text: This one is a slam dunk.\n\nThe only possible correct answer for most of us is...\nRep. Rick Boucher's 1992 amendment (passed in 1993) to the National Science Foundation charter that allowed business to be conducted on the Internet.\n\nBefore that legislation passed, the internet was like a interstate highway system that did not allow commercial vehicles. Oh, you could drive your car on the highway as long as you were not going to the store, or to work at a private company (unless that company was a government, education, or non-profit contractor), or to purchase or provide a service.\n\nBefore Boucher's legislation passed there was no such thing as Amazon.com, eBay, Google, PayPal, or, for that matter, YAHOO. There was no legal way for these business to exist at all. It was actually ILLEGAL to conduct any for-profit activities on the Internet, including (but not limited to):\n  - buying\n  - selling\n  - advertizing\n  - banking\n  - product support\nIt was of course an unenforceable system. People who flaunted the rules pretty much got away with it. The no-commerce rule really served only to inhibit the development of HONEST commerce.\n\nRick Boucher is pretty much responsible for the Internet community as we know it today. So what political party would an innovative thinker like Rick Boucher belong to? Why, he is a Democrat, of course.