Internet Tax Moratorium Passed By House

Yesterday the House passed H.R.3678 - Internet Tax Freedom Act Amendments Act of 2007 405 to 2. The bill, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers. Judiciary Committee chairman, extends the current moratorium on certain taxes relating to the Internet and to electronic commerce to November 1, 2007. The link will take you to Open Congress which provides summary of the bill and a link to the full text. The AP reports that the bill's progress "is uncertain in the Senate, where there is also considerable support for a permanent tax ban." The current moratorium expires November 1, 2007.

Chairman Conyers press release is reprinted on the flip.


For Immediate Release
October 16, 2007 Contact: Jonathan Godfrey
Melanie Roussell


(Washington, DC)- Today, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the "Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) Amendments Act of 2007," which was introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI). The Act extends the moratorium on certain taxes relating to the Internet and to electronic commerce and addresses growing concerns as innovation occurs. The bill passed with a vote of 405-2. The Chairman issued the following statement in support of the bill:


H.R. 3678 is an excellent example of what can occur when we work together – on both sides of the aisle – to deal with highly complex issues. And I am evidently not alone in this observation.

This bipartisan legislation is supported by industry groups such as like the Don't Tax Our Web Coalition, as well as by various government organizations, such as the National Governors Association, the Federal Tax Administration, the National Conference of Mayors, and the National Conference of State Legislatures. It is also supported by a wide range of labor and union groups.

In sum, H.R. 3678 temporarily bans State and local taxes on Internet access, while minimizing the effect on state and local government ability to raise needed revenue and treat businesses fairly. This bill is pro-consumer, pro-innovation, and pro-technology. It amends the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) in four key respects.

First, it extends the moratorium on state and local taxes on Internet access for four years, until November 1, 2011. The four-year time-frame will allow Congress to make any adjustments to the moratorium if necessary in light of developments in the States or in technology – as Congress has done each time it has extended the original moratorium – in 2001, in 2004, and in this bill. It will also allow sufficient time for business planning, while ensuring that consumers continue to have the benefit of tax-free access to the Internet.

Second, the bill extends for four years the “grandfather” provisions to preserve the legality of taxes imposed prior to the 1998 Act, consistent with past extensions. The bill also phases out new grandfathers that some states claim were created in the 2004 extension, while allowing states that issued public rulings before July 1, 2007 that are inconsistent with the foregoing rules to be held harmless until November 1, 2007.

Third, the bill clarifies the treatment of gross receipts taxes, which certain states have enacted in recent years in lieu of, or as a supplement to, general corporate income taxes. Like the general corporate income tax, these gross receipts taxes apply to nearly all large businesses, not just to Internet access providers.

The bill clarifies that this form of general business tax is treated in the same fashion as a corporate income tax, and is not covered by the moratorium as long as it is broadly imposed on businesses and is not discriminatory in its application to providers of communication services, Internet access, or telecommunications.

Finally, in response to a number of concerns regarding the definition of “Internet access” in the current law, the bill clarifies the term to mean a service that enables a user to connect to the Internet. This new definition will not only prevent all tax-exempt content bundling, but will also include closely-related Internet communications services such as e-mail and instant messaging.

In addition, the bill amends the definition of "telecommunications" to include unregulated, non-utility telecommunications, such as cable service.

I want to particularly thank Ranking Member Smith, as well as Subcommittee Chairwoman Sánchez and Ranking Member Cannon, for their cooperative efforts in helping us get to this point.

H.R. 3678 is a good, strong bill that provides much needed clarity to the communications and Internet industries, and strikes the right balance in addressing the needs of state and local governments while helping keep Internet access affordable.

There's more: "Internet Tax Moratorium Passed By House" >>

Pelosi To Conyers and Reyes--Revisit the FISA Bill As Soon As Possible And This Time Do It Right.

I don't know what to make of this, but Nancy Pelosi has written a letter concerning the "interim" FISA bill passed just yesterday.

August 4, 2007

The Honorable John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Silvestre Reyes
Chairman, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
H 405 The Capitol
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Conyers and Chairman Reyes:

Thank you for your leadership on matters affecting the security of the American people and the protection of the liberties that define our country.

I know that your committees have been working diligently on a proposal by the Administration to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). I also understand that your work has been hindered by the Administration’s refusal to provide all of the documents you believe are relevant to your consideration of the proposal.

Tonight, the House passed S. 1927, a bill approved by the Senate yesterday, which is an interim response to the Administration’s request for changes in FISA, and which was sought to fill an intelligence gap which is asserted to exist. Many provisions of this legislation are unacceptable, and, although the bill has a six month sunset clause, I do not believe the American people will want to wait that long before corrective action is taken.

Accordingly, I request that your committees send to the House, as soon as possible after Congress reconvenes, legislation which responds comprehensively to the Administration’s proposal while addressing the many deficiencies in S. 1927.

Thank you for your attention to this request and for your service to our country.

best regards,

Nancy Pelosi

In related news, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek is reporting that last week the administration served a secret search warrant on a former justice department attorney who is known to have opposed the President's Domestic Surveillance Program. It is rumored that the attorney is suspected of leaking the existence of the program to The New York Times in December 2005.

When somebody at the water cooler tells you that the President must pursue the leaker because merely telling the American people of the existence of a possibly unconstitutional program is helping the "enemy," you might remember the following quote from Al Gore's book The Assault on Reason.

(T)his intricate clockwork mechanism of American Government has always depended on a "ghost in the machine." The ghost animating the Constitution's machinery is not holy;it is us, all of us, the proverbial "well-informed citizenry. We may be endowed with individual rights by our Creator, but we act to protect those rights and govern our nation with the instruments of reason. page 51

How can we citizens be a "well-informed citizenry" if the Congress passes secret laws, creating secret Courts to oversee secret activities that might violate the Constitution? How can we keep our Democracy alive if the Executive is clearly going beyond what has been authorized by Congress apparently bypassing the secret court altogether? How can we protect our democracy if the Administration is executing secret search warrants on people whose only crime is to have informed us, the electorate, that our constitutional rights are being violated? Disclosing a program that violates the United State's Constitution might justify the application of something that could be called a whistleblower's defense.

Good luck, Nancy, we will be watching.

There's more: "Pelosi To Conyers and Reyes--Revisit the FISA Bill As Soon As Possible And This Time Do It Right." >>

Conyers To America--Forget About Cheney Impeachment

As we have reported Dennis Kucunick's H.Res.333,Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors is and has been the most viewed "bill" since it's introduction on April 24, 2007.

As the summer wears on, the resolution has been slowly crawling its way across the floor of Nancy Pelosi's office and Sunday night was leaning on a table leg. It seemed to be gathering the strength necessary to drag itself those last few feet to the top of her table. Yesterday John Conyers kicked it in the teeth and stomped it back down to the floor.

According to Donny Shaw of the Congress Gossip Blog

Over the weekend, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) stated that if three more Congressmen sign on to the bill, he will begin the impeachment proceedings.

Those comments must have been music to the ears of Cindy Sheehan, who has taken up the resolution. They were particularly timely since she planned to lead a pro-impeachment march on the Congress yesterday. How fortunate, she must have thought, there will be good news to report at the end of the march. This morning she writes in Michael Moore's blog

About 300 people gathered today and marched the 3 1/2 miles from the entrance of Arlington Cemetery to Congressman John Conyers' office to demand impeachment and accountability from one of the leading figures in American politics for the last four decades. . . .At the end of the march, Reverend Lennox Yearwood, President of the Hip Hop Caucus, Ray McGovern (retired CIA analyst) and I met with Congressman John Conyers to implore him to institute impeachment proceedings against the pretenders to the White House who are destroying our democracy, making a mockery out of our rule of law and who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

Sheehan says

It was with very heavy hearts that Rev. Yearwood, Ray, and I reported back to the media that the Congressman had said that with over one million signatures on petitions and with one phone call coming into his office every 30 seconds supporting impeachment and with 300 activists in the hall to support him, he was still not going to move forward with the most urgent duty of his career. The Rev and I were particularly disheartened and broken because we do love the Congressman so much, but we love our country and the people of Iraq and the Middle East more. The Rev and Ray spent many years serving their country in the military and the CIA and I had a son who gave his life to do what the Congress is supposed to do: protect our freedoms, not hand them over to the mob that runs our country.

It appears Conyers has decided that it is too late in the cycle to start impeachment.

I bet John Conyers will sit right down and write another letter about the administration's very next outrage against the Constitution. His letter will be reported. Everybody will pretend it is meaningful.

There's more: "Conyers To America--Forget About Cheney Impeachment" >>

A Sneering Alberto Gonzales To John Conyers--I Won't Let My Boy, John Tanner, Talk , See, And You Can't Make Me

Yesterday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler postponed a scheduled oversight hearing on the Justice Department's Voting Rights Section of the Civil Rights Division because the Department refused to make Voting Section Chief John Tanner available to testify. The hearing had been scheduled for July 17 at 10 A.M.

As usual Conyers, this time joined by Nadler, sat right down and wrote Alberto a letter.

The Honorable Alberto Gonzales
Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20530

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

The Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties scheduled an oversight hearing on the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division (CRT) for July 17th. We received an e-mail message on July 12th from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legislative Affairs informing the Committee of the Department’s decision to send a Deputy Assistant Attorney General to testify instead of John Tanner, the Voting Section Chief, whom we requested.

We are disappointed by this decision. Brad Schlozman and Hans Von Spakovsky, both former senior Department of Justice officials who served in the CRT, recently testified before the Senate and stated that Mr. Tanner played a key role in the Department’s decision to approve the Georgia Photo Identification law. In addition, there have been numerous articles and letters discussing serious matters that came before the Voting Section under Mr. Tanner’s leadership.

Mr. Tanner’s testimony is important to the Committee’s efforts to understand the manner in which the Department has implemented its legislative mandate. As Chief of the Voting Section, Mr. Tanner is personally familiar with the facts surrounding the Department’s decisions in significant and controversial voting rights cases. We believe that his testimony is therefore necessary for the Committee to fulfill its oversight obligations.

We therefore ask that you make Mr. Tanner available to the Committee for testimony specifically concerning the activities of the Voting Section. We are postponing the July 17th hearing with the expectation that we will receive the full cooperation of the Department in this matter. We look forward to working with you to arrange a mutually agreeable time when Mr. Tanner can testify. Please contact the Judiciary Committee if you have any questions or concerns.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,



John Conyers, Jr. Jerrold Nadler
Chairman Chairman, Subcommittee on the
Committee on the Judiciary Constitution, Civil Rights, and
Civil Liberties


cc: Hon. Trent Franks
Hon. Lamar Smith

I have been searching high and low, but so far I cannot find any legal justification for refusing to produce Tanner, a career civil servant who worked with Bradley Schlozman and Hans von Spakovsky. One commenter suggested the DoJ must be scared spitless because Tanner, who is not a political appointee, might tell the truth. I'll keep looking for the DoJ's excuse, but I suspect the justification is simple: Alberto Gonzales holds John Conyers and the entire United States Congress in utter contempt.

You can read more about this latest outrage and recent Voting Rights Section controversies, many of them involving Tanner, at The Gavel, Nancy Pelosi's website.

There's more: "A Sneering Alberto Gonzales To John Conyers--I Won't Let My Boy, John Tanner, Talk , See, And You Can't Make Me" >>

George Stephanopoulis Shocked To Hear Conyers Use "I" Word

This morning on ABC’s This Week, Chairman John Conyers suggested that the White House has very little room to stonewall, since a very significant minority of the American people (46%) want to see President Bush impeached and a growing majority of the American people favor the impeachment of Vice President Cheney (54%--although Conyers said 58% leading me to wonder if he has seen a new poll.) George Sephanopoulis almost had a cow, “I’m surprised you put impeachment on the table there. Are you open to pursuing that?” The question seemed to remind Conyers that he wasn't supposed to use the "I" word on television. Conyers said he was not putting it “on the table,” merely pointing out the views of the American people. Watching Conyers back up all over himself was pretty sad.

Maybe I just missed it, but why don't Stephanopoulis and the rest of America's pundit class want talk about the views of the American people on impeachment? As near as I can tell among the Washington elite, the topic isn't fit for polite conversation.

I would appreciate a real discussion on this topic. Comments please.

ThinkProgress has the video. I am sure it will be out on YouTube soon.

I would like to echo the sentiments of at least one commenter at ThinkProgress. Maybe we should all send Nancy Pelosi tables of all shapes and sizes. She might be able to find one to put impeachment on.

There's more: "George Stephanopoulis Shocked To Hear Conyers Use "I" Word" >>

John And Jerry Write Alberto A Letter

Apparently the House Judiciary Committee was paying attention to Comey's testimony. Today Chairman John Conyers and Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales demanding answers to specific questions and greater access to information concerning the NSA's Domestic Wiretap program. You can see the letter at a website called CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS. Generally the letter asks Gonzales

1) Is Mr. Comey’s testimony about the events of March, 2004 as provided this week to the Senate Judiciary Committee (a copy of which is enclosed with this letter) accurate and, if not, please explain your version of what happened.

2) Was the classified program referred to by Mr. Comey the Terrorist Surveillance Program, as it existed prior to the changes made according to the Justice Department’s recommendations and, if not, what was the classified program that Mr. Comey was referring to?

3) Who was involved in deciding to seek approval from Attorney General Ashcroft from his hospital bed and who made the telephone call to arrange your visit to his bedside?

4) What was the basis for the Administration’s decision on March 10-11 to continue with the program despite the Department’s objections, how long did it so continue. Please provide copies of any legal or other memoranda on the subject?

5) What was the basis for the Department’s objections to the program. Please provide copies of any Office of Legal Counsel or other documents relating to those objections? and

6) What changes were made to the program to resolve the Department’s objections

Just the questions I want answered. The only question I would have added is "What changes to the program did you authorize after you became Attorney General?"

According to a RAWSTORY by Michael Roston Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) is worried that Comey's testimony "raises serious questions about the NSA program and the White House's heavy-handed determination to continue it." Ya think.

There's more: "John And Jerry Write Alberto A Letter" >>

Goodling to the House Committee -- Go F**k Yourself

Attorney's for Monica Goodling, the lynch pin between Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove's political shop have sent a polite four page letter to the House Judiciary Committee essentially repeating that Monica, invoking her 5th and 6th Amendment rights, will not provide any information about the firings of the Gonzales 8 to the committee and again asking that she be excused from public questioning as a matter of courtesy. In other words, if I tell you to "Go F**K yourself, would you mind opening the door for me to walk away." If Chairman John Conyers stands for this I am going to seriously worry about his level of testosterone.

There's more: "Goodling to the House Committee -- Go F**k Yourself" >>

House Judiciary Committee to Probe Bush on Torture and Patriot Act Statements

RAWSTORY's Brian Beutler is reporting that:

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) will be investigating all of President Bush’s so-called signing statements to determine how drastically the president has misinterpreted laws passed by Congress

In particular Conyer's is interested in two widely reported signing statements The first is a December 30, 2005, signing statement in which Bush asserts "The president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks." and the second signed by the President on March 9, 2006, claims "The president can order Justice Department officials to withhold any information from Congress if he decides it could impair national security or executive branch operations." Boston Globe, April 30, 2006.

Before the last election Republicans complained that if he ever became Chairman Conyer's wouldn't roll over and play dead. I guess they were right.

There's more: "House Judiciary Committee to Probe Bush on Torture and Patriot Act Statements" >>