http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Research_Public_Access_...
The act has not yet passed. It was re-proposed in 2010 and 2012, each time with increased support from a bi-partisan group of sponsors, in both Houses. Cornyn is still a sponsor.
My understanding is that Cornyn was instrumental in the passage of the 2008 NIH public access policy, which makes NIH-funded research available within 6 months of publication:
This is by far the largest victory for open access to date. It would, however, be eclipsed by FRPAA, should it pass.
Given all this, I believe it is natural that Cornyn has an interest in the case, and questions.
I blame the "tough on crime" prosecutors and politicians (and the people who vote for them) for a large part of our current mess.
"kept Texas in power, made lesser states squirm"
Senators John Cornyn and Joe Lieberman
In the House, Representatives Michael Doyle, Frederick Boucher, Michael Capuano, Jerry Costello, Bill Foster, Barney Frank, Gregg Harper, Paul Hodes, Tim Holden, Dennis Kucinich, Rick Larsen, Zoe Lofgren, Stephen Lynch, Dana Rohrabacher, Fortney Stark, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Henry Waxman
I only follow the politics of open access loosely, but my impression is that Lieberman has been a strong supporter since well before it was fashionable - well back into the 1990s.
I disagree with many of these people on many things, but I think this work is admirable, and worth supporting.
Edit: I notice that Senator Ron Wyden is missing from Wikipedia's list. Not sure what's up with that. He was definitely involved.
https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts
Suber is one of the world's leading advocates for open access to science.
For even more complete coverage, you can follow Suber's Open Access Tracking project. The project can be followed in several ways, including on Twitter:
I like Richard Posner, for instance, but I'm disquieted by how quickly the Reddit/HN crowd decided to lionize him once he came to a conclusion they liked regarding patents. Posner for SCOTUS! from people who understand the abstract from one case he worked on. Sheesh!
This is poisoning the well. There are some good questions in the posted letter. Unfortunately, we are unlikely to get good answers. Whatever their political stripes or past failings, at least someone is willing to press the issue instead of dropping it.
Of the asked questions, the ones with veiled accusations of retaliation demand an especially compelling answer. The DoJ should definitely be on the spot for their prior entanglements with Schwartz. Their conduct in this case could easily be construed as retaliatory (we couldn't get you then, so we'll slam you now).
The only question that seems silly to me is the last one. Of course a DoJ prosecutor is aware of the concept of prosecutorial discretion. To be fair, it's also a good counterpoint to the current silly "Congress made us be mean" line the prosecution is taking. It's just more of a statement than a question.
> Expect to see lots of superficial genuflection from Republicans towards the Swartz case; the GOP is in a constant low-grade conflict with the Democratic DoJ.
One of the nice things about an adversarial system is that you can benefit from the conduct of parties whose views don't align with your own.
I'm not saying we should act ignorant of the Senator's motivations here. We just shouldn't dismiss his concerns outright because of them.
Voted YES on extending the PATRIOT Act's roving wiretaps. (Feb 2011)
Voted NO on requiring FISA court warrant to monitor US-to-foreign calls. (Feb 2008)
Voted YES on removing need for FISA warrant for wiretapping abroad. (Aug 2007)
Voted NO on implementing the 9/11 Commission report. (Mar 2007)
Voted NO on preserving habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees. (Sep 2006)
Voted NO on requiring CIA reports on detainees & interrogation methods. (Sep 2006)
Voted YES on reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act. (Mar 2006)
Voted YES on extending the PATRIOT Act's wiretap provision. (Dec 2005)So let's not kid ourselves that Congress has much say in the manner.
Every power grubbing slimeball in D.C. is responsible. My only point was that just because Senator X doesn't share your values, don't think opposing him or her is going to make much difference right now.
Note that if the questioner is generally viewed as someone who would ask such questions merely as an attack strategy (something which is depressingly common in the GOP these days), that's going to make it easier for the administration to avoid giving a meaningful answer; his reputation gives them some cover.
For the same reason, somebody who's viewed as a friend of the administration asking the same questions would be much more painful.
So for better or for worse, it does matter somewhat who's doing the asking...
Keep in mind, the question is coming from a Senator on the Judiciary Committee. It could be a preemptive objection to having the blame sent back at him, perhaps also a threat to alter the law to reduce the "discretion to charge defendents".
You're right that is is more of a statement than a question. Political letters like this are often calculated more to produce effects than answers.
Re: what Swartz would think, he wasn't exactly a fan of Obama's DOJ or drone strikes either.
It's also worth pointing out that Texas (at least until recently) had some of the best open-records laws in the country. Cornyn argued that the Feds should emulate Texas in this regard -- during the Bush administration: http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2005/03/cornyn-foia-sh...
>"Expect to see lots of superficial genuflection from Republicans towards the Swartz case; the GOP is in a constant low-grade conflict with the Democratic DoJ."
Any show of support of the GOP for Aaron Swartz is "superficial genuflection" driven by partisan conflict. Doubtless, Democratic support would be considered genuine.
>"Here, let me put it this way: what do you honestly think Aaron Swartz would think about this clown using his name to score political points?"
A Senator with a history of support for Open Access is a "clown" that is so odious that Aaron would be upset to have his support.
This is partisanship at its worst. tptacek is dehumanizing Republicans in a way that kills rational thought. A Republican can't even do something tptacek agrees with without receiving his scorn.
Is that reasonable to you?
Unfortunately, you see it on web forums all the time that people have no medium or long term memories: basically they see some politician agreeing with them on some topic and there is much raving about how awesome that person is. Two weeks later, the same politician is against the prevalent view on some other topic, and they are the devil incarnate.
Further there is a trend in these discussions to turn everything into "this guy is from this party, so that party is on my side!" craziness, and piles of confirmation bias start happening.
So I see comments on how various parties will spin any event and posture themselves towards it, with references to a larger political climate - such as the one you quoted first - not as "anti-$PARTY" or "hate", but as a reminder that the politicians are always playing, a "here is the game now" statement.
Similarly, regarding your second quote, calling a politician a clown, is not anti republican anything. The senator has a history of open access, but also has a questionable history in larger civil liberties contexts. The senator posturing himself as a champion of Aaron Swartz because of the open access issue, is just that. We've seen a lot of stuff lately reminding us of Aaron's stance on, e.g. Chomsky and the concept of manufactured consent. This politician is in fact doing what Aaron didn't like in the manufactured consent game. It is a reasonable statement to point it out. Note: when the framing of this as "Obama's DOJ" and other types of strong political gaming that will occur around this, no one will mention Ortiz has been a US Attorney since 1997, and therefore doing this sort of action for many administrations. It will turn into a discussion of which party is responsible, rather than a reasonable discussion about what should be done about an actual problem.
In this context, it is reasonable for anyone who wants to address the problem, rather than the politics, to take steps in discussions like this to remind everyone that the person in question may in fact agree with them on this issue, but they, and the party they represent certainly don't agree on every issue. This is a giant problem - the thinking that any party agrees whole-heartedly with your stances, or that any given politician has the right answers to all problems.
Finally it should be noted that tptacek gets accused of hating just about every single group that exists at some point. It seems he is in that rare place of "he thinks for himself", and so gets these sorts of "super partisan" accusations about hating the democrats a lot too. Isn't it great when your knee jerk defense of your chosen favorites causes you to attack someone who regularly gets attacked for being too much on your side?
For you and tptacek, when a politician does something good, that's a bad thing because they are trying to dupe us. I'm not a Chomskyite, so I can't twist my brain in those kind of knots.
Basically, I have no idea how you can claim to be an issues guy, but attack people for being partisan when they warn people to be cognizant of all issues when supporting a single politician. To build a coalition you need to be careful that side effects of the "pro my issue" people aren't "against my other issues".
He also despises republicans completely, given this thread alone.
I'd set equal the anger in Tptacek to the craziness in sparrowos.
It would be lovely if HN could be a place where people could express themselves civilly and not be attacked.
TheAmazingIdiot is correct BTW. Its hard to imagine Thomas posting his ridiculous views unless he is a paid shill. Probably on your team.
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/156227/obama-ad...
This is of course a quantitative measure...but given that Obama wrote a very direct order to officials to err on the side of openness, it's striking that that order is being ignored so casually...I don't think it's hard to make a case that the culture of the bureaucracy is not particularly mindful of openness.
But I thought it was fair to point out that Cornyn is no fairweather public-records fan. But of course, Swartz's JSTOR incident was not just a case of open-access (as it was in the PACER case). There's enough nuance here that I would've just assumed that a senator of Conryn's level would leave it be as there are many other political shitstorms going on (gun control, debt ceiling, etc etc)
Also, worth pointing out is how SOPA didn't really "die" until Paul Ryan and congressional Republicans abandoned it en masse. (and surprisingly, neither he nor they made scant, if any use of this fact for political purposes during the election)
As a self-identified center-left progressive, you can imagine this creates some strong cognitive dissonance for me, but the pragmatist in me can accept the strange bedfellows and opportunism for what it is. Superficial or not, is Mr. Cornyn acting in your interests or against them?
[1] http://www.justice.gov/dag/iptaskforce/ [2] http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/intellectualproperty [3] http://www.iprcenter.gov/
The Entitled Party had complete control of the House and a 60 senator supermajority in the Senate for the first year of Obama's presidency, not to mention near complete control of the "news" media, Hollywood, television, the arts, the unions, etc, etc. If they wanted to introduce habeas rights for prisoners of war for the first time in US (or most any other country's) history, Obama et al could have done it anytime they wanted. State-run news media would have dutifully reported the wonderfulness of it all. Television programs and Hollywood movies would have exclaimed over the Nobel Peace Prize winner's greatness in their plot dialogue. They didn't do any of it.
Remember, it's Cornyn that's being "hyperpartisan", not you.
Maybe, but I hope you can appreciate why you're getting the ad hominem accusations from your words in the original post.
Can't we appreciate when justice is done or good questions are asked no matter who is asking them?
Personally, I know the national media is going to navel gaze on any opportunity to put any hard questions to this administration. We might as well support the opposition party for at least serving some purpose.
You should probably respond to his point that if Cornyn's position were so radical, surely President Obama would have acted in opposition. Otherwise, you can call the position deeply immoral, but surely it's bipartisan by now.
What are you talking about?
A Senator involved in a wiretapping scandal?
You mean the one where the government has been illegally reading every email for a decade? Or the one where the Obama Administration has done everything in its power to evade constitutional protections on privacy? Or the one where the government is illegally storing as much private communication data as they can?
You're going to have to indict nearly every politician in DC, including the President, if that's your standard. And I think that you should (indict them all), but it's ridiculous to use that as some kind of example of terrible behavior: it's the sad status quo in Washington, where privacy violations are now 'legal' and illegal torture is now legal 'enhanced interrogation' etc etc etc etc.
That is: a better alternative is to convince people you disagree with, even lead boycotts if you must, but don't use your time in power to increase the power of the government ...because soon that power will be used on you.
To a liberal, the DOJ is in the abstract the agency that enforces anti-trust laws or the like against big companies. But the actual DOJ is the one going after people growing weed. To a conservative, the DOJ in the abstract is the agency that goes after drug traffickers. But the actual DOJ is the one meddling in mergers.
Things like disliking the political appointees of an institution rather than the institution itself, or disliking parts of an institution rather than the whole, are not difficult distinctions to make. Similarly, I can judge the work output of any institution and my opinion is not likely to be 100% positive or 100% negative.
Which of the ancestors to that comment could have led anyone to believe that?
I'm proud to have him as a Senator.
When a politician does something right - and Cornyn's letter asks far more pointed and on-point questions than I expected - the correct response is not to bring up everything you feel the politician has ever done wrong.
My views, your views, and Cornyn's views about gay marriage aren't particularly relevant here.
You're blasting Corynyn because you don't agree with his politics. Fine. But that has absolutely nothing to do with anything here.
Are you bringing up something from 2005 to kick dirt over the rightness of Senator Cornyn's current actions? Whatever could be the point of this, besides counter-productive partisanship? Can a right action be taken only by people with pasts you deem fully worthy?
If Dick Cheney wrote this letter, a big chunk of HN would have no trouble identifying the problem. But very few HN'ers pay enough attention to national politics to understand that John Cornyn is one of the Senate's answers to Dick Cheney.
Mitt Romney and his sons once rescued a family from drowning when the family's boat sunk on a lake. I imagine you could find some ulterior evil motive in that.
tptacek should support that statement.
In this case its valid. Yes we can google it, everyone here knows how to do that. The bigger problem is knowing from where people got their information.
A Senator's stances on issues like these are simple, objective, easily falsifiable facts. This is one or two steps away from demanding a citation for "Barack Obama is a Democrat." Like, if you can't easily figure out for yourself whether it's true or false, the only possible reason is that you didn't care enough to try.
Ortiz has been talked about as a candidate for senator. With Kerry moving to Sec of State, there's a senate seat in Mass. opening up. Scott Brown just lost the seat for the Republicans and will probably be running for the new opening to gain it back. By taking on Ortiz, Cornyn is removing a potentially strong competitor to Brown.
But really, who cares what games are going on in the background?
Ortiz shouldn't have a career in politics, and it's not going to be people in her own party that stop her.
I am 100% with you on the need to stay on top of Ortiz and limit her career. I have the same problem in my home state with Anita Alvarez, who is also being groomed for bigger things.
I have no problem with the questions Cornyn is asking. Let's just keep him from being adopted as an Internet Superhero. He's not one of those.
Here we have a Senator who is at least drawing attention to the situation, but that isn't welcome because he comes from the wrong side of the aisle?
I'm sure Cornyn is using this for political gain. Of course he is. But if you think there is anyone in Washington who isn't motivated by political gain then your being very naive.
And with that perspective in mind, I can confidently assert that the constitution has been a wild success.
It would be nice if progressives were up-in-arms about overreach in the Justice Department of a Democratic president, but it's not to be expected. Even if it's just republican point scoring, it's still someone holding the Justice department to account.
Maybe once she comes back she can fight for those habeas corpus rights the US DOJ says gitmo prisoners don't have.
Politicians play politics. News at 11
You are doing the same thing that Carmen Ortiz did to Aaron. You are attacking this guy.
The Democrats with the firing of U.S. Attorneys by the Bush administration. Before that it was the Republicans over Elián González in the Clinton Administration.
I'm not sure I understand why the "clown" scoring political points is so bad. Where in the rulebook does it state that doing the right thing must be completely devoid of agenda or beneficial byproducts?
Take, for example, volunteering. There are many who "volunteer" because they have to - whether it be for school, punishment, whatever. Do you think the volunteer organizations care why the volunteers are there as long as they work and do their jobs? No. They're just happy they've got people to help.
I think the same thing applies here. I never met Aaron nor do I know how he would react, but I know many folks who care deeply about this issue. They really only care that someone is asking the pointed questions and holding the DoJ accountable. They don't much care who it is or why he's doing it. If the end result is the same, what does it matter anyways?
When every policy he supports is, both in effect and in spirit, nearly diametrically opposed to the beliefs of the dead person whose name he's using to score political points?
This is a perfect description. I agree completely with the "ruefully" portion. I will still support his quest to raise trouble at the DoJ, but I do not support many of the other things for which he stands.
I know there are many who disagree with that.
So what? Does it mean that he is "wrong" about everything else?
Expect to see lots of superficial genuflection from Republicans towards the Swartz case; the GOP is in a constant low-grade conflict with the Democratic DoJ.
Here, let me put it this way: what do you honestly think Aaron Swartz would think about this clown using his name to score political points?