The National Republican Senatorial Committee has released a 2014 midterm election-themed game called Mission Majority. The game stars an elephant named Giopi, but before you can control him you'll have to give up your email, Google Plus or Facebook information to receive some political mailings about various Senate races around the country. After willingly adding yourself to the NRSC e-mail list, the game charges you with helping the GOP... get a majority in the Senate.

A new Senate bill may force lawmakers to agree to expand the reach of sales taxes on out-of-state retailers, or see the end of a law that forbids states and cities from imposing a tax on internet access. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, this choice for lawmakers is due to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s handling of a bill called the Internet Tax Freedom Act.

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014 passed the Senate Intelligence Committee in a 12 to 3 vote yesterday, clearing the way for the successor to CISPA to be put to a vote in the full Senate at some point this year.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is pushing forward what some are calling a replacement for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act called the "Cybersecurity Information Protection Act" (CIPA). The bill offers many of the same solutions and shortcomings of the CISPA bill that the internet fought so hard to kill last year. The bill written by Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) will be up for consideration before the committee next week, according to Feinstein.

Lawmakers are not happy with the FCC's proposal to allow broadband providers to charge content providers extra money for faster access to their customers. This supposed fast lane approach has rubbed lawmakers the wrong way, according to The Wrap, prompting them to push legislation that bans "paid prioritization."

Ten U.S. Senators have signed on to a letter that was sent to the Federal Communications Commission to express their opposition to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal to change the Open Internet Order (also known as net neutrality) to allow ISPs to charge content providers fees for faster lanes to their customers.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) issued a joint statement announcing their new plans to push for a revamped cybersecurity bill. While details on the bill have not be released because it is still in "draft form" at the moment, the bill sounds like it has the same language that CISPA did.

What's faster than a speeding train? Apparently U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who was nearly clipped by one at a press conference on Friday while standing on a train platform. Ironically enough, Sen. Blumenthal (who is known on GamePolitics as a politician keen on passing laws against gaming and the video games industry at large) was at the train stop to promote train safety.

Yesterday Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.), the seemingly lone voice of dissension in Senate hearings about the proposed $45.2 billion merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, has written a letter to Netflix asking the company to weigh in.

It is likely that Comcast will have no problems getting the support of U.S. lawmakers for its proposed $45.2 billion merger with Time Warner Cable. Why, you ask? Well according to several campaign finance watchdog groups (as reported by Ars Technica), the majority of lawmakers reviewing the merger in hearings have taken campaign contributions from the cable operator directly or indirectly.

In a statement to NBC News former NSA contractor (currently in exile in Russia after leaking classified NSA documents about domestic and international spying programs) called Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA.) hypocritical for complaining about the CIA allegedly spying on the Senate while strongly supporting the NSA's spying programs and bills like CISPA.

Did the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spy on Senate staffers in an effort to stymie an investigation into illegal torture tactics being used by the agency during the Bush Administration? CIA Director John Brennan said that the agency does not spy on Congress and that such an allegation is beyond the scope of reason and simply not true.

Today the United States Senate announced that it plans to hold hearings on the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. The hearing is scheduled to take place March 26 before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The hearing is to figure out how the merger might affect market competition, television services, internet pricing and more. No doubt the FCC's Open Internet Order will be talked about during this hearing as well.

The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee has attached his cybersecurity bill (S.1353) as an amendment to next year’s National Defense Authorization Act. If the amendment manages to survive the approval process Sen. Rockefeller’s Cybersecurity Act of 2013 may finally become law. S.1353, was unanimously approved by the Commerce Committee in July but has been stalled since then.

According to The Hill, one of the demands that Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives have put forth calls for a repeal of the FCC's rules on net neutrality.

According to the publication, a memo was circulated late last week amongst Republican lawmakers detailing some of the demands that they have put forth as a condition of passing a budget and raising the debt ceiling.

While the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) failed to win support from the US Senate earlier this year, not every Senator has given up on passing some sort of legislation related to cybersecurity. This week Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced a bill that is meant to "complement" CISPA and aims to encourage information-sharing between private companies and the government in the name of cybersecurity.

From the "we-could-have-told-you-that-without-a-poll department" comes this story from Politico about the public's opposition to Internet taxes. The polls - conducted for two separate conservative groups - found that most voters oppose federal Internet sales tax legislation and suggested that lawmakers who voted for it could face serious challenges in the 2014 mid-term elections.

While the U.S. Senate debates on whether to give President Barack Obama the authority to bomb Syria (which some in the Administration say the President doesn't need anyway), one Senator was caught by a New York Daily News reporter finding a little distraction on his iPhone.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) sent out an action alert asking its members to tell the United States Senate that it should NOT support S.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and 50 organizations have sent a letter to U.S. lawmakers in both houses of Congress urging them to reform the patent system. The appeal urges Congress to deal with "abuses of the legal system by certain patent assertion entities, commonly referred to as patent trolls."

The Senate's Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee released a draft bill today that attempts to tackle the thorny issue of cybersecurity. The draft bill is backed by Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and ranking Republican member John Thune (R-S.D.). Its creators claim that the draft is an attempt to create a compromise on the issue of cybersecurity after repeated (and failed) attempts to pass legislation through the Senate last term.

While lawmakers would like to get back to pushing the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and other cyber security proposals, it looks like Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA's spying has put the brakes on any legislation moving forward, according to Verge.

Earlier in the week while the National Governors Association and proponents of the Marketplace Fairness Act were hosting an event to encourage House members to approve the bill already passed the Senate, Republicans from the House and Senate joined Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform to rally against it. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) joined House Republicans and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform on Tuesday to rally against the bill.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and 85 other civil liberties groups and Internet organizations to U.S. lawmakers that it must put a stop to the National Security Agency and other U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies spying on American citizens. The letter is in response to two stories that leaked information about several NSA information gathering programs that target the internet and mobile phone activities of Americans.

In April the House of Representatives managed to push the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) through the chamber, but shortly thereafter it stalled in the Senate. Leaders there said they weren't planning on taking the issue up, instead planning to focus on a number of separate bills to address issues related to cybersecurity concerns by the government and corporations.

Here's something you may not know: Glenn Jacobs, the man who plays the "Big Red Monster" Kane character on World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and a co-holder of the WWE World Tag Team Championships, is also the co-founder of the conservative group, The Tennessee Liberty Alliance.

Democrats and Republicans in the Senate seem to agree that requiring online retailers to collect sales tax is a great idea. A bipartisan coalition from both parties easily passed the Marketplace Fairness Act by a vote of 69-to-27. The bill was sponsored by Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) who fast-tracked the bill and avoided any committee that might have had oversight over the bill.

As Atlantic Wire points out in this article, and which we anticipated to be the case in this story earlier in the week CISPA is all but dead in the Senate as lawmakers in the upper House tackle issues they deem more important this year.

While the Senate is likely to pass the Marketplace Fairness Act being rammed through the Senate past the red tape of committees and onto the floor for a vote later today or by the end of this week by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NEV.), House Republicans face a roadblock that they put in place themselves when it comes time to vote for their Internet tax bill: a pledge.

As pointed out by RT, even while the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) may have passed by a 288 to 127 margin in the House (and garnered more votes from Democrats this time around than it did in 2012 when it passed), the bill faces an unknown future in the Senate where other issues like Internet taxes, immigration and more are the causes getting priority right now..