Remember the Obama Regime's long-sought desire to nationalize the Internet through 332 pages of opaque, unconstitutional Federal Communications Commission regulation that was illegally rammed thorough on a 3-2 vote without any public scrutiny or legislative examination to find out what was in it (although GOP FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai courageously did what whistle-blowing he could, incurring the trademark leftwingnut hatestorm against him)?
It begins in an hour and fifty-two minutes:
Rules that treat the Internet like a public utility and prevent companies from blocking or slowing down some online traffic will go into effect Friday after a federal appeals court refused to delay them.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit [10-8 Republican-appointed majority] said it won't postpone implementation of the net neutrality regulations even though AT&T, Verizon, and other companies are fighting against them. The panel said the United States Telecom Association, the plaintiffs in the case, did not satisfy the requirements for a stay.
The ruling is a setback for the industry, but the litigation will go on. The court accepted the Telecom Association's request to speed up the proceedings and asked the two sides to submit a schedule for briefing within two weeks.
Which means that the litigation is now functionally irrelevant, because once the FCC seizure of the 'Net takes effect, the only things that can reverse it - congressional legislation and tilting the FCC balance back towards the GOP - will only be possible under a new conservative president, and however likely that is or isn't in 2016, that won't become reality, if it ever does, for over a year and a half. In the mean time, the Internet we've known for twenty years will become a gutted, ruined, exorbitant, censored shell, in a 1930s-era regulatory straitjacket that will inexorably strangle the vitality and life out of it until there's nothing left.
This is why Barack Obama always wins on his power grabs. He knows the cardinal rule of rulebreakers well: "It's always easier to obtain forgiveness than it is permission". He knows that the GOP is too afraid of him to ever challenge his unlawful, despotic usurpations, and it they surprise him occasionally, his party's congressional minions can gum up the process for him. And if the federal courts slap him down, he can ignore them, and whether or not he does matters little because the damage will be done and his power grab will be entrenched beyond any practical ability of rolling it back.
Dictators, in short, will always be able to move faster than legislatures or judges. Something that The One also knows very well.
So, to adapt the words of Norrin Radd, "Treasure these last moments of cyberliberty"; because, as Captain Picard told Commander Riker at the end of Star Trek: Generations, "It'll never come again".
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