Most conservatives understand that Rep. Blackburn is one of the more reliably intelligent and sober figures in contemporary politics.  That’s particularly true when it comes to technology policy.  While most political leaders speak in simplistic talking points, Rep. Blackburn is known for developing real knowledge about, and applies her steady conservative principles to, the issues.

As the most prominent example, Rep. Blackburn remains one of the most steadfast and informed opponents of so-called “Net Neutrality,” which truly will launch governmental micromanagement of Internet service.

So it’s especially odd and ironic that some conservatives suddenly slur her.  Said RedState’s (and CNN’s) Erick Erickson, “I am pledging right now that I will do everything in my power to defeat her in her 2012 re-election bid.”  His rationale?  Erickson has joined the likes of MoveOn.org, Demand Progress, the Marxist group Free Press and others on the left in fanatically opposing legislation to stop foreign Internet piracy, H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).  In doing so, he and other generally reliable conservatives are promoting lawlessness and outright theft by foreign pirates over constitutionally protected property rights.

So what is SOPA, and why all of the fuss?

First, a personal observation:  I have never witnessed an opposition campaign characterized by such misinformation, ignorance and outright dishonesty as the one waged by opponents of the legislation.  To be clear, I have never met Mr. Erickson, I respect him generally and have absolutely zero ill will toward him personally.  He provides, however, a perfect example of misinformation by making claims such as, “The Act intends to stop online piracy. The way the Act goes about doing this is, in large part, allowing Eric Holder to take control of the internet and shut down websites he does not like.”  That is flatly, horribly false.  Anyone who has actually read the bill knows how preposterous that comment is.  Unfortunately, it’s all too typical of the anti-SOPA coalition.

In previous commentaries I have addressed and corrected the main anti-SOPA myths more fully, but here’s the essence of the truth people should know about it.

First, the bill targets foreign rogue websites dedicated to the theft of American intellectual property that would already be subject to seizure if located within the U.S.  Such websites currently pirate hundreds of billions of dollars worth of American intellectual property, which accounts for an enormous portion of domestic jobs, exports and output.

Second, the bill incorporates exhaustive due process protections for all parties involved.  This is critical, because opponents falsely claim that the Attorney General or rights holders would somehow possess arbitrary powers against innocent actors.  Quite the contrary, the bill explicitly incorporates the same Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that apply to all litigation. Relief can only be granted upon such prerequisites as notice to adverse parties, specific facts that “clearly show that immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage” will occur, specific details justifying relief and opportunity for adverse parties to present their rebuttal.  The bill also punishes false claims, protects defendants against impossible or unreasonable burdens, allows courts to modify relief in the interests of justice and allows damages (including legal fees) for wronged defendants.

So when opponents of SOPA claim that it deprives anyone of due process, they are speaking either dishonestly or ignorantly.  That is a simple fact.

Opponents of SOPA also falsely claim that it somehow constitutes “censorship” or a threat to “free speech.”  Setting aside for a moment the sham that foreign thieves operating outside the jurisdiction of the United States somehow enjoy any First Amendment protections, otherwise illegal activity does not magically achieve sacred status or legal immunity simply because it occurs on the Internet rather than on a street corner.  Moreover, this legislation and judicial orders pursuant to it would remain subject to the same judicial review applicable to any other statute.

Compounding the irony, Google, no friend to the conservative cause, constitutes the primary corporate interest driving opposition to the bill.  That’s no surprise, since Google profits handsomely from the theft of others’ intellectual property online.  Just last August, the search giant admitted wrongdoing and agreed to pay a $500 million fine to avoid criminal charges that it had padded its bottom line for years by knowingly accepting advertising by foreign pharmacies preying on American consumers, which led to the illegal imports of unsafe prescription drugs.

In other words, it’s no coincidence that the largest corporate interest fueling the misinformed opposition to giving domestic rights holders the tools necessary to protect their property against foreign theft online is also the company that stands to gain the most financially from SOPA’s defeat.  Indeed, the legislation’s defeat should be viewed for what it is: the ultimate policy bailout for Google.  And lest conservatives forget, Google furiously supports “Net Neutrality,” which actually does constitute toxic governmental encroachment against Internet freedom.

So shame on so many SOPA opponents on the right, who have curiously joined the online equivalent of Occupy Wall Street to put the interests of foreign thieves ahead of the constitutional rights of American property owners.

The fact that they can’t oppose the bill on honest, genuine bases speaks volumes.  As does the fact that they demonize proven champions of freedom like Rep. Blackburn, who is among the staunchest defenders against actual threats of censorship and improper government expansion.

Google’s policy toward individual and personal privacy of its users can be summed up by comment of their CEO Eric Schmidt who said, “Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.” Unfortunately for consumers, it appears that Google cross that line – often.

Google’s history of privacy violations is long and often appears to be part company policy. Google has admitted it collected personal information and data for three years across the globe while its cars traveled through neighborhood snapping pictures for its Street View program. The cars also collected information from Wi-Fi’s from people’s homes.

Former House Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton initially called for hearings into Google’s Wi-Fi scandal. “[Google] made fairly significant verbal assurances that they would improve their behavior but apparently that’s all they did,” Barton said. “They really didn’t change their business model and it appears to me Google had adopted a model of saying one thing in Washington and doing another in their business practices. We might need to drop the ‘G’ from Google and just call them ‘Oogle’ because of what they appear to be doing,” he said.

If the Wi-Fi incident were the only instance where Google grabbed personal information from consumers, it might be excused but there appears to be a clear pattern of apathy towards personal privacy.

Google’s latest entre into the social networking space is an example of the bull in the China shop attitude the behemoth has toward its competitors and its customers.

Faced with a “friend deficit” versus Facebook, the company endorsed ‘Facebook Friend Exporter,” a tool to snatch unwitting Facebook friends and their personal information into the Google Empire. Names, addresses and even personal phone numbers are pulled into Google+.

When Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) questioned what the Federal Trade Commission was doing about this, the representative responded that she couldn’t comment on things that weren’t “public”.

So while it’s possible that the FTC is already looking into Google’s data snatching program specifically, its clear that Google has some answering to do for their privacy practices overall.

More than 100 amendments were considered during the continuing resolution debate, 21 of which were unambiguous spending cuts. Heritage Action for America, a sister organization to my employer, compiled the votes on amendments that cut non-security spending.

The list includes some familiar names like Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and even a few members of GOP leadership. It also offers clues as to how Republicans might tackle spending cuts on two other measures in the coming months — raising the debt ceiling and producing a budget.

So who are the 47 conservative all stars? Listed alphabetically by last name:

Amash, Bachmann, Broun, Campbell, Chabot, Chaffetz, Coffman, Duncan (TN), Duncan (SC), Flake, Fleming, Franks, Garrett, Gowdy, Graves (GA), Heller, Hensarling, Herger, Huelskamp, Huizenga, Hurt, Jenkins, Jordan, Lamborn, Mack, McClintock, McHenry, Miller (FL), Mulvaney, Myrick, Neugebauer, Paul, Pence, Pompeo, Price (GA), Ribble, Rokita, Royce, Scalise, Schweikert, Scott (GA), Scott (SC), Sessions, Walsh, Wilson, Woodall, and Young (IN).

It’s refreshing to see the names of Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) and Policy Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.), all members of the Republican leadership team, on the list. Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), freshman representative to leadership, and Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) also set a positive example.

Of the spending-cut amendments, most cut millions not billions, targeting programs such as the Legal Services Corporation (saving $324.4 million) or Amtrak (saving $446.9 million). But two of the amendments offered a real test of political courage.

A proposal from Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) for an across-the-board 5.5% cut to non-security discretionary spending would have saved $22 billion. Another amendment, offered by Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), would have cut funding to fiscal 2006 levels for a savings of $34 billion.

Blackburn’s plan, backed by the conservative Republican Study Committee, lost by a vote of 147-281 with 92 Republicans siding with all Democrats. Half of the GOP leadership team, including Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), voted against the RSC’s proposed cuts.

(Cantor, who endured a scathing rebuke from RedState’s Erick Erickson this week, opposed the two largest spending cuts, but voted for the other 19. McCarthy supported 18 of the 21 cuts.)

The good news for conservatives is that the 47 all stars outnumbered the 18 Republicans who were most reluctant to cut spending. They included several appropriators:

Reichert, LaTourette, Biggert, Gerlach, Simpson, Diaz-Balart, Smith (NJ), Bass, Frelinghuysen, Wolf, Wittman, Dent, Dold, Grimm, Kinzinger, Meehan, Stivers, and Young (FL).

Disappointing as they were, these Republicans weren’t nearly as bad as the 95 Democrats who failed to vote for a single amendment that cut spending or the 42 others who opposed every cut but one.

Heritage Action’s analysis included only unambiguous spending cuts, not amendments that shifted spending or blocked policies such as defunding Obamacare or restricting the Environmental Protection Agency’s rulemaking authority.

Blackburn’s bill would place all rules governing the Internet in the purview of Congress and would take the issue out of the hands of the FCC. She is reporting that 60 members support her bill to halt the FCCs efforts to take control of the Internet without legislative action.

“The FCC’s Christmas week Internet-grab points out how important it is that we pass this bill quickly,” Blackburn said in a statement to the media.

Last year, Blackburn appeared at a Heritage Foundation meeting and discussed this issue.

“What we will do is first use this as a way to show how we’re going to keep that Pledge to America,” she said yesterday at The Heritage Foundation. “We said in the Pledge that any rule or regulation that had more than $100 million impact on our nation’s economy would be subject to review. … This is an area where we can keep that Pledge. We can go ahead and start congressional review and move forward on getting this off the books.”

This issue is not one of just Internet regulations but is one more example of Obama’s tendency to use regulation to get around the legislative process, to get around the courts, and to get around the voters in order to instill his left-wing agenda by regulatory fiat.

Obama has already used the regulatory framework of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to implement numerous regulations favorable to Big Labor. Obama has staffed the NLRB with union hacks like Craig Becker and Hilda Solis, both long-time union operatives. Obama has also used the EPA to move his carbon and global warming policies forward despite opposition by Congress and the voters.

Blackburn should be supported in her efforts to thwart Obama’s cynical power grab. We need to shine a light on Obama’s fiat regulatory rules like this one, rules that he is using to push his agenda now that the voters have turned out his overwhelming majority in Congress.

“I agree that the Internet faces a number of challenge, ” Blackburn said in a release. “Only Congress can address those challenges without compounding them. Until we do, the FCC and other federal bureaucracies should keep their hands off the ‘net.”

According to Rep. Blackburn’s office, the “Internet Freedom Act” has the support of more than 60 House members, including a majority of GOP’ers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The legislation already has bipartisan support, counting among its endorsers Blue Dog Democrat Dan Boren of Oklahoma.

“The only sector of our economy showing growth is online,” Blackburn said. “In these times, for an unelected bureaucracy with dubious jurisdiction and misplaced motives to unilaterally regulate that growth is intolerable.”

But Blackburn, who filed similar legislation in 2009, said the measure is an “intermediate step” to counter the FCC’s recent adoption of Net neutrality rules. By way of a more immediate enforcement countermeasure, her office says she supports invoking the Congressional Review Act, which empowers legislators to invalidate noxious regulatory frameworks developed by federal agencies.

As we have much discussed, the FCC has decided to power grab Internet authority on December 21^st.  The Commission must seize said authority because it does not have it unless and until Congress writes a law saying so – which The Chairman himself admits Congress has not done.

The Chairman will do so via a three unelected bureaucrat Democrat Party-line vote (that’s counting him).  He intends to do so under cover of Christmas – slamming it through less than 96 hours before the Big Day.

The Chairman will do so by writing (and rewriting, and rewriting some more, and rewriting again) an 80-plus page “order” – which sounds an awful lot like he’s appropriating Congress’ job and writing law.  (Because, again, Congress has never written a law that allows him to do this.)  He is in perpetual revision mode to continue to capitulate to the demands – and induce the vote – of the FCC’s most Leftist member – Commissioner Michael Copps – driving this Web takeover to the outer limits of illegal usurpation.

The Chairman will do so without a new Public Comment period on this (law and) order.  A new Public Comment period would be most appropriate given the continuing newness and dramatic scope of the Internet control he is writing and voting for himself.  (The Internet is now 1/6^th of our nation’s entire economy – and [for now] growing.)

The Chairman will do so without having made the (law and) order available to the public on the Internet over which he is about to commandeer control.  This after his Day One proclamation that his FCC would be “fair, open and transparent.”  And his once upon a time description of his Net Neutrality emplacement process (which has, again, become a Congress-free rewrite of communications law):

“I will ensure that the rulemaking process will be fair, transparent, fact-based, and data-driven. Anyone will be able to participate in this process, and I hope everyone will. We will hold a number of public workshops and, of course, use the Internet and other new media tools to facilitate participation. Today we’ve launched a new website, www.OpenInternet.gov, to kick off discussion of the issues I’ve been talking about. We encourage everyone to visit the site and contribute to the process.”

And the Chairman will do so after accepting over 2,000 pages of last minute document-dump filings, which no one on Planet Earth could properly pore over, get through and understand the ramifications of in time for the December 21^st vote.

If we could even access them – which for 60 of the last 88.5 hours before the vote we could not.  For if you went to the FCC’s website on Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, or early Monday morning – the weekend before the Tuesday vote – at the very top of the page you saw:

This was an FCC almost Web-wide shut down.  If you clicked on any of the links to the last minute document-dump, and you got this:

Not to mention that when you tried to go to OpenInternet.gov – you got a “Closed” sign:

The irony would be amusing, were the ramifications of this un-transparency from Captain Transparency – I mean Chairman Genachowski – not so dire.

The timing of this “scheduled maintenance” is either incredibly unfortunate – or intentional.

If it is the former, and you later decide to have a vote of this magnitude in such close proximity to said maintenance – you reschedule the maintenance.  So as to allow the public the “fair, open and transparent” access to the vote-relevant information The Chairman has all along promised.

If it is intentional, it means The Chairman never intended to be “fair, open and transparent” – or anything else but a stooge for the Media Marxists and the Net Neutrality campaign-promising White House.

Which means The Chairman is either incredibly incompetent – or deceitfully secretive in every conceivable way about this extraordinarily important vote.

Either way, Tennessee Representative Marsha Blackburn was right:

“There is no doubt they (and we) need new leadership at the FCC.”

You have to give the President credit. Even when delivering a speech designed to inspire the leaders of tomorrow, Obama can still sniff out a way to complain about his perceived ill treatment at the hands of the media. Whether it’s Onstar or Garmin, this man’s persecution GPS has pinpoint accuracy. Judge for yourself:

With so many voices clamoring for attention on blogs, on cable, on talk radio, it can be difficult, at times, to sift through it all…to figure out who’s telling the truth and who’s not. ..Even some of the craziest claims can quickly gain traction. I’ve had some experience with that myself.

Notice the provenance of those “clamoring voices” which Obama insidiously cites: blogs (read new media journalists), talk radio (read Limbaugh, Levin, Medved, et al.), cable (read Fox News). Not the network MSM which coddles Obama, not hoop-shooting Harry Smith or soft-balling Brian Williams, whom Obama himself— at last year’s White House Correspondents dinner –joked about being in bed with.

It’s difficult to remember a whinier American president. If this man’s skin were any thinner, it would be diaphanous. You’d think one of his handlers would have told him: in the eyes of followers, victimhood lessens a leader. Did Patton complain of the desert heat? You bet. To the troops? Never.

The irony, of course, is that the least-challenged president in modern memory spends more time than any other telling us how nobody knows the troubles he’s seen. Reagan welcomed criticism. He’d never pass up a chance to make his critics laugh with a witty riposte. Obama can’t resist letting them know they nearly made him cry.

To be fair, Obama’s speech did include the obligatory “Climb Every Mountain” platitudes extolling the virtues of higher education. But it also featured curious windows into the Obama psyche, such as this gem:

You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t rank all that high on the truth meter. With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations; information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment. All of this…is putting new pressures on our democracy.

To riff on Pope, “A little iPod is a dangerous thing.” Obama’s Queeg-like obsession with media scrutiny borders on the pathological. “Beware the hazardous iPod, the scurvy iPad!” he seems to warn, spreaders of “arguments which don’t rank high on the truth meter.”

It’s hard to imagine what Steve Jobs’ reaction to Obama’s techno-alarmism would be. But it’s even harder to imagine what the poor Hampton U grad of 2010 must have thought hearing it live: So on the one hand, Mr. President, you’re saying it’s good we got a great education (“All those checks you wrote to Hampton will pay off”), but on the other hand, we should be afraid of all these new-fangled gadgets that distract us with—OMG—information?

Anyone else finding it hard to wrap his iMind around that one?

Like Haley Osment’s “dead people” in The Sixth Sense, Obama sees media tormentors everywhere. Now it’s all those new gizmos—with their low ranking on the “truth meter.” So which is it? Is knowledge a “tool of empowerment?” Or is it dangerous? College is so confusing these days.

Two more of Obama’s valedictory remarks scored miserably on the “truth meter” but were off-the-charts on the “irony meter.” Here’s a beaut:

And it will be up to you to open minds that remain closed. That, after all, is the elemental test of any democracy: whether people with differing points of view can learn from each other, work with each other, and find a way forward together.

Yeah. Like the way Obama “learned from” Paul Ryan, “worked with” Marsha Blackburn, and “found a way forward” with Mitch McConnell and the other Republicans at that phony-baloney Health Summit. How open-minded of him.

Finally, in this astonishing—astonishing—sentence about an accomplished black woman named Dorothy Height who recently died at age 98, Obama, unjustifiably and guilefully, attempts to equate the passage of Obamacare with the struggle to end previous terrible civil rights injustices:

“Having been on the firing line for every fight from lynching to desegregation to the battle for health care reform, she lived a singular life.”

Considering that the majority of the country still opposes Obamacare and thoroughly repudiated the arrogant, unilateral manner in which it was forced upon it, this attempt by Obama to pretty up his image by garbing the health care debate in the clothing of a racial issue is particularly reprehensible. To liken health care reform to ending segregation and lynchings is an ignoble attempt to rewrite history and elevate his unpopular bill to a status it hasn’t, and likely never will, come close to earning.

But then what else would you expect from a man with a Sixth Sense about being persecuted?