We had no Tech at Night on Friday becuase I was at the Gathering in Jacksonville. Hope those who went enjoyed it, and that those who weren’t able to attend can make it next year!

So, Harry Reid offered to let Republicans fix Lieberman-Collins. Republicans took him up on that, and he was unhappy. So he tried to ram it through after all. Republicans objected, and the cloture vote failed. I’d say my support for this tactic by Republicans has been vindicated.

Harry Reid, the embattled Senate majority leader under a cloud of serious allegations about his behavior lately, has continued to try to politicize the Cybersecurity Act. Republicans tried to be good legislators. That was embarrassing to Reid, so he had to cut it off.

Proof Democrats have been bargaining in bad faith the whole time comes from Barack Obama’s consideration of rule by decree on this. This of course is a bad idea.

At the Gathering I was fortunate enough to have a chance to remind Ron Johnson, who’s been great in this debate, that one of the largest Internet attacks was against the government. The government that couldn’t protect the privacy of our allies from the Wikileaks diplomatic cables attack, has no business trying to attack private business for not protecting credit card numbers perfectly, nor any business trying to lecture on the matter.

Mary Bono Mack and the House continue to fight for liberty online, trying to keep global government hands off of the Internet. This is bipartisan multistakeholder plan that even Google’s Vint Cerf supports.

Should the FTC be active against foreign infringers of copyright, trademark, and patent? I’m not sure. I think Darrell Issa showed during the SOPA debate in the House that we need to do that with existing trade authorities. Action certainly is needed, but let’s not continue to empower this radical socialist administration to attack private citizens online. Because guess what? when private business accuses NASA of stealing its own videos, IP holders do not have a good enough track record to be trusted to keep FTC in check on this.

Those so-called libertarians who wish to take Google and Facebook dollars to destroy property rights online in favor of a Richard Stallman-like collective socialism of ideas plan, they must be defeated. We need to do something, and there are good ways to act that don’t regulate the Internet for all of us.

You want to create jobs, Mr. President? Stop being a backwards obstructor on spectrum, because spectrum creates jobs.

Regulators need to just stay away from the whole Internets thing. ISP competition is tremendous. Prices are low, and even Comcast just doubled my bandwidth for free last week. Just spontaneously. That’s competition. They have to work to keep me off of fiber or wireless, and they know it.

When I see this story about Anonymous using kids as a PR tool, I’m reminded of stuff like this.

Looks like Michael Reagan is trying to create a secure, private alternative to Google mail for conservatives at reagan.com. I haven’t paid the $40/year to try the service, but it appears they offer secure IMAP access as a rebranded emailsrvr.com service. I’ve never used that service but the technology is a solid way to offer email accessible from anywhere and anything. They also offer a web-based option.

I conclude they’re worth a shot, but of course keep backups! The cloud is not a backup.

Twitter-based Political polling reminds me of the Literary Digest poll that predicted the Alf Landon-slide would defeat President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.