Some people stay up late on December 31. I don’t intend to, Friday and New Year’s Eve or not. Boring, yes, I know. But until I switch to decaf coffee my sleeping habits are going to be a wreck, so I’ll just have to ride it out. And that means I want to get going right away with tonight’s stories.
Republicans are getting very loud on regulatory issues, both with the FCC and with the EPA. Fred Upton is ginning up support in Michigan for his planned House efforts to challenge EPA regulatory power grabs with respect to Carbon Dioxide, efforts that will surely influence the FCC and Net Neutrality. In addition, on Sunday morning at 9am Eastern he’s scheduled to speak with Chris Wallace on Fox, with repeats on Fox News Channel at 2 and 6pm Eastern. I am so glad he’s going out there and preparing to lead on regulatory issues.
Kay Bailey Hutchison has also called the FCC “wrong” on Net Neutrality, and is hoping to be able to get some sort of action through a Democrat controlled Senate. It won’t be easy, as she points out, but it could happen if we can swing enough Democrats to see the truth about the FCC power grab.
She also doesn’t rule out defunding the FCC’s Net Neutrality plans, a way of stopping the regulations that the President cannot veto.
One more thing for tonight. The Onion Router (more commonly known as Tor) is getting heightened publicity, it appears. Tor sells itself as a way of protecting anonymity, but this does not come free. The Tor network is certainly loaded with participants who listen in on all the traffic, as it’s publicly documented that governments and others have used Tor in unwise ways. It’s even speculated that Wikileaks runs parts of the Tor network to try to gather data.
Anonymity I think is a dangerous thing, that I think does more harm than good when uncontrolled as it is with Tor. It’s all too often used by malicious individuals, which is why we routinely IP ban Tor exit nodes here at RedState. If people who use Tor are being listened in on, then that just makes me smile, because it means anonymity comes with a price.