For the second time in as many days, Congress has taken a major bad vote. Yesterday, it was the filibuster of Manchin/Toomey's background checks amendment, which had majority support but not supermajority support (so it died, because the U.S. Senate operates by ridiculous rules that our Founding Fathers would have found abhorrent).
As Joan mentioned, today, the U.S. House passed CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, for the second year in a row. CISPA is something of a sibling to SOPA/PIPA, which many Kossacks may remember were a pair of bills that were derailed last year when the Internet rose up on a chosen day in late January to protest the bills. CISPA isn't as all-around awful as SOPA/PIPA, but it's still pretty bad. Our friends at the ACLU and EFF have been fighting it.
A couple days ago, the White House came out with a statement on the 2013 incarnation of CISPA, threatening to veto it. That didn't stop the bill from passing today, with half of the Democratic caucus voting aye. The roll call vote was 288-127.
98 Democrats voted nay and 92 Democrats voted aye.
Twenty-nine Republicans voted against CISPA. If all Democrats had been united in opposition to CISPA it would not have got out of the House. Unfortunately, the Democratic caucus was split right down the middle. Even House Democratic leadership was split: Hoyer and Clyburn voted aye while Pelosi and Becerra voted nay.
More troubling is that a number of members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus voted for the bill. Most voted nay, but these CPC members were for the bill:
William “Lacy” Clay
Emanuel Cleaver
Luis Gutierrez
Steven Horsford
Hakeem Jeffries
Eddie Bernice Johnson
Marcy Kaptur
Ann McLane Kuster
Jim Moran
Ed Pastor
Charles Rangel
Bennie Thompson
CISPA now goes on to the U.S. Senate. It died there last year and we need to make sure the same thing happens this year. Please let your U.S. senators know you want them to oppose CISPA. If you are represented by one of the above CPC members, please register your disapproval with a phone call, fax, or email. If your U.S. Rep isn't on the list above, check the roll call to find out how he or she voted.
