Eye on Freedom

“There is now a serious question as to whether Professor Liu has approached this process with the degree of candor and respect required of nominees who come before the committee,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the panel’s top Republican, wrote to Leahy on Thursday. “We can no longer extend him the benefit of the doubt that these substantial omissions—in which several of his more extreme statements appear—were a mere oversight.”

Read more….

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Federal Communications Commission exceeded its authority when it sanctioned Comcast Corp. in 2008 for deliberately slowing Internet traffic for some users.

The unanimous decision is a blow to the FCC, which argued it had authority to police Internet providers and prevent them from blocking or slowing subscribers’ Internet traffic. The victory is likely to spark efforts by the FCC and Congress to impose new rules on Comcast and other Internet providers. Major Internet providers will likely oppose such moves, particularly any effort by the FCC to apply rules to their Web services that were originally enacted to promote more competition in the land-line phone industry.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned the FCC’s demand, approved by a 3-2 vote, that Comcast stop slowing Web traffic. The court ruled that Congress had not given the FCC the power to regulate an Internet service provider’s network-management practices.

The decision is a win for Comcast in a case that started when subscribers complained that the cable and Internet giant had slowed Web traffic for some customers who were downloading large files using peer-to-peer file-sharing services like BitTorrent. Comcast stopped the practice but went ahead with its challenge of the FCC’s decision.

Tuesday’s appeals court ruling could be a mixed blessing for Comcast and other Internet providers. President Obama and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski have both supported the idea of “net neutrality” rules, which say that all legal Internet traffic should be treated equally by Internet providers.

Read more….

Senate Republicans on Tuesday slammed one of the Obama administration’s most controversial judicial nominees for failing to initially disclose more than 100 of his speeches, publications and other background materials — an omission the Republicans called unprecedented and a possible attempt to “hide his most controversial work.”

They said Goodwin Liu’s nomination to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is in “jeopardy” in light of the problem.

The complaint came after Liu, a Berkeley law professor, gave the Senate Judiciary Committee a bundle of supplemental material that contained 117 things he left out after his February nomination.

Among the items disclosed were several speeches on affirmative action and his participation at an event co-sponsored by the Center for Social Justice at Berkeley and the the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group.

Read more…..

The Senate Judiciary Committee has postponed the hearing for a controversial Court of Appeals nominee after the panel received a letter from a home-state prosecutor blasting the candidate as a judicial loose cannon and after Republicans raised concerns about bias in favor of sex offenders.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chatigny gained notoriety in 2005 for his role in trying to fight the execution of convicted serial killer and rapist Michael Ross, also known as The Roadside Strangler, whom Chatigny had described as a victim of his own “sexual sadism.”

His conduct in that case, which included threatening to go after Ross’ attorney’s law license, as well as his ruling in 2001 against sex offender registries created under Megan’s Law, has caused a commotion among Republicans on the judiciary panel.

“I’ve never seen conduct like this,” said a Republican source. “I’m shocked that the White House vetted this guy … and still put him up for a judgeship.”

Read more…..