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Democratic House  Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who would like very much to reimpose the old, so-called, “Fairness Doctrine” that once censored conservative opinion on television and radio broadcasting, is scheming to impose rules barring any member of Congress from posting opinions on any internet site without first obtaining prior approval from the Democratic leadership of Congress. No blogs, twitter, online forums – nothing.

This was first reported to me by Congressman John Culberson (R-Tx) and I asked for approval to cite him and for any media links to this story. He provided the following link of regulations proposed by the Chair of the Congressional Commission on Mailing Standards (PDF) Congressman Michael Capuano (D-Mass) that was sent to Rep. Robert Brady, Chairman of the House Committee for Administration. The net effect of the regs would be to make it practically impossible for members of Congress to use social media tools to discuss official business or share video of the same with the public while creating a partisan disparity in what little approved messages might be permitted. It would be a very considerable error to assume that the House leadership intends to let dissenting Democratic members post any more freely than Republicans.

Set aside the nakedly partisan aspect of this plan for a moment – on the technological merits alone this may be the goddamn dumbest thing I’ve heard of regarding the internet coming out of Congress in a long, long, time. The dinosaurs who are uncomfortable witrh computers, the unwashed masses being aware of their actions and free political debate want to turn the clock back to the 1970’s. Except during the 1970’s no one would have dared to propose controlling what  a democratically elected member of Congress could say to their constituents. Doesn’t it register in the Beltway that they are talking about public information that already belongs to the people of the United States? Senators and Congressmen should be interacting with citizens more freely, not less; the U.S. Congress needs radical transparency, not greater opacity imposed by the Democratic House leadership to better hide shady dealings

It’s a brazenly Orwellian and most likely unconstitutional power grab by the Speaker of the House unlike anything dreamed of by any previous speaker – not Sam Rayburn, not Joseph Cannon. Nobody.

Nancy Pelosi has finally arrived at a historical pinnacle – as an enemy of free speech and the public’s right to know.

UPDATE:

It may be possible that these regs will force bloggers other than MoC to comply with these rules as well ( Hat tip Fantomplanet)

UPDATE II.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has info on the Senate version of the House Democratic plan:

In the Senate, the problem gets even worse.  Feinstein (D-CA) would have the Rules Committee act as a censor board, forcing members to get approval for the act of communicating on external websites.  Further, it would appear that the Feinstein proposal would attempt to exercise editorial control over these sites, at least indirectly.

As my source put it, these are the key issues:

• Under their scheme, the Senate Rules Committee would become the Internet speech police for everyone in the Senate.
  • It will be up to the committee to “sanction” which websites and forms of communication they deem appropriate.
  • The Rules Committee thus gets to pick winners and losers among various websites in terms of which are appropriate for use.

• The Rules Committee would get to regulate communication through any site not ending in “senate.gov,” which would include sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

• Further, this could jeopardize guest posts at sites like RedState and Townhall.

• The Rules Committee would require senators to moderate “any public commentary” which would likely mean regulating comments on guest posts and YouTube videos, among other things.

UPDATE III.

Response by Representative Mike Capuano. 

….First, the ONLY item we seek to address is LOOSENING existing rules to allow Members to post videos as a first step toward making the rules meet our constituents’ expectations regarding how they communicate with us in the 21st century. This was completely ignored during the years that Republicans controlled Congress while the internet grew exponentially. It is currently against House rules to post video on any site with commercial or political advertising or to use taxpayer-funded resources to post outside of the House.gov domain.

We are not currently seeking to address anything other than video – not blog postings, online chats or any other written form of communication anywhere on the internet. Any assertion to the contrary is a lie. Perhaps the people spreading those lies should take some time to actually read the letter I wrote, which is attached below.

Our only concern is commercialization – not imposing limits on free speech. It is amazing to me that Republicans think they can obscure the issue with this completely false assertion.

Read in full here.

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While I was away, the SWJ Blog ran a thoughtful essay by General  Huba Wass de Czege on the new military doctrine on irregular warfare. Not only is he good on the substance, Wass de Czege demonstrates how one needs to begin with clear thinking when attempting to formulate and apply usefuyl concepts:

A Reflection on the Illogic of New Military Concepts

What is it about the US Military that tends to produce sound, pragmatic, and common sense ideas about the concrete present, and tends toward illogic, faddish paradigms and hyperbole when dealing with the abstract future? Joint Operating Concepts for dealing with post cold war security problems have proven difficult to “get right.” This is because they begin from the wrong logical starting point and thus define the problem incorrectly. It is also because of inattention to historical fact, definitional subtlety and the theoretical logic within which military forces must operate. This inattention overlooks key logical inconsistencies in such documents crafted more to “sell” to constituencies within the Washington “Beltway” the capabilities and programs championed by one military interest group or another rather than to inform current decisions in the field.

….”Beltway” constituencies have been educated to think according to the attractive new paradigms military professionals have used to buttress their budget arguments.

Read the rest here.

Tim Stevens of Ubiwar had a very intriguing post Thoughts on Countering Online Radicalisation that deals with Islamist “cyberterrorism”  but also the evolution and state of online life and the challenges these pose to CI, CT and law enforcement . You should go read it in full because I am going to comment upon particular snippets:

Terrorists know their actions are reported instantaneously through a multitude of television channels, radio stations, websites, blogs and newsgroups. If the effectiveness of a violent act relies on being able to broadcast it as swiftly as possible to as many people as possible, then the contemporary global communications environment is as near perfect a tool as has yet been invented.

The media environment is at saturation point for “early adapter” elite Westerners by the saturation is fractured. A good visual analogy of the total media picture would be the social media “ripple effect” diagram by David Armano  – including all forms of media would greatly increase the complexity by orders of magnitude but the logic of the effect would remain the same ( the memetic velocity of each form of media differs but they all interact nonetheless). The message of Islamist terrorism like any other meme in a highly competitive, complex adaptive media system must follow the rules of an attention economy or languish to little effect. There must be psychological “hooks” in the message and content, delivery and the multiplicity of audiences must be considered strategically.

Reams of newsprint, untold hours of televisual hyperbole and a thousand academic articles have been expended on this subject, but it remains of critical importance. How do we adjust our Western liberal mores to account for the fact that every violent sub- or non-state actor knows the internet is a tool and, like ‘us’, knows how to use it? The time has long passed when we should be surprised by this, although articles crop up regularly in provincial newspapers and magazines, and occasionally in national dailies, somehow expressing surprise that terrorists use the internet for their own ends, and that something-must-be-done. We wrestle with the First Amendment, the spectre of censorship looms, militaries worry about operational security, and politicians tack with the prevailing wind, dispensing legislation and initiatives like sticking plasters in a bucket of razor blades.

But what is the fuss all about? Do commentators on the subject actually know what happens on the internet? The videos of IEDs in Iraq, or of Juba the Baghdad Sniper, or viral 9/11 videos, might just be the thin end of the wedge. Terrorists and insurgents leverage the tools of new media to broadcast violent propaganda, but why? What lies beneath?

The substrate below the spectacular image factory is a world that most readers of this blog well recognise. Websites, blogs, chatrooms, social networking sites, discussion fora, mailing lists, internet relay chat, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, virtual worlds, email, instant messaging, video sharing, file sharing, torrenting, and a host of other spaces where people – fundamentally – interact.

At this point here it would be profitable for non-geeks and enjoyable for the geeks to detour to Metaverse Roadmap Overview to get a better look at the part of the iceberg of the future that will be beneath the surface of the water. The cognitive power of games should not be underestimated as a learning modality or community-building tool. Virtuality tools drastically lower the transaction costs and risk for experimenting with challenging the social contract and these tools are in the hands of far more more socially alienated people than ever before, not merely unemployed, hiphop listening, Islamist wannabes in Marseilles unhappy with French public housing. The next generation of Ted Kacyznskis might be a superempowered scale free network like “Anonymous“.

Comprehension is critical. All movements congregate around a message, a coherent narrative understood by all, a rallying cry. Extremist propaganda serves this function, and discriminates amongst different audiences. In the court of international public opinion it aims to create either fear or a broad sense of sympathy. When aimed at the enemy, whether military or civilian, the intention is to create fear and uncertainty, and to undermine morale. Different emphases can be placed on the message distributed to extant supporters of an extremist organisation – corroboration, encouragement, reinforcement, righteousness. The fourth audience is the population in whose interest extremists claim to act. Propaganda mobilises public support, constructs bottom-up legitimacy, and affirms credibility through action. Within this population lies the most important group of all: the next generation of extremists.

What would John Boyd have said here ?

“Shape or influence events so that we not only amplify our spirit and strength (while isolating our adversaries and undermining their resolve and drive) but also influence the uncommitted or potential adversaries so that they are drawn toward our philosophy and are empathetic toward our success. – Patterns of Conflict“

I would also add that the potential radical online is also drawn in by the same psychological process that occurs with cults – acceptance, affirmation of identity, certainty, an emotive connection that is continually reinforced and provides a neurophysical stimulus. A good book to pick up here would be Eric Hoffer’s classic The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classics). The mad gleam in the eye of the ranting Islamist has been seen before in SS diehards, Maoist Red Guards, anarchists of the 19th century People’s Will and innumerable others.

Extremism itself is not the problem and nor is radical thinking, but violence against innocent individuals – becoming ‘kinetic’ in military parlance – is not acceptable in modern liberal society. Although its role is sometimes overstated online radicalisation is very real. It cannot be viewed in isolation from the societies in which it occurs but there are targeted approaches available to mitigate its worst excesses. Testimonies of violent extremists of every ilk highlight the role of the internet in radicalisation, either of themselves or of others, and we are obliged to pay attention.

Prior to the 1960’s, liberal societies and liberals themselves did not have problems accepting the fact that the open society had blood enemies and treating them as such. Liberals volunteered to go to Spain to fight fascism and were enthusiastic advocates for the crusade to destroy Nazism in WWII. Social Democrats and trade unionists fought to kick Stalinists out of unions and democratic-Left organizations and so on.  They had a moral center and argued for a “vital center” against extremism, at home or abroad.

Unfortunately, ever since the Vietnam War, liberals have been unable to effectively answer the anti-Western, anti-democratic, illiberal critique posed by New Left radicals, deconstructionists, multiculturalists, gender feminists and various forms of au courant intellectual nihilism. Instead, the democratic Left have accepted the undemocratic extremists as political allies in good standing against the Right, are loath to criticize them and implicitly accepted the moral legitimacy of their crypto-Marxist jeremiad, if not their policy recommendations or often inane political advice. While a general cultural trend, this effect is most acute in the baby boom generation, particularly the ’68’ers and New Right oponents who are at their zenith of systemic responsibility as managing editors, CEO’s, political leaders, intellectuals and bureaucrats.

 A generation still torn by the cultural civil war of their youth make ineffective defenders of a civilization. “The Long War” will be long in part because our leadership is badly divided and on occasion, blind and grossly incompetent.

The SCOTUS decision in Heller is important. Let me crib from Lexington Green:

The enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.

Justice Scalia, The District of Columbia v. Heller

Heller was not just an affirmation of the common sense and historical interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as an individual right -indeed, the idea that the people did not have the right to be armed except at the pleasure of and in service to the national or state governments would have struck the Founders as outrageous tyranny – the entire Bill of Rights was added to placate moderate antifederalists who were unmollified by Hamiltonian assurances regarding Federal power – but of the right of self-defense itself. Not everybody believes that right exists. Or more precisely, they seek to convince you against all history and common sense that you have no right to preserve your life when threatened.

That ancient underlying right emanating from Natural Law is the real target of gun grabbers and authoritarian bureaucrats.

LTC. John Nagl had an article, not yet available online, in the prestigious RUSI journal where he used his review of The Echo of Battle: The Army’s Way of War by Brian McAllister Linn to drive home a geopolitical and grand strategic reality that I offer here with my subsequent comments( major hat tip to Lexington Green for the PDF):

In the twenty-first century, wars are  not won when the enemy army is defeated on the battlefield; in fact, there may not be a uniformed enemy to fight at all. Instead, a war is only won when the conditions that spawned armed conflict have been changed.

 Fielding first rate conventional militaries of local or regional “reach” are inordinately expensive propositions and only the United States maintains one with global power projection capabilities and a logistical tail that can fight wars that are both far away and of long duration.  Economics, nuclear weapons, asymmetrical disparities in conventional firepower, globalization and the revolution in information technology that permits open-source warfare have incentivized warfare on the cheap and stealthy at the expense of classic state on state warfare. The predictions of Martin van Creveld in The Transformation of War are coming to pass – war has ratcheted downward from armies to networks and blurs into crime and tribalism. In this scenario, kinetics can no longer be neatly divorced from politics – or economics, sociology, history and culture. “Legitimacy”, stemming from getting actions on the mental and moral levels of war right, matter tremendously.

‘Decisive results’ in the twenty-first century will come not when we wipe a piece of land clean of enemy forces, but when we protect its people and allow them to control their territory in a manner consistent with the norms of the civilised world.

 This is “Shrinking the Gap” to use Thomas P.M. Barnett’s phrase. The remediation of failing and failed states not to “utopia” but basic functionality that permits a responsible exercise of sovereignty and positive connectivity with the rest of the world.

Thus victory in Iraq and Afghanistan will come when those nations enjoy governments that meet the basic needs and garner the support of all of their peoples.

Taken literally, Nagl errs here with two polyglot regions, especially Afghanistan where the popular expectation of a “good” central government is one that eschews excessive meddling while providing – or rather presiding over – social stability and peace. Taken more broadly to mean a gruff acceptance by the people of the legitimacy of their state so they do not take up arms ( or put them down), then nagl is on target. Realism about our own interests vs. global needs and our own finite resources requires a ” good enough” standard be in place.

Winning the Global War on Terror is an even more challenging task; victory in the Long War requires the strengthening of literally dozens of governments afflicted by insurgents who are radicalised by hatred and inspired by fear.

 We might want to consider prophylactic efforts to strengthen weak states prior to a major crisis arising – more bang for our buck – and this should be a major task of AFRICOM. Strengthen the Botswanas, Malis and Zambias before wading hip-deep into the Congo.

The soldiers who will win these wars require an ability not just to dominate land operations, but to change entire societies – and not all of those soldiers will wear uniforms, or work for the Department of Army. The most important warriors of the current century may fight for the US Information Agency rather than the Department of Defense

Nagl has internalized an important point. The “jointness” forced upon the U.S. military by the Goldwater-Nichols Act in the late 1980’s and 1990’s needs to be broadened, first into true “interagency operational jointness” of American assets then into a full-fledged “System Administration” umbrella that can integrate IGO’s, NGO’s, and the private sector along with military-governmental entities to maximize impact.

Like SecDef Robert Gates, LTC. Nagl “gets it” and we can hope now that he has joined the ranks of policy wonks that an administration job is in his future.

UPDATE:

Check out this post at Kings of War – highly relevant.

And at the SWJ Blog