What will the Federal Communications Commission decide regarding the proposed XM/Sirius merger? The hell if I know.

But it's fun to come up with predictions, especially if you live 3,000 miles away from Washington, D.C. and mostly get your information via the Internet. One thing is for sure, the path is open to a decision. The Department of Justice has ok'd the union. It's up to the FCC now.

Possibility #1: The FCC will reject the merger outright

This isn't likely, I suspect, but you never know. The FCC's 1997 Order did stipulate that one entity could not own all the spectrum on the Digital Audio Radio Satellite (DARS) band. And XM and Sirius have, after all, flagrantly ignored the agency's requirement that they create an interoperable receiver that could pick up both services. And boatloads of Congresspeople have told the FCC that they hate the idea, including lots of Republicans.

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If you happen to be in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley region this Thursday, you might want to check out the FCC's second hearing on Internet network management, to be held at everyone's favorite educational theme park for the hyper-rich: Stanford University. The speakers for the event's two panels have not been named, but the names of the panels have been named: "Network Management and Consumer Expectations" and "Consumer Access to Emerging Internet Technologies and Applications." . . . more

I'm enjoying the Federal Trade Commission's new videos about "phishing"—Web sites that try to trick you into disclosing information about your bank account, social security number, security passwords and such so they can steal your identity and rob you silly. The little skits are simple and funny. And the fat phishy guy is sort of cute with his fin getting in the way of his efforts to rob people in person.

Mr. Phish's attempt to snooker a business executive in her office is especially funny.

"Something here doesn't seem . . . right," she says as he waits for her to give him her bank account password.

"What?" he asks innocently.

"I can't quite put my finger on it!" she exclaims.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pleaded not guilty today to civil charges that he lied under oath about an affair and spent taxpayer funds to conceal the relationship with his staff member, Christine Beatty. The counts against him all add up to an absurd 90 years in prison. I have no way of knowing whether Mr. Kilpatrick is innocent or guilty of the charges that he faces. But I'll say this about the man, a couple of years ago he stood up to AT&T.

When AT&T first proposed merging with BellSouth, a union that would create an entity controlling half the land lines in the United States, most minority advocates supported the merger. 

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The news media is having a great day with the revelation that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer paid for sex with prostitutes. Behind the scenes, corporate criminals are breaking out the champagne. As Attorney General of the Empire State, Eliot Spitzer championed the consumer and feasted on white collar crooks. Not only that, Spitzer's zeal often forced those around him in government to do their jobs better, whether they wanted to or not.

To cite only one example, in the summer of 2005 Spitzer launched a campaign against radio payola. The smart set had long ago concluded that payola was inevitable. After all, the government had cracked down on it in the early 1960s, and yet here it was still around.

Read the rest at Allvoices.com 

The fallout continues from Charles McGrath's essay "Is PBS Still Necessary?", published in the New York Times on February 17th. Public television's Newshour has, understandably, paid close attention to the piece, inviting its fans to post response comments on its Web site. Here's one I'll bet the PBS suits especially like:

I find the comment of the New York Times writer [McGrath] , "Jim Lehrer, 73, has been with “NewsHour” since 1975, so long that some of his early viewers are now in assisted living," to be both condescending, and a cynical attempt to lead readers to a discriminatory judgment. This article (Is PBS Still Necessary?) is contemptible and beneath the 'dignity' of the New York Times. The News Hour with Jim Lehrer is the best news program on television.

To be fair to the poster's feelings, McGrath no doubt intended to be provocative when writing the essay, eg. his left-handed dismissal of accusations of left-wing bias: