The Northern Kentucky Tea Party

House Passes CISPA By Huge Margin

CISPA, or the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or "the worst privacy disaster our country has ever faced" has just passed through the House of Representativeswith an astounding majority of 288 to 127.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act wormed its way into the public consiousness shorty after the Internet's big SOPA smackdown. But unlike previous legislation that aimed to snag some precious Internet control for the government by whining about "content theft," CISPA's plan is/was to scoop up information on you in the name of security against cyberthreats by allowing (but really coercing) companies to share your data with good ol' Johnny Law. And now it's continuing to roll on towards becoming law.

Read more at Gizmodo.

Bitcoin Really Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State

So far, Bitcoin is not a big deal. Its total value in circulation was $1.4 billion as of this week. That's equivalent to the currency stock of a small nation -- somewhere between Iceland and Uruguay -- and just one-thousandth of the total value of U.S. dollars in circulation. The volume of transactions in Bitcoin is growing only slowly, relative to the massive increase in demand for the currency: This discrepancy is strong evidence that Bitcoin’s rise is a speculative bubble.

Nonetheless, Bitcoin raises some interesting questions. One is whether it might undermine the modern state -- which, for many of its libertarian-anarchist advocates, is the whole idea.

Read more at Bloomberg News.

IRS Says It Will Respect 4th Amendment With Regard to Email, But Questions Remain

With tax day behind us, taxpayers may soon have something else to celebrate from the IRS. In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee today, IRS Acting Commissioner Steven Miller was questioned aggressively about documents released by the ACLU last week that indicate that the IRS does not think it needs a warrant to read all emails and other electronic communications during criminal investigations. Under pressure from senators, Miller agreed to update IRS policy documents within 30 days to state that a warrant is required for access to all emails, regardless of their age.

Two senators from opposite sides of the aisle, Senator Grassley (R-IA) and Senator Wyden (D-OR), pressed Miller about whether the IRS has sought or obtained emails without a warrant since a federal appeals court ruled in 2010 that a warrant is required for all emails. (You can watch the hearing here.

Read more from the ACLU.

Senate GOP Leader Does Not Want to Anger Harry Reid With Obamacare Vote

I reported yesterday that Mitch McConnell is expressly blocking a vote on a conservative backed measure to repeal Obamacare, but there is news this morning that the situation is far worse than even I thought.

Alexander Bolton reports Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell intends to avoid any votes on repealing Obamacare this entire year lest he anger Senator Harry Reid.

Obstensibly, McConnell says a vote on the DeMint authored legislation would give the Democrats cover to vote against Obamacare headed into the election. But this makes no sense because McConnell intends to offer up Senator Blunt’s amendment tomorrow on religious liberty, also letting Senate Democrats get on record defying the President on a controversial issue related to Obamacare.

Read more @ redstate.com