The Party of Trump Funds Planned Parenthood, Abandons the Internet
The big story of the new Continuing Resolution is of course thatCongressional Republicans caving to President Obama and affirmatively funding Planned Parenthood.
But there’s a lesser-known story that’s almost as big of a Republican failure: in addition to failing to protect the unborn, they also failed to protect the Internet.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has made it his mission in DC to try to save the Internet. Barack Obama wants to abandon American stewardship of the Internet via the agencies known as ICANN and IANA. These are the groups that control the fundamentals of the Internet: the assignment of addresses under the Internet Protocol, and of names under the Domain Name System.
You see, these groups control IP addresses and domain names, without which it’s hard or impossible to communicate with people on the Internet. ICANN and IANA run the show, but they do so under a Commerce Department contract, so ultimately we have oversight. The US Government is the guardian of liberty online. Obama wants to change that.
Obama would hand oversight of these groups over to an international body, giving Russia and China unprecedented access to shape and censor the American Internet, instead of just the Internet access in their own countries.
This also would mean that foreign interests can target American companies, which they already have in the case of Brazil going after Amazon.
Well, Ted Cruz wanted to save the Internet using the Continuing Resolution. But the leadership refused, passing the bill exactly the way the President wanted: funding Planned Parenthood and abandoning the Internet to Obama’s extremist plans.
Good job, good effort.
