A small win

In the continuing battle to protect our freedom, we’ve gotten a win:

A prominent Republican in the U.S. Congress has backed away from plans to rewrite Internet privacy rules by requiring that logs of Americans’ online activities be stored.

Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said through a representative this week that he will not be introducing that legislation after all.

Apparently, Rep. Sensenbrenner was the recipient of quite a lot of, shall we say, “negative comments” (like mine, perhaps), and has decided to back off of this particular idiocy, at least for the time being.

However, rather than Sensenbrenner taking the blame for this (After all, he is the Congressman, and shouldn’t be responsible for what is done in his name, should he?), his office has decided to foist it onto an unnamed aide. Also note that the proposal was drafted without “Sensenbrenner’s direct involvement”. I guess that means he did it all by voice mail and email (he said sarcastically).

Jeff Lungren, communications director for the House Judiciary Committee, said an aide had drafted the proposed bill without Sensenbrenner’s direct involvement. “Staff sometimes starts working on issues–throwing around ideas, doing oversight–and (they) get ahead of where the members are and what they want to tackle,” Lungren said in an e-mail message.

Bushwa. Sensenbrenner is a big-time supporter of the President, and it’s been widely noted that this whole thing about after Alberto Gonzales said in public it would be a Great Idea! and the EU decided that their subjects should be under similar scrutiny. Sensenbrenner cooked this thing up and floated it out, where is promptly received the exposure and ventilation is deserved.

However, I’d suggest remembering that part of the quote that says “Staff sometimes starts working on issues–throwing around ideas, doing oversight–and (they) get ahead of where the members are and what they want to tackle.”

This will be back, and this time it will be buried in some piece of “must pass” legislation. Then, without fanfare, our freedom will once again be sold down the river, and we won’t know it until it’s too late.