Lawless: Having Been Shot Down by Federal Courts Twice In Attempting to Vote Themselves Powers Not Granted Them By Congress, Obama's FCC Violates the Law a Third Time and Once Again Pronounces Themselves Lords of the Internet

The left has been agitating for this endlessly, and twice before -- in 2010, I think, and then again in 2014 -- the FCC acted unconstitutionally to assert power over the Internet, bequeathing upon themselves a jurisdiction never delegated to them by Congress.

In 2014, the last time a Federal Court told the FCC it was acting unconstitutionally, there were suggestions that it would try again a third time, this time by using a different tactic.

It has now in fact used that tactic. The internet is an "information service" over which the FCC has no power. So the FCC has decided, on its own authority, to declare the Internet a "telecomunications service," over which it does have authority.

Note that Congress did not make this important change in definition. An agency charged with executing the law as Congress passes it has decided that it itself would change the law.

We are no longer a democracy, and as there is no longer even a fictive consent of the governed in our laws, there no longer exists any philosophical basis for obeying the government. Now obedience is simply required by practical considerations: because they will kill or imprison you if you don't obey.

Whether this move is good or bad is besides the point. But it is, you know, as bad as you would guess.

Peter Suderman considers the possibility that this Will To Power Grab will itself be struck down in court; I suppose the odds of that are good, but I do wonder at what point people stop resisting fascist tyranny, and simply give in to it, when the out of control and frankly terrifying government demonstrates that it simply will not stop until it collects all political power into its hands.

In the meantime, though, it means that the FCC has taken an unprecedented and fear-reaching step in order to make good on one of the Obama administration's long-running political priorities--a step that solves no significant existing problem, but is instead designed largely to fend off hypothetical harms, and give the agency far more power over the Internet in the process.

As Commissioner Pai told ReasonTV, the move is a "solution that won't work to a problem that doesn't exist." It is a solution, however, that is now in place, and is sure to create some problems of its own.

What is truly shocking is the complete disdain this Administration has for the rule of law and for our constitutional processes. They understand that these are the moves of a fascist tyranny, and they're okay with that.

We no longer live in a democratic republic, in which the ordinary citizen can be said, at least constructively, to have consented to the laws which bind him; we now simply live under whatever laws the gangsters occupying our government have decided to inflict upon us.

Beginning in 2009, the American Government went to war with the people it supposedly "served;" in 2015, it won that war.

posted by Ace at 03:11 PM

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