses in 2014.

“It’s just the latest costly example of a political attempt to manipulate the health care markets,” Moffit said. “Co-ops should be able to emerge naturally in a free market.”

Health Republic is the fourth co-op to crumble in less than a year. Last month, a co-op in Nevada announced it was closing at the end of 2015 because of “challenging market conditions.”

Louisiana’s co-op announced the same in July, and CoOportunity Health, which served Nebraska and Iowa, was liquidated in March.

Moffit said nearly all of the co-ops are in financial trouble, marking a “serious problem” that he predicts will continue to push more of the insurers to close down.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/28/obamacares-largest-co-op-collapses-marking-4th-failure-of-the-year/

Did We Elect the Enemy? Frightening: See How Obama’s Ties to Radical Islam and Socialism Run Deeper Than You Might Think

Obama is a product of, and whose actions reflect what David Horowitz described as an unholy alliance, between the American left and radical Islam.

They have been brought together by the one overriding trait they share – their contempt for the United States, their belief that our country is the very embodiment of evil on earth and, therefore, must be destroyed. While Islamic radicals seek to purge the world of heresies and of the infidels who practice them, leftist radicals seek to purge society’s collective “soul” of the vices allegedly spawned by capitalism — those being racism, sexism, imperialism, and greed.

Obama’s statism and economic policies appear to be taken directly out of the Marxist-Leninist playbook of his childhood mentor, American communist Frank Marshall Davis, whose newspaper columns advocated wealth redistribution, government stimulus for “public works projects,” taxpayer-funding of universal health care, and nationalizing General Motors. Davis’s writings, riddled with racism and resentment, denounced the “tentacles of big business,” blasted Wall Street and “greedy” millionaires, lambasted GOP tax cuts that “spare the rich,” attacked “excess profits,” and often called for transformational and fundamental “change.”

Not only was Obama member and candidate of the 1990s Chicago socialist New Party; he has emulatedVladimir Lenin in striving to increase state control over important sectors of the American economy such as energy, health care, finance, and education— and with smaller interventions in food and transportation. In addition, the broader policies of the Obama Administration and his congressional progressive fellow-travelers bear comparison to Karl Marx’s ten point plan for incremental socialism.

Obama was registered at a Catholic school in Jakarta as “Barry Soetoro” and was listed as having Indonesian nationality and a member of the Muslim religion. In a conversation with George Stephanopoulos in September 2008, Obama spoke of “my Muslim faith,” only changing that to “my Christian faith” after Stephanopoulos interrupted and corrected him.

Obama has often expressed his affection for Islam:

“We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world – including in my own country.”

“We’ve seen those results in generations of Muslim immigrants – farmers and factory workers, helping to lay the railroads and build our cities, the Muslim innovators who helped build some of our highest skyscrapers and who helped unlock the secrets of our universe.”

“These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.”

“Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace.”

“The sweetest sound I know is the Muslim call to prayer”

And, most recently at a dinner to mark the celebration of Eid-al-Fitr on July 27, 2014, Obama thankedMuslim Americans for their many “achievements and contributions… to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy.”

Obama’s friendship with Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour and his sponsorship of Obama as a prospective Harvard law student probably helped harden Obama’s Islamist, leftist, black-nationalist, and anti-American views. It is likely that Obama, while attending Columbia University, became closely associated with al-Mansour, when the latter was invited to lecture by Obama’s Columbia professor and later friend, the Yasser Arafat apologist and Israel-hating Edward Said.

Formerly known as Donald Warden, al-Mansour, an American, was a mentor of Black Panther founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in the early 1960s. He changed his name after studying Islam and learning Arabic. He is well known within the black community as a lawyer; an orthodox Muslim’ a black nationalist; and an outspoken enemy of Israel, the United States, and white people, in general. His writings and books are filled with anti-American rhetoric. Al-Mansour is a personal advisor to Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the world’s 19th wealthiest person, part-owner of News Corp (Fox News), and the individual who allegedly funded Obama’s Harvard education.

Obama’s apparent respect for and adherence to beliefs so divergent from America’s history and traditions raise questions concerning their influence on the formulation of his policies, whose effects appear to have had such a clearly negative impact on American society and national security.

Stated simply, did we elect the enemy?

Is Obama’s current Middle East policy, for example, seemingly contrary to American interests, designed to inhibit Israel, bolster Hamas, and return the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt?

As bad as Obama might be for the country, he is only a manifestation or symptom of a deeper, more corrosive problem: our corrupt political-media culture.

If we had an honest federal government with an unbiased media, Obama would still be voting “present” in the Illinois state legislature.

If Barack Obama is permitted to complete his term of office, it will be an endorsement of permanent political and media corruption in the United States.

http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines-2015/did-we-elect-the-enemy-frightening-see-how-obamas-ties-to-radical-islam-and-socialism-run-deeper-than-you-might-think

http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines-2015/eerie-post-from-2008-barak-hussein-obama-is-a-shiite-muslim

http://www.truthandaction.org/obama-gives-1500-islamic-terrorists-asylum-u-s/

Chinese aircraft carrier and missile cruiser reported transiting the Suez Canal

The Chinese are coming.  A website linked to Israeli intelligence reports that a new Chinese aircraft carrier and missile cruiser has passed through the Suez Canal.  That fact cannot be hidden, so it is likely to be true. 

The Chinese task force is heading for the Russian-controlled Mediterranean port of Tartus, to join Syria's Assad and Hezb'allah forces aiming to knock out the U.S.-supported Sunni rebels in Syria.  Russia also now controls a Syrian air base. 

The Russians and Chinese have limited force-projection capabilities, but put them both together, combined with Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hezb'allah, and Assad's troops, and you get the kind of force projection only the U.S. has possessed in the past half-century. 

This is a major surprise strategic move, coordinated by Putin while talking peace at the U.N. 

Obama has been snookered again. 

Putin is insisting that ISIS is his target.  At the U.N. he (correctly) compared ISIS to Hitler's Nazis.  But his real goal is a superpower play against the United States and its half-century of dominance in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean.  Pax Americana is gone. 

The United States simply lacks the political leadership with a strategic vision able to cope with this major new threat.  Under Obama, the U.S. has lost credibility with our former allies like Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.  We therefore do not know how the dominoes will fall. 

In the worst case, it will accelerate the rise of Iran's Armageddon cult to regional power.  In the best case, Putin is positioning to cut the Iranian Crescent in half.  Chances are that Putin doesn't want an Islamofascist nuclear power on his southern border.  ISIS has recruited both Chechen and Uighur Muslims, who pose a domestic threat to Russia and China, respectively. 

In the last few days, France has also sent jet bombers to raid ISIS training camps, possibly based on its sole modern aircraft carrier. 

All these moves could be coordinated, with the aim of bringing Russia and China into the Middle East while the U.S. deliberately turns away. These big, coordinated moves spell a long-term change in global power politics.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/09/chinese_aircraft_carrier_and_missile_cruiser_reported_transiting_the_suez_canal.html#ixzz3nBLl06tP
 

Clinton Foundation was given classified information by Hillary aide Cheryl Mills ryl_mills.ht

More of Hillary's Lies coming out? She said nothing to see here move along.

Close examination of the Hillary Clinton emails so far released by the State Department reveals some disturbing insights.  Alana Goodman of the Free Beacon noticed that an email from longtime Hillary aide Cheryl Mills, her chief of staff at the State Department, was sent to Amitabh Desai, foreign policy director at the Clinton Foundation, containing “foreign government information” that is automatically classified at birth.

The email, which discussed the relationship between the governments in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, was originally drafted by Johnnie Carson, the State Department’s assistant secretary for African affairs, who sent it to Mills’ State Department email address.
Mills later forwarded the full message to Desai along with “talking points for Presient [sic] Clinton” shortly before Bill Clinton was scheduled to visit the region.
About half of the forwarded message was redacted due to its classified nature before the State Department released it to Citizens United last month. Although it is not clear what the redacted section includes, the State Department said in a court motion filed last week that it “concerns both foreign government information and critical aspects of U.S. foreign relations, including U.S. foreign activities carried out by officials of the U.S. Government.”
The State Department added that the “disclosure of this information has the potential to damage and inject friction into our bilateral relationship with African countries whose cooperation is important to U.S. national security.”

The potential for shakedown and bribery is enormous.Ponder for a moment the situation that has been revealed here.  The Clinton Foundation has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from entities, including foreign governments that have business pending with the State Department and the United States government.  That Foundation, we now know, has been given classified information that you and I would not be (and in this instance are not) allowed to see because it could damage relationships with certain countries.  In effect, the Clinton Foundation is operating as a shadow organization with (at least some – we don’t know the full extent) access to inside confidential information at the State Department as it requests substantial funds from foreign governments and private entities that do business with these governments and the U.S. government.

Of course, the Clinton Foundation is employing the “not marked” dodge:

An attorney for Mills said that she never knowingly transmitted classified information, and would presume that any information sent to her unclassified State Department email address—as opposed to through the department’s secure email system—was unclassified.
“When a subject matter sent the information on the unclassified system, [Mills] presumed it was unclassified,” said the attorney. ”She never knowingly transmitted classified information.”
Mills’ spokesperson also disputed the notion that the information would have been classified when it was sent. The attorney said that some information is not deemed classified until it is transmitted outside of the State Department.
“Information that is considered unclassified when discussed inside the State Department can later be deemed classified when it is being released outside of the Department,” said the attorney.
Intelligence experts have told the Free Beacon and other media outlets that “foreign government information” is one of the few categories of information that is automatically presumed classified from the time the U.S. government receives it, because it is so diplomatically sensitive.

Closing question: Why does the Clinton Foundation have a “foreign policy director”?  Isn’t foreign policy the province of the State Department?  This just reeks of a shadow government.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/09/clinton_foundation_was_given_classified_information_by_hillary_aide_cheryl_mills.html#ixzz3nBL0GtMW
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Question about whether Obama's plan to 'internationalize' the internet is constututional

A group of Republican lawmakers have sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office questioning the authority of the president to "transfer possession and control of critical components of the Internet's infrastructure to a third party."

The Obama administration plans to abandon oversight of internet doman name functions and allow an international body to assume control.

Washington Examiner:

The letter was signed by the chairmen of both congressional judiciary committees, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va; presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. Issa is also a former chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

The lawmakers point out that the Constitution says "Congress has the exclusive power 'to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.'"

The Internet's root zone file was developed by a grant from the United States, and since 1997, it has been operated by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration under contract with the Department of Commerce. The department had planned to transfer its management rights to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, an international agency, by this Wednesday, but announced this summer that the date would be postponed until roughly June 30 next year.

In their letter, the lawmakers asked the GAO whether transferring ownership of the Internet domain name functions would cause government property to be transferred to ICANN, whether the root zone file constituted U.S. property, and whether it was constitutional for that property to be transferred to any non-federal entity.

The lawmakers did not provide a deadline for answers, saying that the GAO would need to "conduct both significant audit work and complex legal analysis" in order to respond.

If ever there was a shining example of the adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," it's the internet.  There is no reason for the U.S. to relinquish "control" of any part of the internet.  In fact, it's the lack of control of what goes on the net that has dictatorships and theocracies so concerned.  And that total freedom is what has created the modern world while undermining the authority of the authoritarians.

Very slowly, the U.S. government is seeking to determine internet content.  The new FCC rules on net neutrality could very well marginalize websites that express a particular political point of view.  The feds swear that won't be the case.  But the temptation to do so will be great.

And what of international actors?  Are we to place our freedom of expression in the hands of the likes of Putin's Russia and Communist China?  We've already agreed to transfer these internet functions so that even a new president would have a hard time reclaiming them.

One more unconscionable part of President Obama's damaging legacy.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/09/question_about_whether_obamas_plan_to_internationalize_the_internet_is_constututional.html#ixzz3nBJthTRb
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