The Quiet American

I’ve only been home for a couple of days and I’m already starting to fall into some of my old habits. Specifically, I’m paying more attention to politics and watching the news more. It’s something that I don’t really do down at school, mostly because I don’t really have anyone to talk about current events with. Up here, the nightly news is just a regular part of the night and my family and I actually talk about that kinda stuff. Anyway, here are a couple of stories that I heard about today. One is genuinely frightening as a child of the digital age, the other is a classic example of legislative stupidity.

According to an article on BoingBoing, the Recording Industry has used their impressive lobbying abilities to pretty effectively shred the Constitution. HR 4279, (with the working name PRO-IP (Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008)) allows the RIAA to collect personal property that may be used to facilitate piracy or which my be related in any way. And that stuff is on top of any settlement. That means that they can sue you for $10,000 a song and then repo all your stuff on top any monetary rewards they might get. That seems wrong to me. I used to be the biggest pro-piracy guy out there (I wrote my college admission essay on intellectual property rights and reform) so I’m pretty much automatically against any new RIAA legislation but this is just incredible. I urge everyone to write to their Senators and Congressmen and ask them to vote down this horrible law. (Original Article)

This other is article is just stupid. I can think of no better examples of Washington’s current “stick it to the other party” mindset. Apparently 178 Republicans voted against a bill in support of Mother’s Day. The bill didn’t do anything except say in fancy language that “they support the goals and ideals of Mother’s Day.” That was to much. Republican are apparently trying to make the Democratic Congress look bad by stalling and blocking as much legislation as possible. That means 178 of the no longer love their mothers. Then again, if they ended up being Republicans, their mothers must not have loved them very much. House Minority Leader John Boehner said that the reason they all voted against Mother’s Day was to show on the record that everyone supports Mother’s Day. Apparently Bizzaro World is represented in the House and they vote Republican. (Original Article)