On Reddit, I ran into this article about N.Y. Attorney Genral Andrew Cuomo strong-arming Time Warner into shutting down Usenet servers because they may contain child porn.

I have always predicted that the government would pry open the gate to internet censorship using child pornographers as the crowbar. How can any sane person take the side of child pornographers? None of it surprises me. Bit torrent is probably next.

But what did surprise me was this comment on Reddit from Jeff Simmermon the Director of Communications at Time Warner Cable:

Ahhhh — the cool caress of reason. I am the director of digital communications at Time Warner Cable, and I’m really, really glad to see folks cutting through the alarmist hype here. We’re not blocking access to Usenet nationwide — we can’t do that. We’re not blocking access to anything. We’re simply making the decision to stop offering newsgroups hosted on our servers — anyone that wants to use Time Warner Cable to read Usenet groups hosted on other servers can do that unabated…f any of you want to follow up with me directly, feel free to e-mail me at jeff.simmermon@twcable.com, btw.

What Jeff stated here seems reasonable. However, below, I have a few questions for Jeff. I hope he will be kind enough to stop by and answer them.

What disturbs me most about this article is that the decision appears to be based on a power play by the N.Y. Attorney General. I don’t have a problem with a business making a voluntary decision, but this doesn’t look voluntary. It stinks of threats and coercion.

“We are attacking this problem by working with Internet service providers to ensure they do not play host to this immoral business,” Cuomo said in a statement released after a press conference in New York. “I call on all Internet service providers to follow their example and help deter the spread of online child porn.”

If you are unfamiliar with the Usenet, it was the original social networking app.

Question #1

Did Time Warner turn off usenet because hosting usenet groups is “playing host to an immoral business?” If so, what about all the years you did host usenet? What about all the current hosts of usenet? Are they suddenly immoral, because Andrew Cuomo declared them immoral?

Question #2

What role did the government play in your decision to stop hosting usenet servers? What other services are you willing to stop hosting if Mr. Cuomo asks you to?

Question #3

From the article, it seems clear that this move was designed to combat illegal content - child porn specifically. Is that why you pulled the plug? Were your servers hosting child porn? Or was it because they could potentially host child porn? Was a crime committed? Or was it some other reason? If it was another reason, why does Mr. Cuomo’s talk revolve around pornography and morality?

You see, if ISPs are willing to shut down entire services with millions of legitimate users and decades of archived information because of 88 instances of illegal activity, it seems to me they are willing to shut down anything the government asks them to close, regardless of actual abuses.

More illegal activity happens over the weekend on your local freeway than happened in 15 years on the Usenet. Why doesn’t the Attorney General shut down the freeway system?

The answer is obvious. Government charlatans scapegoated Usenet as a test run to find out how much resistance there is and to clear the legal arguments. It a safe start because the Usenet is old and its user base is decreasing, and they can grandstand about how tough they are on pedophiles. Most ISPs won’t think the battle is worth fighting.

This move will do nothing to fight pedophiles. It is only an opportunity for politicians to conduct a test run of internet censorship.

We all want to stop child molesters, terrorists, drugs, and drunk drivers (CMTDDD), but many tactics used to fight these problems are unconstitutional and are analogous to chopping off your leg to kill toe fungus.

If you surrender your rights to fight CMTDDD you’ve still given away your rights, CMTDDD will still exist, and will have stolen your most precious gift, your freedom. Don’t sell your freedom for the promise of utopia. It’s a Faustian bargain. They promise an end to suffering but they will never end it with government programs. Socialism always creates more suffering. The real choice is between freedom and occasional suffering and slavery and constant suffering. Instead, ask your politicians to stop the fear of CMTDDD from controlling our country, our policies, and our lives. Tell your politicians that you demand your freedom no matter what evil people do. Tell them you don’t want your phone tapped, your email sniffed, your internet censored, your movement curtailed, or any other constitutional right violated because of CMTDDD. Tell them you will not live in fear of CMTDDD and the best way to fight them is to stand up and preserve our freedom.

If you are looking for a quick easy way to send a message to your politicians, visit downsizeDC.org. They’ve made it as easy as possible to tell your politicians how you feel with a few clicks of the mouse.

I know this is an unpopular view, but it must be said. Oil is not a threat to our way of life, lack of oil is a threat to our way of life. We must stand up to the environmental movement. The environmental movement is an unscientific scam, and our leadership is gutless to call them what they are - socialists. Every environmentalist solution calls for more government power over your life.

While environmentalist spokesmen like Al Gore and John Travolta lecture us about climate change, they produce more carbon than a small country. Al Gore is an absolute hypocrite, he has no intention of living like a pauper, stacked up like cord wood in an urban high rise, riding his bike everywhere. John Travolta owns five jets! I can’t believe he has the gall to lecture us, when this is how he lives:

It is the classic orwellian “some pigs are more equal than other pigs.” They have no intention of changing the way they live. They want to change the way you live by putting a government shotgun to your head. It is classic socialism in a new wrapper.

While a majority of Americans drape themselves in their latest pop culture fashion trend - green, our economy is grinding to a halt. Not because of corporations, but because of government interference in the market.

If we want to overcome our current economic woes, we need a free market energy policy.

There is no evidence we are running out of oil. Peak oil is a myth. If a shortage of energy exists, it is artificially created by government regulation.

We don’t need windfall profit taxes, we need investment, technological advances, elimination of regulation, and exploration. There are 400 billion barrels of oil under North Dakota waiting to be tapped by innovation. Do you realize that that is almost twice the amount in Saudi Arabia? Wind and solar are not going to get us out of this. Electricity, geo-thermal, and hydrogen might, but until then, this is what we need to do:

• Drill more, in more places like ANWR and the outer continental shelf. We need to increase supply now.
• Build more refineries
• Build more nuclear power plants

We are going to grow to 9 billion people over the next 50 years. Unless we want the vast majority of them to live in abject poverty, we need cheap abundant energy. Conservation isn’t going to work, unless you want poverty. I don’t. I want wealth for everyone. And in order to increase our wealth we must increase our supply.

Socialism sucks, even when it arrives in a shiny green package.

Three core values we should demand from our leaders:

• Authenticity
• Integrity
• Character

These are the core values by which we should measure all human activity.

At the Minnesota Republican State Convention on Friday May 30th 2008 what I witnessed was repugnant. The entire state party leadership and a significant percentage of of the rank and file delegates failed a basic test of integrity and decency.

Let me lay the stage. I’d like to jump right to the meat, but to understand the underhanded tactics used by the Republican elite you must understand the context of this story.

About 1100 delegates were seated, 400-500 of which were conservative/libertarian delegates. Many (but not all) of these delegates were recently inspired to get involved in politics by the message of Dr. Ron Paul. I was part of that delegation as the senate district 35 coordinator.

First, the state Republican elites denied Dr. Ron Paul, a 10-term Republican congressman and presidential candidate, access to the convention hall and forced him to address his supporters outside in the park.

But that injustice was only the beginning.

One of the privileges/responsibilities of being elected a state delegate is to elect delegates to the national convention. The national delegate saga began several days before the convention when I received this mailing from the “Conservative Delegate Team.”

It is important that you understand that this mailer arrived days before the convention (I’ll explain in a little bit). While the mailer is filled with inflammatory language, there is nothing unethical about it… yet. I will refer to this list as the “party appointed national delegates” because, as you will learn, the national delegate election was a sham.

In order to appear on the ballot, all prospective candidates for national delegate were required to appear before the “Nominations Committee” on Thursday May 29th, the day before the convention. On Friday morning when I entered the convention hall I noted giant 25 x 10 banners hanging on each side of the stage listing the “party appointed national delegates.” These banners must have been printed days, maybe weeks, in advance of the convention.

On each seat in the hall was a glossy 30-page magazine advertising the “party appointed national delegates.” The party elites clearly spent an unprecedented amount of money campaigning for these candidates, but as you will see, pulling out the big money guns wasn’t enough insurance for these goons.

As we worked through the convention agenda, what I believe were unelected McCain political operatives with ear pieces and floor passes, who by rule should not be allowed to influence the vote, walked the aisles holding up signs instructing delegates to vote yes or no. Several objections were made, the most eloquent by Quentin Reese a Zimbabwean immigrant who compared these tactics to those he had witnessed in Robert Mugabe’s communist dictatorship, but the party officials and the sergeant at arms did nothing to stop these people from flagrantly violating the rules.

The real dirty tricks started once the Nominating Committee Report was announced. The committee allowed only 18 candidates on the National Delegate ballot of which 14 were the “party appointed national delegates.” **sarcasm** What a coincidence! The mailer was sent, the giant banners were printed in advance, the glossy magazines published, and by some stroke of luck, all of them made it through committee! Could it it have been pre-planned? Could this have been orchestrated weeks in advance? **sarcasm** Only 4 grass roots candidates appeared on the ballot, and of those 4, 2 had committed to supporting McCain at the national convention. What does this mean? It means at best, only 2 non-McCain delegates could be elected regardless of how many delegates on floor were McCain supporters.

At this point, I was angry, but I could accept it, so I decided to vote for the 4 grass root national delegates, 2 of whom were McCain supporters. However, I was unwilling (and so were many others) to support the “party appointed national delegates” for reasons of principle. Then the chair instructed us we MUST vote for exactly 14 delegates or the ballot would not count. We could not vote for 4, 6, or 8, only exactly 14. This rule made it extremely improbable that the grass root candidates would be elected because each delegate who did not wish to support the “party appointed national delegates” was required to submit a ballot containing at least 10 of 14 votes for the “party appointed national delegates.”

This is the point at which I refused to participate in the sham election. Not only was I not allowed to vote for the people I supported, I was forced to vote for 10 people I did not support or my vote wouldn’t count. I have been to over 12 GOP conventions and I have never seen an under-vote ballot spoiled. It is standard to spoil over-votes but never under-votes. This tactic would be similar to tossing out your ballot in a general election if you voted for President but didn’t vote for Congress. Such a tactic in a general election would be considered a gross violation of voters rights. However, since the Republican Party is a private organization, this is legal. But because it is legal to disenfranchise 40-50% of your voters doesn’t make it right.

I stepped out of the arena and thought about this situation for a few minutes, and I made a decision. I went back into the convention, intentionally spoiled my ballot, and walked out. What pushed me over the edge was how so many rank and file Republicans supported the corrupt leadership tactics with their applause and their votes.

I learned later that the convention elected 13 of the 14 national delegates and all 14 alternates from the “party appointed” list.

To be honest, I’m jaded. I’ve been around this crap since 1989. I’ve seen dirty tricks used to destroy good people and to manipulate conventions. I saw Arne Carlson assassinate (my opinion) Jon Grunseth’s character in 1990. I saw the State Republican Party run Kevin Knight out of town - a man who actually had a plan to reduce the size of government. I was present when Rudy Boschwitz used highly unethical (but legal) tactics to defeat Bert McKasy. I saw the National Republican Party deny Buchanan the right to speak and hundreds of Buchanan delegates the right to carry a Buchanan sign on the national convention floor. But this situation is by far the worst thing I have ever witnessed in party politics. Using a pure power play, parliamentary procedure, and manipulative rules they denied the vote to over 40% of the delegates present, most of whom were new people, the very people we need to grow and expand the party. Our leaders are either compromised or they are fools. It doesn’t matter which, they need to go.

I have tried to convince people for years that they need to get involved in the Republican Party, that they matter, that the world belongs to those who show up, and that even when you lose your vote counts, but if you don’t show up, you don’t have a chance. Few people believed me. What can I say now? If I am honest, I can no longer tell people this. I can no longer look someone in the eye and tell them that their vote counts in the Republican Party, because I was present this weekend when delegates were denied the vote.

It is a sad time for the Republican Party. It doesn’t matter who wins, both Obama and McCain are going to do everything they can to destroy conservatives/libertarians. For those of you who say libertarians have no place in the Republican Party, remember, Jason Lewis recently quoted Reagan reminding us that Reagan called himself a libertarian. The Republican Party will face huge losses this year. If the party survives, rebuilding will take leadership we have not seen since Goldwater and Reagan.

This isn’t about Ron Paul or any other person. This is about creating a smaller limited government. Every Republican talks about it, but few follow through with action. I went to this convention, not for Ron Paul, but to send a message to elected Republicans that we are here and we expect you to act on what you say. I am a Reagan Republican, a Goldwater Republican, a Ron Paul Republican, and a small “l” libertarian.

I want thank Joe Repya for sharing his thoughts about the convention. I don’t know him personally, but he is clearly an honest and intelligent leader. He isn’t a Paul supporter, but he saw the convention for what it was, and was dead honest about it. Men like Joe Repya build parties, not tear them apart, because men like Joe have integrity, something which seems to be in short supply in today’s Republican Party.