What’s worse than that though is when the occupiers can’t even manage to occupy anything. They can’t even execute their strategy, let alone see it through to policy results. That’s what happened tonight when they tried to Occupy CPAC. They failed, badly.

Yes, we beat SOPA, but the problem of foreign infringers is still around. And we’re not just talking about online copyright infringement, either. Copies of clothing, purses, gadgets, you name it: foreign free riders are a problem. It’s an important tradeoff to find, so an open process for the Darrell Issa OPEN Act is a good one. A slow, consensus-based approach is also smart, so I’m glad consensus is what Eric Cantor and John Boehner are demanding from a bill on this topic.

The alternative is picking winners and losers. That’s not good for government to do, even if it’s been a problem for a long time, to the annoyance of Frédéric Bastiat.

Speaking of picking winners and losers, FCC Spectrum management is falling apart. The more the FCC controls who’s bidding, and how the winners of the auctions will use that spectrum, the less efficiently we allocate and use that critical, limited resource.

So naturally what are we looking at? Hassling Verizon for doing what it has to instead of fixing the FCC. Seriously: People who say that any Republican would be anywhere near the problem Obama is, simply need to look more closely at just how awful the Obama regulators are. They are completely out of control. We need to defeat Barack Obama and restore some sanity at FCC, FTC, EPA, and the rest.

Google and Facebook will obey Indian censorship laws. Singling out Twitter for abuse over foreign censorship laws never made much sense, folks.

Programming note: due to CPAC and my traveling cross country to it, this will be the only Tech at Night post this week.

Good news? I had a great Pastrami Burger tonight from a place called The Hat. Seriously: the pastrami itself is great, and I’ll probably go for the Pastrami Dip next time. Bad news? It was a busy evening and now I’m tired. The good news that wins out? Not much to cover tonight, so let’s go.

In France it’s illegal to give away free maps. Yes, Google is reportedly having to pay €500,000 because a French cartographer didn’t like the competition. Insane.

Reminds me of one of the times Rick Santorum made a point to stand up for big government: when he tried to get government out of the business of providing “free” taxpayer-funded competition to private weather services.

Of course, Google’s free services are under fire in the US, too, so we can’t get too smug yet.

The push for a sales tax compact marches on. I still say it needs more safeguards against ever-higher taxes, double taxes, a national sales tax, and other forms of expansion.

And yes, Republican FCC reform plans are pro-growth by checking the runaway FCC.

Even worse for the President, Pethokoukis applied a model by Ray Fair to guess the resulting share of the vote Barack Obama will win based on likely GDP growth rates. Pethokoukis calls the resulting prediction a “close race,” but it actually isn’t. Using Swingometer and some simple math, I think the prediction is one of a nearly 100 EV win for the Republican nominee.

Pethokoukis uses Fair’s model to project that the Obama/Biden ticket should get 47.8% of the two-party popular vote in November, if the economy sees 2% growth this year. In 2008, the McCain/Palin ticket received 46.3% of the two-party vote, meaning Obama had a 7.4 point lead. For Obama to get only 47.8% would give the Republican ticket a 4.4 point lead in the two-party vote, meaning the prediction is of an 11.8 point swing from Democrats to Republicans from 2008 to 2012.

The Swingometers at Unlikely Voter happen to work with swings in the two party vote. We can take that 11.8 and plug it right in. The result is not particularly close, in my opinion:

That’s right: Using the Pethokoukis figures and plugging them into my Swingometer, 2% GDP growth predicts a 316-222 Electoral College victory for the Republicans. Republicans swing Nebraska’s second district, Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, New Hampshire, and even Maine’s second district. I don’t call that a close contest at all. 94 EVs would be the biggest Republican win since 1988.

We can’t really expect old-fashioned blowouts anymore, though. In 1956, 1964, and 1980, the parties and the nation were less polarized on the issues and on philosophy. There were conservative Democrats and Rockefeller Republicans. Republicans and Democrats could easily find themselves preferring the other party’s candidate. Now, though, conservative Democrats are gone, the Rockefeller Republicans are gone, and the nation is polarized. Democrats aren’t going to win Texas and Republicans aren’t going to win California.

So a nearly 100 EV win I don’t call particularly close on the modern scale. Certainly, in this scenario, we’re not having a late night wondering who won.

One hundred sixty four years ago, on this date in the year 1848, in the conquered and occupied Federal District of Mexico, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed by representatives of US President James Polk and interim Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, ending the war between the two countries.

By every possible measure, the war ended as a decisive victory for the United States and a humiliating defeat for Mexico. As a result of the treaty, Mexico ceded all rights to territory north of the Rio Grande and the Gila River, including all of California, Nevada, Utah, and Texas, parts of Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Oklahoma, as well as the parts of Arizona and New Mexico not later bought in the Gadsden Purchase. From Mexico’s perspective, a perspective that recognized neither the revolutions in Texas and California nor the Annexation of Texas, the country lost over half of its prewar territory.

The combined Gross State Products of CA, NV, UT, and TX in 2008 were, according to Wikipedia, approximately $3.27 trillion, as Texas and California were our two most productive states. The entirety of Mexico that year produced about $1.55 trillion, less than half of the Mexican Cession’s total output even when we exclude the partial states given up in the treaty.

Yes, it’s clear that the war was a terrible disaster for Mexico, a loss that to this date grates and shames their national ego, which is why we see the Reconquista movement today, as groups like La Raza weep at the contrast of the prosperity of northern Mexico-in-America versus the failure of southern Mexico-in-Mexico. After all, the land ceded to us was mostly empty. It was southern Mexico that had all the people. We built what we have today from next to nothing.

It’s no wonder that, as the US tried to negotiate a settlement with Mexico, many of Mexico’s elites asked the US simply to annex the entire country. Even then, the writing was on the wall about the fates of the two nations. And of course to this day Mexicans who long for prosperity and freedom come here, in such great numbers that we’re having trouble dealing with it.

In looking back at what has happened since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it becomes clear that our Constitution, our values, and our way of life that are critical to our prosperity we have enjoyed, even as petro-rich Mexico has lagged far behind.

We’re Americans. We’re even allowed to be proud of that.

Sometimes, the anarchists lose. Even in leftist Sweden, The Pirate Bay’s founders lost their last appeal. It’s guys like these, who deliberately put up a system for infringing on US copyrights while playing word games to justify it, that motivated SOPA and that drive the desire for a treaty like ACTA.

Google considers its privacy changes a public policy issue as the firm is getting plenty of criticism. This suggests to me they believe the critics won’t actually stop using Google services like Gmail, but will rather try for government regulation.

Considering Google is implementing a censorship plan much like that Twitter recently announced, and yet you don’t really see the same angry protestors saying they’ll quit using Google services in protest, that did a “Twitter blackout,” I think Google’s right that nobody will quit them over any of this. Hey, people: If you don’t like Google, use somebody else. It’s not that hard.

A former Clinton and Obama administration official is angry that the House Republicans have the nerve to demand the FCC obey the Congress. AT&T seems to think the FCC needs put in its place, though. I still support efforts to put limits on the FCC’s ability to dictate arbitrary spectrum rules.

The FCC is feeling the heat. As Chuck Grassley demands transparency on LightSquared, the brand new Chief of Staff lashed out at the Senator, and had to apologize. Watch the name Zachary Katz. He may embarrass himself and his bosses again in the future, and let slip their controlling agenda in his rage.

Grassley’s now gotten pushback from the FCC and from LightSquared. What do they have to hide? Why not just go transparent on this, instead of criticizing the man simply asking for openness in government? It couldn’t be because LightSquared is now under pressure from Sprint to deliver the goods, eh?

After all, it was when FCC critics exposed abuse of the “Lifeline” program that the need for reform of the wireless phone subsidy became apparent.

Don’t you just love it when firms ask for favors from the FCC, openly asking for legal action that benefits them against others? When it’s out in the open, we see the corruption inherent the regulatory system. Help, help, America is being oppressed.

Oh boy, Herb Kohl wants to block more spectrum deals. This is out of control. It’s like DC Democrats want to keep high-speed wireless Internet prices sky high or something.

When Congress wants to grab power for government, one of the easiest ways to disarm opposition is to say it’s being done to fight child pornography. People’s brains shut down and they rush to join in that fight. So I’m not sure we’re fully thinking through the risks of this data retention bill. Once we create this database, we’re not only creating a huge new legal mandate on a fast-growing, innovative industry, but we’re creating risks that the data could get out, or be used for other purposes. Do you really want Eric Holder to have access to all you do online? Really? I think I oppose this bill, despite the misleading name it has: the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act. A more accurate name would be: Keeping Records Of All You Do Online act, because the real goal is data retention for government to check up on you.

Databases always find new uses. When they created the ‘deadbeat dad’ database, they couldn’t help from using it to track other things. Mark my words: If these database are protected, they will be used to track more than child pornographers. This I promise you. The warrants will be issued. The laws will be passed. This data will get out.

It’s not really a “snooping” bill. It’s a data retention bill. But just as we don’t like it when Google creates a massive database of all we do, so should we fear government demanding that such databases be made. It simply creates the risk of future snooping, and that’s bad enough.

Also, we’ve really got to primary Lamar Smith. He’s producing one stinker of a bill after another. He clearly has no concept of limited government in his mind.

Meanwhile, as we keep trying to regulate Americans, Wikileaks operates abroad, and none of the bills Lamar Smith is putting up would do one thing about it. Nor would the latest power grab of a “cybersecurity” bill by Jay Rockefeller and Susan Collins.

You don’t create security by regulating the victims; that just hinders innovation and distracts from retaliation and prosecution. You don’t stop criminals by creating massive schemes to track everyone online; that just hurts the innocent.

Fascinating issue to consider: How do we apply the concept of the search warrant to encrypted data? How do you compel the accused to admit to the knowledge of a cryptographic key, which if the encrypted data is illegal, amounts to a self-incriminating statement? As the world goes digital, the lines between information and ‘stuff’ get more and more blurry.

Again, what good is ACTA if China doesn’t join it and trashes Apple trademarks?

There’s a lot of fear going around about ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a plurilateral agreement under the WTO between the US, the EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Morocco. Some of the fears look real, some don’t. For example, even though it was negotiated in secret, the text is easily available.

Another false complaint is that it’s another SOPA, when in fact such a claim misses the point. SOPA was a bad bill, as it turned out to be a censorship bill that defied due process, but the intent was to fight the problem of free riding on copyright and trademark. Crossing international boundaries has been a cheap and easy way to cash in on another country’s copyright and trademark laws without having to abide by them. SOPA tried to fix that in a crude, rude, and ineffective way. ACTA has more options, and doesn’t have to resort to censorship, necessarily.

I’ve just read the treaty. I don’t really see a problem. Even if infringement isn’t ruining the movies and music, trademark and copyright are Constitutional concepts worthy of protection. That’s why some of the anti-SOPA leaders are promoting their own bill.

The pro-liberty position is not one of anarchy. It’s time to get reasonable protections in place. Maybe I missed something, and ACTA is a problem. But the best argument I see against ACTA is that it only includes a few countries, and not those best known for infringement (such as China, either China in fact). ACTA may yet be harmless but ineffective, as opposed to SOPA being harmful and ineffective.

So no, don’t expect me to cry either that Megaupload’s data is dying. Businesses that profit from mass copyright infringement deserve to die. And besides, did people ever see that website? It was shady like crazy all along. Everyone knew this.

Now, on the other hand, what I do see and have seen a problem with are the various “cybersecurity” proposals we keep seeing. The worst of course was the infamous Internet Kill Switch, which actually was even more dangerous than it sounded: It proposed to give the President “emergency” dictatorial powers over broad ranges of private property related to the Internet.

A new bill has apparently eased up from that ridiculous degree, but there are still concerns that it gives too much of that power over certain companies, such as government contractors. Republicans Kay Bailey Hutchison, Chuck Grassley, and Saxby Chambliss along with Lisa Murkowski wrote in Politico that the current plan “is ultimately a costly and heavy-handed regulatory approach. It will not work and it won’t pass Congress.” If they’re right on the former, I hope they’re right on the latter. We don’t need to create yet more “broad new regulatory powers.”

I also maintain my opposition to the role of government in policing private sector ‘privacy violations.’ If you don’t like Google, use competitors or take sensible precautions like not staying logged in and using the same cookie across all their sites. There’s simply no place for Mary Bono Mack to act here. Also, as I analyzed in the past, Carrier IQ was a total nothingburger and it’s simply grandstanding for Edward Markey to push the issue, especially since the guy never did take a stand against SOPA. He’s trying to change the subject.

Notes about the Twitters: Be careful what you broadcast internationally about your travel plans before trying to travel to another country. Also, Thailand applauds Twitters’ newer, narrower censorship compliance tools. I’ve seen no word yet on how many EU countries will use those tools.

It’s popular to talk down polling, but from where I sit, the polling of the primaries has been pretty good. Yes, Iowa was terrible, but that was a caucus. The primary polling has been solid.

Florida’s polling has lined up in a nice, neat band for every candidate, making it easy to say Mitt Romney is going to win tomorrow.

Real Clear Politics, the indispensable feed of the latest polls, shows 7 polls ending the weekend, and 4 more ending Friday. They all put Mitt Romney in a range of 36-44. To see an 8 point range over 11 polls is not surprising when the polls all have margins of error around 3-5. Newt Gingrich? He’s shown in a range of 26-32, a 6 point range in the same circumstances.

We’re in that rare and special spot when we have so many polls taken all at once, that the statistical properties of polling become visually apparent. We can reasonably project from these polls that Mitt Romney’s true value is at 40. Newt Gingrich’s true value 29. Rick Santorum shows up at 13.5. Ron Paul clocks in with a 9.5.

So, as a result of the wealth of the polling we’re seeing, barring some very last minute, unexpected news like Rick Santorum dropping out today, I’m expecting a double-digit Mitt Romney win tomorrow, but he’ll come short of a majority. I still expect us to start seeing majority wins by Super Tuesday, though.

Crossposted from Unlikely Voter

So, Google is integrating its websites more. As a result, some privacy settings will apply network-wide, and one site will be able to use data from another site. People are flipping out, naturally. People have been giving Google this data for ages. People have known that Google was watching them, and yet they chose to keep using Google and in fact use one account for many Google services.

Note that the new policy changes nothing about what Google already knew about you. It just changes what certain Google sites will use about you. As Marsha Blackburn and other members of Congress begin to look into it though, Google isn’t helping its case by pleading that it’s alright because certain users are excluded, which just furthers the premise that there’s something wrong with it.

But ultimately, you’re in control of what you do online. Personal responsibility: it’s not just for breakfast anymore.

I feel vindicated though in having about a dozen Google accounts for the limited times I had use for their services, usual in the course of helping somebody else. Different accounts for different uses and different sites. It was never hard. You just had to do it. Oh, and not use their email.

Once again, the real LightSquared issue isn’t even LightSquared. This is about the Obama administration. the actual decision is irrelevant at this point and Chuck Grassley will keep fighting for process transparency.

The SOPA battle didn’t end with defeating SOPA. We still need to solve the problem of foreign free riders. That’s why Steve Forbes joins those taking a look at the OPEN Act.

I’m just one guy, but it wasn’t hard for me to figure out why this Washington Post story is garbage. In the course of making the case against Net Neutrality, by pointing out that we need wireless providers to be able to innovate and expand, and get those innovations and expansions paid for, the WaPo claims that Apple’s Siri would overload wireless networks.

That never made sense, though, and of course it’s not true. Siri’s sending in a few seconds of audio, and getting back some text, then maybe doing a web search. That’s not going to kill a network. It’s not even video.

The problems are spectrum (we need more of it) and regulation (we need less of it). Get government out of the way, and we’ll allow incentives to build bigger, better networks. Unless the Roaming regulations which actually encouraged Sprint to reduce its network coverage, free riding on competitors’ networks, reducing total capacity and harming rural users.

So again, one of the better things we can do is whip the FCC into shape by restricting its freedom to do bad things. No more picking winners and losers.

California coughs up a million bucks after losing its video game censorship case. Watch people cheer, until they remember the ESA was pro-SOPA.

Twitter wants to censor EuroNazis and probably Chinese users. Blaming Twitter for this is dumb. But then again, Anonymous and other radicals pitching a fit about this don’t intend to actually stand up to Red China or the EuroSocialists who censor their people online. Blaming Americans is the easier route, so naturally they take it.

It’s easy to talk about turning over Facebook and others accounts after people die, but in the case of all free online accounts, how do you prove that the deceased actually “owned” that account? With most property there is a paper trail, a transaction, or something that ties the owner to the property. But free online accounts, who do they really “belong” to? And how do you prove it, without a paper trail?

We were spoiled by the New Hampshire and South Carolina polling. Those states weren’t stagnant in voter opinion, but they at least moved at reasonable speeds, and allowed for a clear understanding of what was going on.

Florida is different. After swinging 20 points to Newt Gingrich, has now gone 10-15 points right back to Mitt Romney.

Today I’m looking at the polls that ended Tuesday and Wednesday. That includes three big, familiar names this cycle: ORC/CNN/Time, Rasmussen Reports, and InsiderAdvantage.

I hate inconsistencies. The less consistent the polling is, either across pollsters or between readings, the less confident we can be in making predictions based on that polling. We can never be sure whether the changes are the result of real movement in the electorate, or the result of some form of measurement error.

In the case of Florida right now, the polling is looking to be inconsistent over time. Rasmussen Reports (750 LVs, MoE 4) shows Romney 39, Gingrich 31, a 17 point swing from the Romney 32, Gingrich 41 reading of just three days before. Inside Advantage (530 LVs, MoE 4) is very close to that: Romney 40, Gignrich 32, a 16 point swing from three days before.

CNN/Time (369 LVs, MoE 5) didn’t poll a few days ago, and in fact didn’t poll in a week. So CNN apparently missed the Gingrich bump and kept Romney ahead all the time. Be careful though, while Romney 36, Gingrich 34 though is a worse result for Romney than the other two, don’t be misled by the fact that CNN shows a 22 point pro-Gingrich swing since its last poll. This is why only looking at swings within a single pollster’s results isn’t a technique I use.

Estimated win probabilities based on each poll: 84% Romney, 84% Romney, 57% Romney. So it’s very near even if CNN is right, otherwise Gingrich needs pull another surge from his sleeve to get Florida on his side.

Some will say Gingrich clearly can do it, since Florida has been volatile. Others say Gingrich’s lead was a mirage, and was a bump he was never going to sustain, just basking in great media coverage after South Carolina and a debate. My suspicion is that voters just aren’t sure. In the YouTube era, every candidate is now visibly flawed.

Crossposted from Unlikely Voter

Some are still worried about the Megaupload takedown (including many the Obama got the concept right when he said “It’s not right when another country lets our movies, music, and software be pirated.” Foreign countries should not be allowed to be free riders on American copyright.

So I’m glad to hear that Patrick Leahy is open to SOPA alternatives such as the Ron Wyden/Darrell Issa OPEN Act. Follow the money. If money can’t be made from Americans by selling infringing materials back to Americans, then property rights win the day. And we can achieve that goal without censorship.

Remember those roaming regulations I warned about, where the FCC was going to set price controls? Remember how I warned it would worsen investment, and wouldn’t really increase competition? Oops, I was right. Sprint Nextel is actively reducing its rural wireless deployment in order to get a free ride on other carriers. (Cue the FCC apologists who will claim that I have something against Sprint, because they can’t argue the facts or the law).

The FCC simply cannot be trusted to look out for ordinary Americans as opposed to connected corporate interests, so that’s why I support House efforts to take control of the FCC when it comes to spectrum issues. The FCC needs to know who’s boss. It cannot be allowed even to think it has more authority than it was granted by the Congress, points out Greg Walden, though with more diplomatic language.

FCC regulations also tend to be out of date. Witness Netflix being hindered from modern social media by dated, probably pointless at the time regulations on video rentals.

Chuck Grassley, increasingly the beast of oversight in the Senate, is becoming quite a target. his Twitter account got hit and now he says he was the target of a bribe attempt over LightSquared. Even as LightSquared itself focuses its public comments purely on the technical matters of interference with GPS, the reaction to Chuck Grassley suggests there’s something going on in the White House that we need to know.

Barack Obama and the FCC are damaging LightSquared’s reputation with their silence, unfairly or no.

Some are still worried about the Megaupload takedown (including many the Obama got the concept right when he said “It’s not right when another country lets our movies, music, and software be pirated.” Foreign countries should not be allowed to be free riders on American copyright.

So I’m glad to hear that Patrick Leahy is open to SOPA alternatives such as the Ron Wyden/Darrell Issa OPEN Act. Follow the money. If money can’t be made from Americans by selling infringing materials back to Americans, then property rights win the day. And we can achieve that goal without censorship.

Remember those roaming regulations I warned about, where the FCC was going to set price controls? Remember how I warned it would worsen investment, and wouldn’t really increase competition? Oops, I was right. Sprint Nextel is actively reducing its rural wireless deployment in order to get a free ride on other carriers. (Cue the FCC apologists who will claim that I have something against Sprint, because they can’t argue the facts or the law).

The FCC simply cannot be trusted to look out for ordinary Americans as opposed to connected corporate interests, so that’s why I support House efforts to take control of the FCC when it comes to spectrum issues. The FCC needs to know who’s boss. It cannot be allowed even to think it has more authority than it was granted by the Congress, points out Greg Walden, though with more diplomatic language.

FCC regulations also tend to be out of date. Witness Netflix being hindered from modern social media by dated, probably pointless at the time regulations on video rentals.

Chuck Grassley, increasingly the beast of oversight in the Senate, is becoming quite a target. his Twitter account got hit and now he says he was the target of a bribe attempt over LightSquared. Even as LightSquared itself focuses its public comments purely on the technical matters of interference with GPS, the reaction to Chuck Grassley suggests there’s something going on in the White House that we need to know.

Barack Obama and the FCC are damaging LightSquared’s reputation with their silence, unfairly or no.

Neil Stevens (Diary) http://www.redstate.com/neil_stevens/?p=3121

Filesonic stops infringing. I guess the site’s leadership didn’t want to go to jail like Ninjavideo, or get hit like Megaupload did. People put up with ad-laden, obnoxious ‘file sharing’ sites when they want to download something that can’t be distributed legally, by less annoying sites. Everyone knows this.

It’s a good thing that Megaupload was taken down. That was a blow for property rights. But not all in the anti-SOPA coalition support property rights. They don’t want prudent copyright protection laws to fix the problem of foreign free riders, and want us to wink and nod at infringers. Look, even if we repealed the Sonny Bono act, or even the copyright act before that, we’d still have copyrights that needed protection.

Europe regulates the Internet again. “Right to be forgotten?” I say Brussels has a right to take a long walk off a short pier.

Chuck Grassley, convert to our side on SOPA, gets his Twitter account attacked. Hijacking someone’s communications accounts is to attack political discourse in an open society. I hope those responsible are prosecuted. Also, way to reward people for doing the right thing, not.

When word came out of InsiderAdvantage’s new Florida poll, I said to myself “I’ve heard this story before.” Newt Gingrich shooting up like a rocket, but confirmation is needed.

Rasmussen provided the confirmation.

When InsiderAdvantage was out first with Gingrich’s South Carolina jump, I posted quickly to say we needed confirmation, only to get that confirmation hours later. This time I waited, and it paid off.

So here we are: Two polls, Rasmussen with 750 LV and MoE 4, InsiderAdvantage with 557 LV and also a listed MoE of 4. Insider Advantage has more undecideds, so that the absolute numbers are different, but they’re close and the gap is the same.

Ras: Gingrich 41, Romney 32. Rick Santorum and Ron Paul battle for third at 11 and 8. IA: Gingrich 34, Romney 26. Paul passes Santorum with an 13-11 margin.

Early voting throws an interesting kink into this polling, as it draws somewhat of a distinction between polling current opinion and predicting who will win, but this looks like the same pattern we saw in South Carolina: Gingrich, then [Romney], then Gingrich again at the end.

Crossposted from Unlikely Voter

It was a long fight. I can’t tell you how many times I kept saying that SOPA and PROTECT IP were in trouble. But they’re getting shelved now. Sure, there’s whining about it. And the President still is too cowardly to lead.

Now it’s time to move on to the next step, though, and find a sensible way to attack the foreign infringers, who essentially are free riders on the American copyright system, taking advantage of the scarcity imposed by copyright without themselves respecting the rules that create that scarcity.

You can tell who’s trying to make this into a fight against copyright though, by the way Megaupload is being made out as a victim. When Megaupload in fact was a company that was making big bucks as a place you could stash files for broad distribution without regard for copyright, and they’re rightfully being shut down.

So it’s not surprising that the terror group Anonymous is defending them and attacking the United States of America in the process. This is an anti-American lawless band of thugs that needs to be be made to pay. And they always do get caught. We just have to wonder whether there will be a backlash against an open Internet thanks to that anarchist scum.

I’m glad Marsha Blackburn flipped on SOPA, because she’s making fantastic points on spectrum. FCC management of spectrum holds back even good policies like auctions. Those failures keep spectrum idle, and thus harm the public by creating artificial scarcity. They don’t do the job right, and so now we need to stand over them and tell them what to do. They had a chance, they failed. Read the whole thing.

Google has a long way do go before it earns trust from a lot of people. People aren’t going to forget soon how closely Google allied with Barack Obama, and then how Google allied with the radical left to push for Internet regulation. So Google’s position on SOPA is being met with skepticism from some, and it’s hard to say it’s unwarranted.

Ah, the open Internet.

On the Senate side, Harry Reid has canceled the vote on PROTECT IP, killing momentum for the proposal in both houses of Congress.

Smith’s and Reid’s decisions come on the heels of disgraced former Senator and current MPAA head Chris Dodd calling for cross-industry discussions on property protection. It may have been the death blow for PROTECT IP and SOPA’s biggest industry supporter to start talking compromise, when in the past the Dodd MPAA had taken a hard line against any deviation from the bills.

In other SOPA news, Marsha Blackburn also announced a change of heart on SOPA. I agree with Blackburn’s new position: scrap SOPA and start with something new. Issa’s and Ron Wyden’s OPEN Act is also worthy of consideration.

InsiderAdvantage polled South Carolina just a few days ago on the 15th, and Mitt Romney had a 32-21 lead on Newt Gingrich.

NewsMax had them poll again on the 18th, and the results were different. Gingrich takes his first SC poll lead in a month.

Facts: 720 LVs, postweighted, MoE 3.8.

The result is a huge swing from just a few days ago. We’ve gone from Romney +11 to Gingrich +3, a 14 point swing, but it’s not zero-sum. Gingrich gains 11 points, Romney loses 3. Jon Huntsman’s voters shifted heavily toward Newt Gingrich if this poll pans out, and isn’t just some fluke result for that one candidate, the former Speaker.

This is now our first major contradiction in the South Carolina polling. Rasmussen Reports showed Romney +14 in that firm’s first post-Huntsman poll. CNN/ORC shows Romney +10 (33-23) in their first post-Huntsman reading.

So two polls continue to show Gingrich in the 21-24 band he’s held for the last two weeks, but one poll gives him a huge boost. I conclude it’s possible that SC has very suddenly gotten a lot more competitive, but it’s not a sure thing.

One poll, one time, from one pollster, when two others disagree, does not make a surge.

Crossposted from Unlikely Voter

So, Erick Erickson decided to make a big push against SOPA today, again bringing out the primary threat card. I also had a post on SOPA and PROTECT IP today.

We were heard. On the House side, Speaker John Boehner echoed Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and said the committee needs to find consensus before the bill can get a vote. And again, conservatives like Darrell Issa, Justin Amash, and Jason Chaffetz aren’t going to lie down and quit. So as long as Boehner and Cantor are true to their words, SOPA is dead in the House this Congress.

On the Senate side, of the 16 Republicans co-sponsoring PROTECT IP, I’ve received word of six of them changing their minds. Kelly Ayotte, Roy Blunt, John Boozman, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, and Marco Rubio are dropping their support. Moe was keeping track, but I think Ayotte flipped after the posted.

The threat of electoral consequences is all a politician will listen to. Democrats know that the online left won’t lift a finger, so Democrats are still backing SOPA and PROTECT IP, much to Markos Moulitsas’s disappointment. We stood on principle, while Daily Kos just whined. We got results, he got blown off.

Erick even tried to make this a bipartisan thing, where both sides would primary the SOPA and PROTECT IP supporters, but he got crickets.

Lamar Smith remains primary target number one though, as he does his best impression of the Saddam Hussein Ministry of Propaganda. The Allies are not in Iraq! SOPA is still in control of the country! It’s all lies! Also, Lamar Smith is himself an E-PARASITE. Will he resign and report to prison?

And remember: being against the SOPA/PROTECT IP plan is not the same as being pro-infringement. There are better, more workable ideas.

I started talking about PROTECT IP last May, back when the Kos left was all in favor of Internet regulation. So I’m staying ahead of the game and will continue to beat the drum about the next fight: national and Internet sales taxation. There’s a plan gaining steam called the Marketplace Fairness Act, and we all know what it means when people talk about “tax fairness:” Grab your wallet.

Governors love the plan, no, really, as it’s a way of raising taxes while claiming you’re not raising taxes. That saves them a political fight to cut spending.

They then resort to personal attacks on the opposition, by claiming they’re “evaders” or “cheats” or other such nonsense. Those shameful attacks change the subject from the undeniable fact that the Constitution reserves the regulation of interstate commerce to the Congress. Without an interstate compact, state attempts at interstate taxation defy the Constitution and are illegal.

Beware the compact plans currently coming about though. Demand that they contain safeguards, such as the compact being dissolved immediately, or state accession documents requiring the states to withdraw immediately, in the event of a national sales tax plan, in the style of the Canadian HST. Demand that tax rates be limited. Tell these sponsors that you oppose back-door national sales taxes with the full brunt of income tax left in place.

News flash: it’s not illegal for Google to do something just because you don’t like it. It annoys me that there are people who want to bring government into this. Bunch of whiners. Use something else if you don’t like it. Grow up!

Bad spectrum regulations harm access to the Internet. Yes, yes they do. I’m not going to adopt the language of these groups and say it’s a “civil rights issue,” but I agree that we need more competition. And that means less regulation and smaller government, not a runaway Justice and FCC. We need to let firms large and small get the spectrum they need.

This was a well earned victory for conservatives, and we owe the above allies thanks for sticking up for our values against formidable opposition. Barack Obama refused to pledge a SOPA veto even in the face of a massive petition from his supporters. Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith sponsored the bill, and notable tech leaders like Marsha Blackburn co-sponsored it. Well-funded groups like AFL-CIO, MPAA, and RIAA all lined up behind it.

It took everything we had to be heard on this. Our movement could hold nothing back. Erick Erickson himself had to threaten a primary challenge to Blackburn, and he was right to do it. But we got our way, and we should be glad.

But today, as SOPA protests go on across the Internet, we should be aware that there are a few lingering pockets of resistance, and be mindful of them.

It all goes back to May 2011. RedState started work early against a new bill, called PROTECT IP (now being called PIPA in parallel with SOPA). Even as the administration was ramming Net Neutrality Internet regulation through the FCC, the RedState community knew that Net Neutrality wasn’t just a threat in itself, but it was also a stepping stone to bigger, more intrusive Internet controls.

It was true, too. Net Neutrality passed, and no matter how loudly we cried out, no matter how hard Kay Bailey Hutchison pleaded for the Senate to take up the Net Neutrality repeal that House Republicans passed, it remained. And with the Internet already regulated, why not try for more?

So Patrick Leahy’s PROTECT IP bill grew in support, gaining shocking co-sponsors like Marco Rubio. Why a TEA Party Senator would want to give dictatorial Internet censorship powers to Eric Holder, I have no idea. If not for Ron Wyden’s obstruction of the bill, it might have been worse yet.

But Wyden did block the bill, and so PROTECT IP came to the House under the name of SOPA. Leahy’s idea found a Republican champion in Lamar Smith, and the bill backed by disgraced former Senator Chris Dodd’s MPAA brought in even more disappointing Republican sponsors. Marsha Blackburn has been a hero against Internet regulation, but she for some reason cosponsored SOPA.

We at RedState complained and complained, for months highlighting this bill and its dangers. But as with Net Neutrality, allies were few and far between. But slowly, we grew the coalition. Erick Erickson joined my primary threats, and Darrell Issa put together a crack team of liberty-loving Republicans to make some noise. Together we made people realize how bad this bill really was.

Now, suddenly, the whole Internet was screaming about SOPA. People who mocked and scorned us for months suddenly were rushing to be on our side. However unlike us, they put no pressure on their own side to do right on SOPA and PROTECT IP. Barack Obama, despite making no promise to veto SOPA, endures no criticism. Senate Democrats are left free of consequences to force a vote on PROTECT IP. Judiciary Ranking Member John Conyers and other House Democrats vote for SOPA’s censorship and are free of public censure.

Conyers in fact laughably said “The notion that this bill threatens freedom of information is insupportable,” but what has the left done? They free ride on our primary threats by joining in on our attacks on Lamar Smith, whose picture is prominent in the Wikipedia page for SOPA. But today we continue to name and shame Republicans like Smith, Rubio, and Blackburn for their roles in supporting SOPA and PROTECT IP.

We stand and demand electoral consequences for censoring the Internet. That takes time, effort, and money, and I’m glad our community is a coalition of the willing.

Today I thank the RedState community for working, for joining our effort and applying the pressure it took to get Eric Cantor to come down on SOPA. I’m glad RedState’s community is here, because if Cantor ever backslides and SOPA becomes a risk to pass, we’ll need a full team effort once again.

We’ll need action if SOPA starts to move again. RedState is online today not because we support SOPA, but because somebody had to do the heavy lifting to defeat SOPA, and that’s what we were part of. Thank you, RedStaters, for getting that done. Thank you Darrell Issa, Justin Amash, Jason Chaffetz, and other House members for getting this done. Thank you Orrin Hatch and other Senate Republicans for demanding against the odds that Harry Reid should stop his insistence on jamming PROTECT IP through the Senate.

But most of all thank you, RedStaters, for showing up for small government and an open Internet even when it’s not the cool thing to do so.

SOPA is dead in the House, says Majority Leader Eric Cantor, until there is consensus. Since there’s never going to be consensus on Internet censorship, Cantor seems to be saying the issue’s dead in this Congress.

The President went mushy on SOPA, Harry Reid and Senate Democrats decided to push forward, but Eric Cantor, Darrell Issa, and House Republicans want to kill the bill. That’s a clear, bright line, folks.

Turns out primary threats matter more than vague protests.

Hey, if Rupert Murdoch wants to hold Google accountable for every search result, then let’s come after Rupert Murdoch for every classified ad ever run in any of his newspapers, eh? Have any ‘pirates’ ever advertised there? Massage parlors? Other lawbreakers? Betcha they have.

And I bet Google hasn’t hacked anybody’s phones. Or committed perjury before British inquiries related to those phone hackings, like James Murdoch and British elements of the News Corp. empire have. Oops.

If the FCC doesn’t like Republican efforts to constrain their freedom of action on spectrum, it’s their own fault for creating that mistrust that now exist. Nobody believes Julius Genachowski has any intent to obey the law. He thinks he’s above the law.

Some bills become unstoppable in the Congress. They pile up cosponsors, get leadership support, and cruise on through to easy passage. Not SOPA, or its original Senate version, PROTECT IP. They’re in trouble. While the left is fighting these bills with blackouts and protesting, our message is simpler: If you back SOPA or PROTECT IP, we will primary you. That matters.

One guy who has clearly heard us, and is responding to our complaints by urging a slowdown on PROTECT IP, is Orrin Hatch. He’s a potential primary target and he knows it, so he’s listening. It’s refreshing, and certainly puts Hatch over many in Congress on this issue.

Yeah, Free Press and the radicals are hypocrites on this, but SOPA really is a bad bill. Lamar Smith is even talking about removing some of the worst provisions, that’s how bad it is. Patrick Leahy is also talking about bending on PROTECT IP. We’re making progress. Keep it up.

Industry is paying attention, the threat of a vote looms. Erick Erickson made it clear he’d even oppose Marsha Blackburn if she helped pass SOPA. This is serious and we need to be loud and committed to action.

Look. It’s simply bad customer service for Google to sabotage its own new search service by deliberately omitting popular services like Twitter. But it’s an even worse idea to bring government into it. We need to leave government out of it. These big government losers need to suck it up, quit whining, and just stop using Google if they don’t like Google. Grow up people. Get a life already.

Likewise, if you don’t like NFL blackout policy, quit watching. I don’t like bringing government into it, either. But the FCC under Barack Obama thinks it rules the world.

So it’s irksome that they’re now crowing about their shameful behavior regarding AT&T. They claim it was a win of the rules for competition, but there were no rule of law there. There was no objective decision being made according to facts and evidence. This was government picking winners and losers according to the whims of commissioners.

why do you think they’re getting hysterical about House Republicans wanting to constrain FCC action regarding spectrum allocation? They want FCC to rule according to their whims, and now Constitutionally-passed law. Congressional oversight and control over legislation annoys them. Thinking about why that would be suggests why it’s a good idea to begin with to pass laws constraining the FCC’s actions.

Chuck Grassley is turning into a real beast on regulatory oversight. Good on him.