Act would give power to 'shut down' Internet...

A recently proposed but little-noticed Senate bill would allow the federal government to shut down the Internet in times of declared emergency, and enables unprecedented federal oversight of private network administration. The bill's draft states that "the president may order a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic" and would give the government ongoing access to "all relevant data concerning (critical infrastructure) networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access."...link

Wow.......Avoid the noid..........

Will Obama Open Up All U.S. Travel to Cuba?..

Few things engender hypocrisy more broadly than U.S. policy on Cuba. It's embarrassingly inconsistent for Washington to maintain a trade embargo against Havana and to bar U.S. citizens from traveling to Cuba when the U.S. gleefully does business with regimes like China, whose human-rights violations are more egregious than Cuba's. At the same time, it's curious at best that embargo foes like California Representative Barbara Lee, who led a congressional delegation to Havana last week that met with President Raúl Castro and his brother Fidel, rarely mention Cuba's jailed dissidents but will, as Lee has, blast China for "repression against the Tibetan people."...Link

Barack Obama is "wavering"......

President Barack Obama is "wavering" on whether to fully release details of the Bush administration's approved torture techniques, according to a report in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal based on statements by "people familiar with the discussions." "Among the details in the still-classified memos is approval for a technique in which a prisoner's head could be struck against a wall as long as the head was being held and the force of the blow was controlled by the interrogator, according to people familiar with the memos," the paper reported...link