The horrible COPE bill, which serves up our Internet as a nice little garnish on a fat juicey meal of money and power to the Telephone & Cable companies (who have become, not incidentally, another arm of the authoritarian regime now in power), passed the House last night. The Markey amendment, which would have protected Net Neutrality, failed by 117 votes, of which 58 came from Democrats. Eleven Republicans and one independent voted with the good guys on this one.
Call me a pessimist, but I think this is a bigger story than YearlyKos or Coulter or Al Zaquari (?spelling?).
As usual, Harold Feld, the First Amendment lawyer at the Media Access Project, has the details at his
Tales of the Sausage Factory column. Disclosure: Harold's column is part of my blog Wetmachine.
To see how your Congressperson voted, go here.
Our last stand will be in the Senate. Perhaps with enough effort, and some serious reaching across the political divide to groups who don't share our politics but do share our desire to preserve the Internet, we can stop this juggernaut yet. Please do your bit to preserve the Internet as a public good. To borrow a line from the helpful sparrow to Peter Rabbit, when Peter was ensnared and losing hope, I exhort you to exert yourself.