Scooter Libby lost his job and had to pay a shitload in fines. Only the prison term was commuted. He was also never charged with leaking anything. Also, his conviction was part of a partisan witch hunt. Richard Armitage leaked the name of Wilson's wife. Armitage confessed to the prosecutor before Libby was ever interviewed, so there was no reason to interview Libby in the first place. The prosecutor did anyway because he wanted to stick The Bad Guys with something.

Armitage opposed the Iraq war, and leaked the name by mistake. The leak wasn't a Cheney/Rove plot to smear Iraq war opponents, which is the story we were all fed at the time.

The phrase is "buck naked." The analogy is to the male deer, a woodland creature not known for wearing clothes. Also, please learn how to use the shift key on your keyboard.

Gore claimed that he created the modern internet by sponsoring the bill in the Senate that deregulated the ARPANET. In full context (which Gore provided) the claim is fair. Speaking of, where was The Biggest Deregulatory In Internet History in the Title II debate?

While you're thinking, please consider my full position, which is "The United States government needs an organization whose job is EXCLUSIVELY to license over the air broadcasting. If it uses the RF spectrum, it can be subject to this agency's regulation. They should issue licences by type of broadcast (OTA TV, FM, AM etc.) and maybe some light touch content stuff. (The FCC as currently constituted is too heavy handed in this area.) Anything NOT broadcast over the air (such as wireline internet connections) should NOT be regulated by this agency."

The examples you are talking about are examples of the content rules. The content rules are dumb and overused, but that's not what I'm talking about. The EFF, for one example, is worried about the CONDUCT rule (which is just taking effect now) being ex post facto.

You're just babbling now. "The ISPs have exclusive access to the backbone?" Who, other than ISPs, need access to it? That's like saying "people with cars have exclusive access to the highway." The problem is that in almost all geographic areas, one ISP has exclusive access to the customers in that area. Those are monopolies, but Title II doesn't fix that problem, it makes it worse. (As far as bragging to the FCC, you're wrong on that as well. Comcast says that they should be allowed to merge with Time Warner because there are no areas where Comcast and Time Warner compete for the same CUSTOMERS, not nowhere they compete for the same backbone.)

I don't think you know what an oligopoly is. Cable companies don't compete with each other because of exclusive municipal franchise agreements, which make it illegal for another company to run cable. Companies don't price fix with other companies because they're not competing with anyone. (In areas where they compete with fiber optics, they compete with the fiber company and you'll see lower prices.)

If you had two options for cable companies, and they both raised their rates at the same time while keeping service the same, that would be an oligopoly. What you have with cable companies are a bunch of small monopolies.

Generally speaking, a monopoly gets that way because the government grants them a monopoly. This is certainly the case with your cable company. The municipal franchise agreement is a law that enshrines you cable company in a monopoly status forever. Title II's price fixing* does that too. Both laws perpetuate monopolies. They also regulate the monopoly, sure, but they guarantee that the the company has monopoly status forever.

Banning exclusive municipal franchise agreements would remove the ability of local governments to grant monopolies. That would break up the monopolies, and that would be an actual pro-consumer move. Title II was undertaken because of a pressure campaign sponsored by guys who give a lot of money to one party, and that party answered the bell. But don't forget for a second that Title II hurts your cable company's monopoly status.

Imposing Title II isn't within the FCC's powers either.

Title II got implemented because of a huge special interest pressure campaign, because Obama is deified by a certain demographic (the press) and because Wheeler hates the cable companies.

If the pressure campaign had been directed towards state and municipal governments (or towards Congress directly, who could make this law at a national level), exclusive franchise agreements could be banned and then there would be actual monopolies. Republicans in Congress were ready to pass an anti-traffic shaping law (Net Neutrality without Title II) in February, but Democrats refused to go along with it.because they wanted Title II.

Title II was implemented because it helps a whole bunch of tech companies who back Obama and the Democrats (the guys who appointed Wheeler) cut costs. Not out of some kind of concern for fairness or whatever. They spun up the pressure campaign to get exactly the result they wanted. For you and me, that just means that the Comcast monopoly gets deeper entrenched.

I don't know what I'm supposed to take from your comment.

If laws are too complex to follow, we should demand that the laws are changed to be made simpler and more easily followed.

You're right, that argument is WILDLY different from "The government should not be deciding whether something is illegal retroactively." That's what the FCC is doing here, giving itself the ability to make ex post facto rules if they don't like your traffic shaping practices.

It's not the FCC's job to police customer service.

Do me a favor. Turn on MSNBC.

Comcast owns that.

Of note, this didn't happen. No traffic shaping ever undertaken by the ISPs is illegal under the Title II regulation.

In fact, there was a bill in Congress that just implemented Net Neutrality (but not the rest of Title II), but Congressional Democrats wouldn't support the bill because they would rather enact Title II and bring the Internet under the thumb of their party.

I don't think you know what you're saying. Yes, there was lots more innovation after the government broke up Ma Bell's monopoly.

Here's the thing though. Ma Bell got that monopoly from the government in the first place, through Title II legislation. Title II is essentially a deal between the government and the company. The government will protect the company's monopoly, but in exchange, the government can impose otherwise illegal rate controls. (Wheeler has said that the FCC will practice "forbearance" on rate controls and not implement them. If you are paying attention, it is IMPOSSIBLE to trust him on this.) Title II is intended to perpetuate monopolies.

If you want to expose Comcast to competition, what you need to do is regulate municipal franchise agreements, where a provider gets an exclusive right from a town to wire it for broadband. Enacting that would be a strike against broadband monopolies, but Wheeler and Obama just moved the ball in the other direction.

I don't get why any supporter of Title II would want to bring up the end of Ma Bell's monopoly.

Maybe they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. But they DO deserve to know what the rules are up front, and not have the FCC be able to swoop in and declare something illegal retroactively. We write the laws down up front and let people see them (hey, wait a minute..) EXACTLY BECAUSE WE WANT PEOPLE TO FOLLOW THEM

Microsoft has outright said that "free for a year" means "you have one year to redeem the offer. If you redeem it, it's a full copy, not a subscription." The subscription stuff was just dopey clickbait by a couple of disreputable sites.