A Cry To Congress: Save The Internet!

Congress is holding hearings on the most outrageous decision—among all too many—of the Obama Administration: having the U.S. give up control of the Internet to some as yet undefined international body. Good God, even this hard-left crowd should see the malignant folly in this. As Gordon Crovitz put it in the Wall Street Journal, "The alternative to continued U.S. authority is control by an international body dominated by authoritarian regimes."

From the get-go the U.S. has been meticulous in keeping politics out of the functioning of the most extraordinary creation of modern times.

Authoritarian regimes have been hungering for years to find ways to get their mitts on this powerful and power-to-the-people instrument. China spends countless billions of dollars and employs hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats in trying to censure what is said on the Internet.

The current White House deeply believes that this country should have virtually no footprint beyond its shores, that everything that happens anywhere else should be left to the UN, the IMF and other dysfunctional multinational bodies. The decision to turn the Internet over to the tender mercies of the Putins of the world is part and parcel of this America-is-bad mentality.

Even if counter-Internets were set up to replicate the freedom of the original, they would be too small to have similar scope and impact.

Congress should dispense with these hearings and pass legislation declaring any such disastrous Commerce Department decision null and void.

If Senate boss Harry Reid were to try to block such a bill, Silicon Valley Democrats should publicly open their checkbooks to GOP Senate candidates. Knowing how vulnerable his majority is, Reid would capitulate.

So, ultimately, would the White House, just as it did several years ago when a move was afoot to pass legislation that was ostensibly meant to fight piracy but would have actually damaged the Internet.

Let Congress and the President know that we will not allow antifreedom hacks and dictators to pollute and destroy the Net.

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