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Representative Justin Amash (R-Mich.) has joined a multi-website protest of SOPA and PIPA, two anti-piracy bills, by changing his Facebook profile photo and posting a status update protesting the bills. 

On Wednesday, January 18, I will join others across the Internet in a 24-hour “blackout” to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. These bills give the federal government unprecedented power to censor Internet content and will stifle the free flow of information and ideas. In protest, I have changed my profile picture and will temporarily disable your ability to post independent content on my Wall (although you still may comment under this post). Demand that Congress and the President keep the Internet open and free…

Read Amash’s post in full.

Also, Politico is reporting that, Rep. Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Lee Terry (R-NB), two co-sponsors of SOPA, will pull their names from the bill. Quayle did so on Tuesday and, Politico reports, Terry will follow suit today. 

(h/t Tech Crunch) 

majorleaguesports-deactivated20 asked: Do you think Congress is responsible for this countries economic problems, or President Obama?

Can we say neither?

Sure, Congress & the administration have had a rough year trying to get along, but most of that hasn’t really affected our economic policy to a degree that it would really send us over the edge.

If you’re looking for someone to blame, we would start with the ten years prior at the Fed, then look at the banks and how they so poorly dealt with a rapidly collapsing housing market, and then Europe, which today is largely responsible for many of the fears and woes that things are going straight back to 2008. If you haven’t, we’d also recommend you listen to this This American Life podcast which really does a great job of explaining “The Giant Pool of Money.” It won a Peabody!

No Labels is a group of Republicans, Democrats and Independents who want our government to work again. Our 12-point plan to Make Congress Work can be implemented in just 24 hours to start reducing gridlock and hyper-partisanship.

It would effectively give every copyright and trademark owner a big club with which to threaten any new technology or feature that it thinks doesn’t do enough to police possible infringing uses.

That’s the Center for Democracy and Technology’s David Sohn writing on the implications of SOPA, that anti-piracy bill that Tumblr (thankfully) threw in our faces last week with their censorship dashboard takeover.

If Congress is mostly Democrats, why is there an anti-abortion-rights majority in the House? Because Republicans treat abortion as a litmus test, while Democrats don’t.

Sarah Kliff: You can be a Congressional Democrat and be anti-abortion rights, but if you’re a Congressional Republican you must be anti-abortion rights. A look at how that skews our politics.

And yet, we’re not sure this is the way to balance the budget:

Introducing H.R. 3501, the `Humanity and Pets Partnered Through the Years (HAPPY) Act’, which would allow you to deduct up to $3,500/year in pet care expenses