A veteran of 40 years of demonstrations, the American folk singer’s latest campaign involves camping in a tree to save a 14-acre farm from the developers.

Read the full story at the UK Independent.

A bipartisan majority on the House Judiciary Committee yesterday passed the “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act” - a good bill that would use antitrust law to protect Network Neutrality, according to the SavetheInternet.com Coalition led by Free Press.Net.

But the questions remain: Will the Internet remain in the hands of users and innovators? Or will a handful of telephone and cable companies determine which Web sites you see and which you don’t?

“Yesterday’s vote - a milestone for our movement - would have been unthinkable just three weeks ago,” said Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press.Net. “But we’ve shown once again that organized people can defeat powerful corporations.”

The opponents of net neutrality spent untold millions on high-priced lobbyists, slick ad campaigns and fake grassroots groups, he said. But the voices of hundreds of thousands of citizens made the difference.

The SavetheInternet.com Coalition led by Free Press now boasts nearly 700 groups that span the political spectrum, including MoveOn.org, the Christian Coalition, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Gun Owners of America, Consumers Union, and the American Library Association. Thousands of blogs have taken up the cause. Yesterday, the coalition’s petition drive surpassed 750,000 signatures.

“Our top priority is increasing the number of people who know about this threat to Internet freedom,” Silver said. He urges people to find five friends to join the fight.

“The struggle in Congress isn’t over,” he said. “Our work is not done. But momentum is on our side.”

The full House will take up the bipartisan Judiciary bill (H.R. 5417) - as well as the massive rewrite of the Telecom Act - after they return in June. The Senate is also considering major legislation that currently fails to protect Net Neutrality, though a bipartisan group of Senators are lining up behind the excellent Snowe-Dorgan bill (S. 2917).

What people can do:

1. Sign the SavetheInternet.com petition and send a message to Congress.
2. Check out the latest news on the SavetheInternet.com blog.
3. Learn the facts. Read the report on Why Consumers Demand Internet Freedom.

When Ken Lay’s Enron Corp. collapsed in fall 2001, George W. Bush’s defenders said the President proved his ethical mettle by rebuffing pleas to bail out Lay, one of Bush’s top political donors. But that story wasn’t true.

Behind the scenes, Bush pushed several plans to put hundreds of millions of dollars in Enron’s coffers. One scheme was run by the National Security Council in summer 2001, while it was ignoring warnings about an impending al-Qaeda attack.

For the full story about Bush’s secret plan to save Enron, read it all at the independent Consortiumnews.com.