Paul suggests below that Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann is the embodiment of the theory that people who are demonstrably crazy tend to have have far more potential for career advancement in the Republican Party than in the Democratic Party.
And her convoluted understanding of the whole raison d'être of network neutrality seems aimed at validating Paul. Bachmann wants to let you in on a little secret: President Obama's plan to prevent the discrimination of content on the Internet is actually -- flippity-floppity -- a scheme to practice the discrimination of content on the Internet:
They're advocating net neutrality which is essentially censorship of the Internet. This is the Obama administration advocating censorship of the Internet. Why? They want to silence the voices that are opposing them.
There's literally no place where Bachmann's reasoning makes sense. None. Not D.C. Not Minnesota. To review, net neutrality is an operating principle that holds that the Internet should serve as a disinterested conduit for information shipped across it. Beyond some reasonable network management, there should exist the expectation that the companies that control the networks that make up the backbone of the Internet are treating all their traffic more or less the same, whether it comes from them or someone else, even a competitor. Network operators and other neutrality opponents argue that regulation isn't necessary to preserve the practice of neutrality, while supporters of neutrality think that there need to be hard and fast rules in place. How you get from the debate over the wisdom of a regulatory regime to enforce neutrality to Bachmann's assertion that Obama wants to "censor" the Internet is literally incomprehensible.
It truly is a wonder that Bachmann can spout such things and still be considered a legitimate spokesperson for the Republican Party.
--Nancy Scola