Reply from Congressman Lankford – Discriminatory Hiring Practices

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By Jay Hansen

This is Congressman James Lankford’s response to my letter asking about discriminatory hiring practices in regards to religion. I wrote him the letter after an interview with Think Progress where he says that members of the LGBT community should not have legal protections from discriminatory hiring practices.

Summary: Lankford did not address my question at all. He seems to have one automated response he sends to anyone e-mailing him about discrimination in the past 24 hours or so because of the massive influx of mail he is receiving, which is at least partially understandable. At least, it is for e-mails about the LGBT rights and sexual identity. Mine was not in that same pool, so my question went unanswered. Immediately, I wrote him back, which is at the end of this page.

Full Text:

May 16, 2012

Dear Mr. Hansen,

Thank you for contacting me about discrimination in the workplace.  As this is an important issue, I would like to take a moment to explain my thoughts on employee’s rights and my support for the traditional institution of marriage.

As you know, Think Progress, the internet blog run by Center for American Progress Action Fund, recently posted about a comment I made as one of their video surrogates caught me outside the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington.  Misconceptions are being wildly spun regarding what I actually said and meant in the Think Progress video clip.  At no point in the video, nor anywhere else, have I ever stated that employers should be able to fire an employee based on outside-the-office sexual behavior.  I emphatically believe that employment decisions should be based solely on performance in the workplace.  An employee’s personal sexual preference has no place in that conversation.  I did state that I believe the homosexual lifestyle is a choice, and I do firmly believe in the traditional view of marriage between one man and one woman.

After the President and Vice President’s recently-made statements supporting same-sex marriage, the fight for traditional marriage has come under attack nationwide. For some time, the Administration has continued to ignore Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act—the current law of the land. The Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law in 1996 by President Bill Clinton after being passed in both chambers of Congress with overwhelming bipartisan majorities.  Section 3 of DOMA defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman for purposes of all federal laws, and to date, more than half of the nation’s state governments have codified their Constitutions to legally define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.  My background and convictions also support the traditional institution of marriage as stated in the law.

Recent actions by the Administration have led to a unilateral decision of President Obama and the Department of Justice to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act. This is a slap in the face to our constitutional framework.  No president gets to pick and choose different laws to enforce or not to enforce. The personal views of the President do not override the government’s duty to defend the law of the land.  President Obama does not have the right to abandon the defense of this law.

As the President attempts to bring about “change” in our nation, he is redefining key terms along the way—marriage being a prime example.  The outcry expressed over my conviction that marriage is between one man and one woman is telling of the state of our culture. Misrepresenting my position on workplace hiring to advance the President’s attempt to redefine marriage is disingenuous and an affront to my right to free speech.

I appreciate hearing your concerns, and I want to take this last opportunity to communicate clearly to you. I fully support workplace equality; I believe wholeheartedly in strictly performance-based employment decisions; and I will unequivocally defend the traditional view of marriage between one man and one woman.

As the 112 th Congress addresses the many challenges facing our nation, I hope you will continue to share your comments with me.  Please, contact me via email for a faster response.  To keep up with my work in Congress, I encourage you to visit my website at  www.lankford.house.gov .

     In God We Trust,

James Lankford
MEMBER OF CONGRESS

My Response

Dear Congressman Lankford,

Thank you for responding to my letter so quickly. I understand correspondence is difficult for you now given this controversy, so I would like to assure you feel free to take your time in this response. I just watched your interview with the local CBS affiliate and I now have another question. In the interview, you said that employees should only be fired or punished based on work performance. While this may be true, and it may be what you would do as an employer, do you understand that not all employers think or act in such a way? As you said, they should judge an employee based off of his or her performance, but some simply don’t work that way. That is why we have legal protections for discrimination and wrongful termination, to make those employers that would judge an employee in such an inappropriate way in violation of the law. Do you believe that a gay or lesbian employee that (within reasonable suspicion thereof) is fired because of his or her sexual preference is entitled to a wrongful termination suit and due process? You seemed to be in support of discrimination laws regarding race and other factors that are immediately noticeable, but what about those regarding religion, as I asked in my original letter?

Also, as much as you may tire of seeing these statistics in the past couple of days I must ask, you are aware that nearly all accredited medical and psychological organizations in America agree that there is little to no choice in one’s sexual identity? How do you justify, and what credentials do you have, to refute such a clear majority of certified medical and scientific professionals?

Thank you for your time. I will try to condense my letters as much as possible in this correspondence with you.

- Jay Hansen

Lankford Choosing Not to be Gay

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By Jay Hansen

Looks like everyone’s favorite tool has put on the big-boy pants and shown his ignorance on the national stage, proving once again just how massively entrenched in the culture of ignorance he is. In an interview with Think Progress, Congressman James Lankford stated that he believes it’s okay for members of the LGBT community to be discriminated against by employers because “it’s a choice issue.” His primary comparison is that of race; we are born a certain race, but Lankford does not believe that people are inherently gay.

Man, where to begin. First, all accredited medical organizations such as the American Medical Association, the American Association of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association are in agreement that sexuality and gender identity are not choices.

Taken from the American Psychological Association’s page on sexual orientation:

“There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.”

This is one of the primary reasons I have such little respect for the Republican Party in today’s America; they have become the anti-science party. Be it Evolution, Global Climate Change, or the science of human sexuality, all they do is bury their heads in the sand, plug their ears, and shout “LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU” when it comes to anything that causes them even the slightest bit of cognitive dissonance. It’s times like this where I actually start to think the religious wing of the party may have more power than the wealthy wing, because at least the wealthy wing would be smart enough not to deny science and prevent such asinine statements by its members, right? And yet, here I am writing this article.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, even if sexual orientation was a choice, Lankford’s argument is still inherently false. If employers can fire someone because they “choose” their sexual orientation, can they also fire employees based on religion? We choose our religion, after all. If an atheist employer decides to fire all his Christian employees simply because he hates Christians, should he be allowed to? Or how about an Evangelical employer firing all his Protestant employees, simply because he or she disagrees with their beliefs? According to Lankford yes, because religion is a choice – far more of a choice than sexual orientation ever has been.

It’s this exact question I plan to pose to Lankford in an e-mail, because I’m sure he’s being flooded with e-mails right now with the sources of how and why homosexuality isn’t a choice. I decided to take a different approach. See the bottom of this article for the full text of the very short message.

Now, to be as fair as physically possible to Lankford (am I not the most open minded man in Oklahoma?), if he answers yes to the religion question, that employers should be allowed to discriminate based on religion, at least he’s not being a bigoted, disingenuous asshole. Instead, he’s just being a libertarian asshole. I’m not saying all libertarians are assholes, but rather I’m talking about the ones that hold the belief that employers can do no wrong and should the government ever attempt to intervene, regulate, or otherwise tell them what to do they cry bloody murder of “big, intrusive government.”

“But sir, we in the federal government are just saying you can’t whip your employees as a form of discipline.” – Regulator

“Bull$#%&!” – Libertarian asshole

I’ve talked about this level of libertarianism before in previous articles. In a nutshell, I explained that while there’s sometimes merit to libertarian arguments, we live in a society that needs fair and efficient intervention and regulation of the free market to prevent exploitation of consumers, employees, and the citizens of our country in general. We can’t just let each and every employer make their own rules, otherwise entire communities within society could easily be discriminated against en masse, forcing them to forever stagnate in horrible poverty, turning them into a completely new lower class of society. It happened to the black community in the dark days after the Civil War and before discrimination laws were created, so to say it is out of the question or too farfetched that it could happen to the LGBT community simply isn’t true.

Of course, Lankford’s no libertarian. That would take principle. His support of big oil subsidies and earmark spending prove that beyond much of a doubt. Given that, the only real option is the former of the two; Lankford wants to use the issue of discriminatory hiring practices as yet another means to spread, or at least permit and foster an environment for, discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered individuals. While this is no real surprise, I think this story may tell us a lot more about Lankford than most of us perceive.

When Rick Perry came out with his horrible campaign ad “Strong,” I wrote this article about the projection of homosexuality. I’d suggest reading the entire article, but again, in a nutshell, I explained that truly straight people don’t have gay thoughts. It’s pretty much that simple. Therefore, if you hear a preacher or politician talking about how people need to “reject the temptation” of homosexuality, what does that tell us about him or her? It means that they, in their personal lives, have experienced this temptation, and assumed it’s normal. If one of these same people see homosexuality as some great plague upon humanity that could bring an end to us all, the only explanation for that is because they assume that everyone would be gay if they weren’t “choosing” not to be, when in reality they’re just suppressing their instinctual urges. Why else would they assume everyone would choose to be gay if it was legalized or otherwise sanctioned? It’s because they feel these urges themselves, and to defend their own psyches from the possibility of the realization that they might be gay themselves, they project the perceived flaw onto everyone else because of their assumption.

One of the primary ways this projection happens now is politicians and other social leaders make the claim that homosexuality is a choice. By touting this claim, despite it not being scientifically or medically true at all, they can convince themselves that they are “choosing” not to be gay even though they themselves feel the urge to be. So for them, it is a “choice,” but only because they’re ignoring and suppressing their instincts and who they are. So, as I said in the aforementioned article, whenever a politician insists that homosexuality is a choice in the face of great scientific opposition to the notion, raise a huge red flag – the person making the claim is very likely gay themselves, or at least bisexual.

So, in the words of Cenk Uygur, I’m not saying anything, I’m just saying, and allow me to be the first to say it.

James Lankford… gay?

Allow me to be immature for a moment. This does make a lot more sense now. I mean, look at the guy.

Tell me this picture and face doesn’t just scream “I’m going to be caught snorting coke off a male prostitute’s ass within ten years.” Does anyone want to start an official poll? It’s something about the lips and mouth, I tell you. Maybe the hair.

Well whatever it is, this story and video of Lankford has really triggered my gay-dar. There’s nothing wrong with being gay of course, but when you’re making a career out of gay-bashing and oppressing them even if just in part is when I clearly begin to take issue with such sell-outs.

At the very least, I’m starting to think my initial branding of Lankford as a tool may have been overly generous. Now that he’s showing direct defiance of science, and falling for his party’s own propaganda and lies, he may turn out to be a fool yet.

Full Text (of message to Congressman Lankford)

Dear Congressman Lankford,

My name is Jay Hansen. I’ve recently come across a conundrum within right-wing ideology, and I’d like to know your position on the issue. I know you support most deregulation to give employers as much freedom as possible in their own businesses and hiring practices, but I must ask, how do you feel about employers that practice discriminatory hiring practices based on people’s religion? Could an atheist employer refuse to hire Christians? Or could an Evangelical employer fire all his Protestant employees simply because they’re Protestant? Do you believe this should be legal and permissible?

Thank you for your time.

- Jay Hansen

UPDATE: Lankford went on an Oklahoma local news station and says that Think Progress is trying to slander him by taking his quote out of context. He clarified in the interview that he does not support legal protections for members of the LGBT community from workplace discrimination. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that not everyone is as open-minded as he claims to be, as he continually assumes the argument that an employer would never fire anyone based on anything other than job performance, which is just extremely ignorant.

So… he wanted to clarify that he does in fact believe it’s okay for employers to discriminate based on sexual identity?

Fox Talk

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By Jay Hansen

I don’t know if they’re coming out more often or if they just happened to all pop up at the right time in the right order, but in the past week or two I’ve been seeing more and more perfect examples of how and why FOX “news” isn’t news at all. Each story was so exemplary as to why, and so condensed within one or two weeks, I felt it was high time I finally shed some light on the more subversive tactics employed by FOX to promote propaganda and manipulate their audience rather than promote truth and inform as a true news outlet should. Some of this may seem painfully obvious to most of my readers, but I live in a very red state where FOX News and other NewsCorp controlled media outlets dominate every aspect of communication and information. What is obvious to someone politically motivated and informed enough to read my site isn’t so for the average Oklahoman that takes everything sources like FOX and The Daily Oklahoman “report” as fact, with the thought of it being wrong or challenging it never even occurring to them. But even the most politically aware amongst us may not realize the depth of FOX’s propaganda and damage to society.

For starters, before talking about more recent stories, let’s talk about some of the more basic, structural aspects of FOX when compared to other outlets. A little over a year ago, a long-time employee of FOX left the company and spoke out (anonymously) about how things work there. Every morning, all the on-air talent is part of an editorial meeting where they discuss the daily line up. There’s nothing too out of the ordinary about that; all the other stations do that as well. What FOX does differently, however, is that they all strategize about what their message that day will be. At other stations like MSNBC, each host gets to decide the line up for their own show relatively independently. At FOX, each host, be it a commentator or a “news” anchor, will make one overall message for the day and they will all hit on that one target message. This allows them to repeat the same talking point over and over again, which, as famously noted by Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propoganda for Nazi Germany, is the most important part of manipulating the masses with lies.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” – Joseph Goebbels

More than that though, FOX sends out memos to all its on-air actors on specifically what to say. At first, they coached them to always take the conservative perspective on issues, which isn’t good precedent for a news organization anyway, but still not as bad as they are now. Over the years, they felt it more profitable or otherwise beneficial for the company to always take the Republican perspective, even when it contradicts conservative principles. Eventually, during the Bush Administration, they took it even further and became, in the words of this former employee, a “Stalin-esque mouthpiece” for the Bush Administration, because Bush would still occasionally do things that the Republican Party opposed, and totally and utterly contradicted conservative principles such as the Wall Street bailouts, or the War in Iraq. If an anchor or commentator didn’t get the memo telling them what the conservative, Republican, or Bush perspective on an issue was, they were simply expected to know it and push that talking point no matter what. Even more than that though, the memos detailed specific language station management wanted the hosts to use. For example, instead of saying the Affordable Care Act, they were specifically told by FOX management to say Obamacare because it sounded more negative. The same is true for the Public Option within the health care debate. The term “public option” polled really well, so they switched to saying “government run health insurance” because it sounded and polled worse in an attempt to manipulate people into not wanting something they actually did want had it instead been worded differently, or better yet, actually explained to them.

If all of these perspectives and even the subtle manipulations (to some extent) were exclusive to the commentary shows like O’Reilly or Hannity, FOX still wouldn’t be as detrimental to society as it is now. The problem is that they send these same bias-encouraging memos to their so called “news” anchors and “journalists” as well, whom they claim and tout as being “fair and balanced.” If you’re telling your journalists to take a specific stance on a political issue though, be it in line with an ideology, party, or a single politician, it is literally the exact opposite of fair and balanced. The President of FOX News, Roger Ailes, even acknowledges that his entire station, not just the commentators, has a conservative bias. Does it matter though? Of course not; everyone, viewers and other stations, continue to claim FOX is fair and balanced, and a legitimate news source, in one of the greatest paradoxes ever accepted by the masses. FOX is both fair and balanced, and has a conservative bias. Both are accepted as fact by nearly everyone. How? I don’t know. This only speaks to the power of propaganda, and it is even reflected in the polls with FOX rated as both the most and least trusted name in journalism.

Good God humans are stupid.

On that note, let’s take a look at a few of the tactics FOX employs while actually on the air, and not behind the scenes, to manipulate its viewer base. On April 30th, The Young Turks did a story about self-proclaimed Democrat Michael Goodwin on FOX News criticizing President Obama. Now it’s fine to criticize the president, but Goodwin’s criticizing of him sounded exactly like that of a Republican on the issue of Obama over-politicizing the killing of Osama bin Laden. Imagine that; even the “Democrats” on FOX hate Obama. This really isn’t anything new or shocking; Democrats will sellout their party base, leaders, and ideology all the time for a couple of extra bucks from big donors. Just look at Joe Liberman. That’s not what really got me about this story though; what got me was how the interviewer said President Obama “might” have an enemy list, and that the last President to have one was Nixon.

This is another classic propaganda trick; President Obama might have an enemy list. He might have death panels. President Obama might have ties to al-Qaeda. Sometimes they even word it like a question; is president Obama a Kenyan anti-colonialist? Does President Obama want to kill your grandmother? Is President Obama a communist?

Obviously, NO, to all of these points. Any sane person could tell you that. But by putting President Obama in the same sentence as words like communist, death panel, al-Qaeda, and other bad things, FOX associates him with them indirectly. Most people don’t focus or scrutinize the news with great interest; they just listen to it in the background. When we do this, we open our subconscious minds slightly more to invasion than we would if we were paying strict attention. By simply hearing someone ask if Obama is a communist, or say he might have want to kill your grandmother, you’re more likely to accept or believe these lies in the future. It lays the framework for them to build completely unfounded paranoia and fears of the President. Plus, like Goebbels said, repeat the lie. Repeat the lie repeat the lie repeat the lie; hear these words, claims, and questions enough times, especially if you’re only half-paying attention, like most of the nation does to news, and people will begin to accept it as true, even if they can’t rationally explain why, further reinforcing the significance of the entire station repeating one message throughout an entire day’s broadcast.

Later in that same episode they talked about how FOX always shows off a significant amount of leg on their female anchors. This reminded me of an older story they did where Roger Ailes admits that he (at least sometimes) hires female anchors because they’re attractive, and not based on other qualifications, saying “I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got good ratings.” That’s why pretty much every female anchor on FOX is blonde with great legs. Ailes even takes it a step further and says that when he watches FOX he does so with the sound off.

Now, why would he do that? If he’s running a news organization, shouldn’t he know what’s being said and how it’s being said? With their morning meetings, though, he knows exactly what they’re going to say because he and the other managers of the station already told them exactly what to say, sometimes word for word. Based on what he sees in Sarah Palin and likely the other female anchors of the station, he’s looking for physical attraction. I don’t just mean in women, but just being appealing to the eyes. Sure, it’s his job to make sure the station looks good, but if the news looks good, you’re more likely to get distracted by the scrolling news feed below the screen, or the hot blonde chick’s legs that are on camera some ridiculous 70% of the time. Just like I mentioned above, if you’re distracted by something else, it’s easier and easier for what the anchors and commentators are actually saying to slip into your mind and build a foundation upon which their propaganda can be built. So if you’re busying ogling the hot news woman, and you hear “Obama’s a communist” five or six times in one show, you’ll be much more inclined to believe it both because of this subtle form of weakened hypnosis and just because of association and conditioning. You hear Obama is a communist enough while staring at a hot woman you’ll start to believe it too. Repeat the lie, repeat the lie.

Farfetched? Not really. If it seems like I’m stretching this a bit too far, consider this. When Roger Ailes still worked in the Nixon administration running communications, it was his dream to set up a Republican television station that would allow them to broadcast their message and talking points without having to go through the media, because back then the media actually checked sources, used facts, and promoted the truth. Ailes didn’t like that model, so not only did he make his own station for just Republican talking points, but through that station he influenced the rest of the media to be weak, complicit, and neutral on all issues. I find it hard to argue, then, that Ailes is at all interested in promoting the truth if he was so opposed to the media during the time of Nixon. He wants the media to lie to people and manipulate the masses to help the powerful, which one could speculate was his entire job as Richard Nixon’s communications operator. It just so happens that the powerful now are corporations, Wall Street, the big banks, and ultimately their protectors in Washington, the Republican Party.

Sometimes, instead of feeding subversive information to you audibly, it is done visually. The biggest breech of journalistic ethics I’ve ever seen is an example of this. In November of last year, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez attempted to assassinate the president by firing an assault rifle at the White House. The man was deeply psychologically impaired and proclaimed himself to be Jesus. Investigators decided to search the nearby Occupy D.C. camp near the White House for clues, especially after learning that Oscar was a drifter. In their investigation, they found that he had absolutely no connection to the Occupy D.C. camp, the movement, its members, or anything. Despite this, FOX News runs this footer on a picture of Ortega-Hernandez:

FOX called him the OCCUPY SHOOTER. Why? There’s literally no evidence that he had a connection to the Occupy D.C. movement, or that he was even there, yet FOX calls him the OCCUPY SHOOTER, and makes the completely baseless claim that he tried to hide amongst the protesters. They also used the previously mentioned language trick of saying he “may have tried to blend in with the Occupy protesters in D.C.”

But that’s the thing about FOX “news;” they just don’t care about facts at all. In the words of the aforementioned former employee, the content FOX airs is “just made up.” The Occupy movement opposes corporate greed, the bailouts, the policy of too big to fail, the vast and ever-growing income disparity between the wealthy and the poor, and other general forms of economic injustice; everything that the Republican Party, and therefore, FOX “news” lives to support. Therefore, FOX “news” is incentivized to smear and destroy the Occupy movement, or any opponents of the establishment, by any means possible, even if it means outright lying on national television, and worse, on a show that is supposed to inform the public about the truth.

They do this constantly. They use subtle tricks in language, visual distractions, and sometimes outright lies and misinformation to manipulate their viewers into agreeing with their political goals whether it’s in the best interest of the audience or not. Even their so called “business” channel does this, because they don’t talk about business. They just use this channel as yet another propaganda wing of the Republican party, pushing pieces trying to debunk global warming (against Bill Nye the Science guy nonetheless) or talk about how liberal and evil Hollywood and The Muppets are. Lord knows how much Beaker is a threat to our national security.

And just as a side note: FOX “Business” host Eric Bolling not knowing who Kermit the Frog was is without a doubt the most un-American thing I’ve ever heard come out of FOX, and that’s saying a lot.

What FOX and its viewers don’t seem to understand is that this level of harsh propaganda has real, detrimental consequences, and if they do it’s an issue of deeply unethical behavior, let alone journalistic behavior. Van Jones, one of if not the most progressive advisor in the President’s team was forced to resign after FOX ran a smear campaign against him, spear-headed by Glenn Beck. They focused on his ties to communism years and years ago, which he had long since abandoned, and, with no appreciation for the irony of the title, mockingly referred to him as a “communist czar” (the Czars having been the mortal enemies of the Communists of Russia, like calling someone a Republican Democrat in America). Who cares if it doesn’t make sense? Czar is Russian, Americans think Russian equals Communist, and it sounds spooky, despite the fact that every president since Franklin Roosevelt has had Czars as advisors. For simply picking him to be a Czar, the Obama Administration had to be punished, and Van Jones had to lose his job. Shirley Sherrod was a USDA official who was forced to resign as well by the Obama administration, and in an insulting, demeaning way, and for even worse reasons than Van Jones. The hack-journalist Andrew Breitbart did a smear job on her with one of his highly edited videos of her giving a speech about racism years ago. In the past, Breitbart’s work was so insidious it got entire government programs shut down because he presented such heavily doctored video it was borderline entirely falsified and would not hold up in any court. With Mrs. Sherrod, a video where she was originally telling a story of how and why she overcame her own personal racism was twisted to make her look like a vicious racist. FOX picked it up almost immediately, demanding her out. Within hours she was harassed with phone calls from her boss and administration officials demanding she resign immediately, telling her to pull over on the side of the road and do it over the phone instead of coming into the office. Why? Because, and I quote, she was told “you’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight,” so of course they had to get her fired before that could happen. Most recently, EPA Administrator Al Armendariz was forced to resign as well because of footage dug up of him over two years ago saying that they should make examples of companies that break the law and pollute citizen’s drinking water, comparing it to how the Romans would crucify Turkish villagers to intimidate and control them. The fact that it was literally his job to punish such polluters and make examples out of them exactly as he was saying in his analogy was completely lost on the people at FOX. God forbid our regulators actually regulate to protect American citizens. Armendariz himself had taken on pollution companies in the past responsible for tainting a city’s drinking water with methane and benzene, poisoning the townsfolk and making children’s teeth fall out. FOX can’t allow people like that in the government. They smelled blood when they saw this video and pounced on the opportunity to eliminate another Obama regulator and put his administration in its place.

I really don’t know what’s worse; the fact that people actually believe this garbage and consider FOX credible news, or that the Obama administration is so weak they actually bend to their will out of fear of being criticized by them. Someone may want to remind Obama that FOX “news” viewers are not among his base. But this isn’t just an interpretation of the administration’s actions regarding FOX, even though that interpretation would be an apt and fair one. According to an FDA official, FOX’s criticism “scared the bejesus out of everybody,” referring to his fellow regulators and the Obama administration, and that they were in “the era of Glenn Beck, and the White House was terrified that Beck would get up and say this is all part of the nanny state.”

Roger Ailes’ dream has come true and then some. His dream of creating a “news” station that did nothing but propaganda and talking points for the Republican Party is alive and thriving in FOX “news,” but in ways he never thought possible. His station influences the rest of the media because it’s such a powerful employer for people in the journalism field, directs the tone of the political discourse in this nation or at least Washington D.C., and even controls the Presidency. No one organization, media or not, should have this level of influence on the Presidency. No Presidency should have this level of fear of any one organization. That’s not how democracy works, making FOX perhaps the truest testament to our broken system. Watching FOX, or even acknowledging them as a legitimate news source, only feeds into and empowers this system.

I could go on. Dear Lord, I could go on and on, but I must stop now lest I infuriate myself further.

FOX “news” is anything but.

Reply from Senator Inhofe – CISPA

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By Jay Hansen

This is Senator Jim Inhofe’s response to my letter I wrote him about CISPA (the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act), which you can read here. Say what you want about Senator Inhofe, he’s probably the most prompt politician I’ve ever even heard of. I wrote him on May 3rd, and received a response on May 7th. He also responded to my previous letters very quickly.

Summary: Senator Inhofe did not address CISPA at all in his reply, exactly as he did when I asked him of SOPA in the previously linked correspondence. He did, however, mention related legislation such as The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 and the SECURE IT Act, but even still did not give comment on this legislation. He said should this or similar legislation reach the Senate floor, he will “keep [my] views in mind,” and that he “will continue to support efforts to strengthen  cybersecurity defenses while importantly promoting the free flow of commerce and information on the Internet.”

To give just a little commentary here, his letter is almost identically structured and worded as his response to my letter about SOPA, with virtually no specifications about the legislation about which I actually asked. With SOPA, this was apparently because Inhofe was undecided how to publicly approach the legislation, or possibly undecided on it altogether. Given that, it’s entirely possible Inhofe may soon be against CISPA, or at the very least, given that he said nothing to the affect of CISPA in his reply, he’s undecided on the issue.

Full Text:

Dear Mr. Hansen:

Thank you for contacting me regarding  cybersecurity in the United States. As your voice in Washington D.C., I appreciate hearing from you.

Cyber attacks on the federal government continue to increase.  In 2011, out of the total 107,655 attacks reported, 43,889 were aimed at federal departments and agencies.  As new high-tech dangers emerge, we must be prepared to defend against both domestic and foreign hackers who wish to do harm to the United States.

Several bills were introduced in the 112th Congress to address these increasing  cybersecurity threats.  On February 16, 2012, Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Senator Susan Collins (R- ME   )   introduced S. 2105, the  Cybersecurity Act of 2012.  This legislation requires the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, to conduct risk assessments to determine which sectors are subject to the greatest and most immediate cyber risks.  It authorizes DHS, with the private sector, to determine  cybersecurity performance requirements based upon the risk assessments, and issue regulations to ensure they are met. The performance requirements would cover critical infrastructure systems and assets whose disruption could result in severe degradation of national security, catastrophic economic damage, or the interruption of life-sustaining services sufficient to cause mass casualties or mass evacuations.

The bill is designed to cover the most critical systems and assets in a given sector, and only if they are not already being appropriately secured. Some critical infrastructure is already required to adhere to very high standards by their oversight agency. Lastly, this bill provides a framework for the sharing of cyber threat information between the federal government and the private sector, and within the private sector.

Additionally, on March 1, 2012, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) introduced the SECURE IT Act, which encourages voluntary information-sharing between the government and private sectors but includes no requirements for securing privately owned critical infrastructure.

  Should either of these bills be considered by the Senate during the 112th Congress or a new consolidated bill come to the Senate floor, I will certainly keep your views in mind.  Please know that I will continue to support efforts to strengthen  cybersecurity defenses while importantly promoting the free flow of commerce and information on the Internet.

Thank you again for your correspondence. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future with any other concerns or comments you may have.

Sincerely,

James M. Inhofe
United States Senator