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A new U.S. Senate bill would grant the president far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of or even shut down portions of the Internet. The legislation announced Thursday says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines, or software firms that the government selects "shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller says he will hold a hearing on the Gulf oil spill in the coming weeks. ... He calls the spill "an unmitigated disaster." Earlier Tuesday, he said he would have a hard time voting for offshore drilling again.

"He says 'I'm for clean coal,' and then he says it in his speeches, but he doesn't say it in here," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. "And he doesn't say it in the minds of my own people. And he's beginning to not be believable to me."

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, arguing this morning in favor of amending the Senate Finance Committee bill to include a government-run health care plan, claimed that his approach would have been supported by the intellectual father of capitalism, Adam Smith. Rockefeller blasted the current draft of the bill, authored by committee Chairman Max Baucus, for being a massive handout to insurers. Insurers would get a half a billion dollars in subsidies, he said, and though the bill imposes a raft of new regulations on the industry, they'd easily be able to get around them if there weren't a government-run plan to keep...

Following up on his This Week appearance where he promised to fight on for the public option, Sen. Jay Rockefeller blasted the draft bill produced by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus: “there is no way in its present form that I vote for it unless it changes in the amendment process by vast amounts.” He’s not alone. Fellow Finance Committee member Ron Wyden is livid too. Expect a rocky mark-up next week. As one top Democrat told me, the fundamental problem is that Democrats “are being asked to support a bipartisan bill that doesn’t have bipartisan support.” The compromise without...

Security: A Senate bill lets the president "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "nongovernmental" computer networks and do what's needed to respond to the threat. Didn't they just collect our e-mail addresses?We wish this was just a piece of the fictional "Dr. Strangelove" that fell to the cutting-room floor, but it's not. It is a real piece of disturbingly vague legislation sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Senate Bill 773 would grant the administration emergency powers (where have we heard that before?) in the event of a cyberemergency that the president would have...

While Americans are under the illusion that the government cannot take away their right to use the Internet, an effort by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-VA) is underway that appears to permit President Obama to seize control of the private-sector during whatever he deems to be a cybersecurity emergency

Senator Jay Rockefeller is going to be in Charleston tomorrow at a meeting on healthcare. Below is an email sent out by the AARP. As you can see, the email gives instructions on how to RSVP for the event. They note that the event is by RSVP only, so please call 304-340-4606 as soon as possible. Many folks are planning on showing up at 9:30. Just in case not everyone gets into the meeting, a peaceful demonstration will be held at that time. Please bring a sign expressing your thoughts on the healthcare legislation currently making its way through Congress....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY

Cheney Calls Rockefeller Wiretap Objection A 'CYA' @ 1:21 pm by Walter Alarkon Vice President Dick Cheney suggested that Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) only penned a letter to the Bush administration objecting to its domestic warrantless wiretapping program to give himself cover, not because he really opposed it. Cheney, on CBS's "Face the Nation," said that congressional leaders, including Rockefeller, didn't object to the government program to wiretap phone conversations without warrants when Cheney first told them about it in 2003. Rockefeller, then the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committeee, later wrote a letter voicing his concerns about the...

President George W. Bush and his top policymakers misstated Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism and ignored doubts among intelligence agencies about Iraq's arms programs as they made a case for war, the Senate intelligence committee reported on Thursday. The report shows an administration that "led the nation to war on false premises," said the committee's Democratic Chairman, Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia. Several Republicans on the committee protested its findings as a "partisan exercise." The committee studied major speeches by Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials in advance of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003,...

Font size=4>Disloyalty: Imagine someone who believes our armed forces don't "care about the lives of people" heading a key congressional panel. No need to imagine: Meet Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller.For John D. Rockefeller IV, great-grandson of his oil titan namesake and for close to a quarter century now the junior Democratic senator from the state of West Virginia, wearing the uniform of the United States was not part of the plan. For this son of privilege, it would instead be the exclusive Exeter boarding school, the Peace Corps and becoming a "soldier" in President Lyndon Johnson's War on...

U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) was forced to apologize Tuesday to Republican Presidential candidate John McCain for comments he made about McCain’s military service. “I have profound respect and appreciate his dedication to our country, and I regret my very poor choice of words,” Rockefeller said in a prepared statement. Rockefeller, who supports Barack Obama for President and has campaigned for him, said in an interview with the Charleston Gazette editorial board this week that McCain was not grounded in issues affecting people because, in part, he was a fighter pilot. “He flies at 35,000 feet and drops laser-guided bombs,...

Yesterday, a member of the Senate stood and addressed his colleagues in both the upper chamber and the House in defending telecom immunity and the FISA reform legislation. Can you guess who said this? Now, let me say something more. What people have to understand around here is that the quality of the intelligence we are going to be receiving is going to be degraded. It is going to be degraded. It is already going to be degraded as telecommunications companies lose interest. Everybody tosses that around and says: Well, what do you mean? I say: Well, what are they...

Jay Rockefeller – Liberal Fascist by Paul R. HollrahJanuary 28, 2008   Senator John Davison Rockefeller IV, otherwise known as “Jay” Rockefeller, is a four-term member of the U.S. Senate from West Virginia and a great-grandson of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller. He is the youngest in a long line of prominent politicians and financiers, including former Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, former Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, and. banker David Rockefeller. The only Democrat in what has always been a staunchly Republican family, he is also the son-in-law of former Republican Senator Charles H. Percy, of Illinois.   Rockefeller...

PITY THE Rockefellers. Try though they might, they never manage to get a Rockefeller elected president. Governors, senators and even a vice president have borne the Rockefeller name. Yet the presidency eludes them. And so they busy themselves playing kingmaker behind the scenes. Their latest project is Hillary Clinton. Last Thursday, the public interest group Judicial Watch published a memorandum which the Clinton Library was forced to release under the Freedom of Information Act. The 24-page memo shines a spotlight on Hillary’s little-known relationship with America’s mightiest oil and banking dynasty. Dated May 26, 1993 and addressed to “Hillary Rodham...

Take two! Senate intelligence committee chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) had said yesterday that the CIA told him about its destruction of videotaped interrogations in "November 2006." But oops -- in a new statement just released to the press, he says he spoke too soon. It turns out he knew about the tapes' existence in 2003, but only found out about their destruction yesterday. Rocky: "Last night, the CIA informed me that it believes that the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee was told of the decision to destroy the tapes in February 2003 but was not told of their actual...

Democrats Want to See Interrogation Memo Oct 4 07:10 PM US/Eastern By LARA JAKES JORDAN Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate and House Democrats demanded Thursday to see two secret memos that reportedly authorize painful interrogation tactics against terror suspects—despite the Bush administration's insistence that it has not violated U.S. anti-torture laws. White House and Justice Department press officers said legal opinions written in 2005 did not reverse an administration policy issued in 2004 that publicly renounced torture as "abhorrent." Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller sent a letter to the acting attorney general saying the administration's credibility is...

Excerpt - NEW YORK: A document suggesting that Texas oilman Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. provided former President Saddam Hussein's government with information about when the United States would invade Iraq should be excluded from his upcoming oil-for-food trial, his lawyers say. "This document essentially alleges that Wyatt has committed the deplorable crime of treason and aided an enemy of the United States," the lawyers said in court papers made public Tuesday. Wyatt is scheduled to go on trial next month on charges that he conspired to pay millions of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam's regime in Iraq to win contracts...

From the time we're in grammar school, all the way through our adult lives we've been taught to take responsibility for our actions and not place blame on others for something we did. It's one of the essential elements of integrity. There was a time in our history when we could at least hope to look up to our elected officials and view them as statesmen, because they represented character traits we admired. Those traits and the courage to take a stand against evil would make us proud to follow them into battle. But today, we see many of them...