How Reactionary & Extremist Does A Congressmember Have To Be To Vote Against Cybersecurity?

H.R. 4061, the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act, isn't really very controversial-- unless you're an enemy of America and want to poke around to find ways to wreck U.S. cyberspace-- or, apparently, if you stand with Rush Limbaugh that any failure on Obama's watch is good for "America" because it will rid us of him, no matter what the cost to the nation. It passed the House Science and Technology Committee in November.

The 10 congressmembers sponsoring the bill, 4 conservative Republicans (Vernon Ehlers, Ralph Hall, Mike McCaul and Adrian Smith) and 6 Democrats (Daniel Lipinski, Bart Gordon, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ben Ray Lujan, Steven Rothman, and David Wu) span the great ideological divide in the House and the 5 votes on amendments yesterday all won by lopsided bipartisan majorities, along the lines of... well, 417-4. 4 of the 5 amendments (the outlier being Jeff Flake's nuttiness) have a combination of 4 consistent opponents in common, radical right extremist obstructionists-- who in a less politically correct time might be reviled as the seditionists they are: Paul Broun (R-GA), Tom McClintock, Ron Paul (R-TX), and Jeff Flake (R-AZ).

The 4 congressmen don't recognize that government has a legitimate role to play in cybersecurity (or much of anything), so they've broken with their party-- not to mention America-- to vote, no, no, no, no. That and they're crazy conspiracy paranoids. These are the people who fervently believe in black helicopters and a plot to turn America over to the UN. I'm guessing neither Broun, McClintock, Paul nor Flake was paying any attention when Feinstein's Select Committee on Intelligence was delving into the problem yesterday:



UPDATE: Cybersecurity Bill Passes... By A Lot

Just before noon, the full House passed the bill, 422-5, the only members working on behalf of China and other American adversaries being, once again, Paul Broun (R-GA), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Ron Paul (R-TX) and James Sensenbrenner (R-WI). In the end McClintock was too scared to vote against it. Unlike the Georgia and Texas kooks, he lives in California.