Republican Representative Mike Rogers (Mich.) has announced that he will not seek reelection in 2014; instead, he will pursue a career as a talk-radio host with Cumulus Radio.
Mike Rogers was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. He has been the presiding member throughout the NSA metadata scandal and has a history of being pro big-business.
Rogers was the author of the controversial cybersecurity bill, CISPA. CISPA was the followup many will remember after SOPA. The bill contained provisions to allow companies and the government to share information about security breaches, dangerous software and the goals of the government.
The bill put many privacy advocacy agencies on edge, however. Concerns that the law would simply provide companies with blanket immunity for handing over customer data. The bill survived the House and went on to the Senate in 2012, but when President Obama expressed that he would veto the bill, it died. Rogers thought the bill was still a good idea and tried to bring it back to life in 2013. It didn’t go far.
“It has been an honor to serve the people of Michigan’s eighth congressional district over the last 14 years,” Rogers stated, “But I have always believed in our founder’s idea of a citizen legislature. I had a career before politics and always planned to have on after. The genius of our institutions is they are not dependent on the individual temporary occupants privileged to serve. That is why I have decided not to seek re-election to Congress in 2014.”
‘An honor to serve,’ ‘people’s legislature,’ but he’s not going to try and come back. Rogers is known to be out of touch with the public’s opinion. He once called intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden a “14-year-old tweeter in the basement.”
You won’t find any heartache here over Rogers’ exit.
Joshua is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. You can follow him on Twitter @Joshual33.
