Selling His Fellow Senators

Desperate to get his massive and controversial telecom bill through Congress this year, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska has gone, well, postal: a glossy direct-mail-style brochure trumpeting the legislation. But the two-sided tri-panel pamphlet put out by the Senate Commerce Committee that Stevens, 82, heads is anything but slick. Presumably aimed at fellow senators, it features kitschy shots of the wonders of modern technology--iPods, laptops and flat-screen TVs. It also lists groups supporting "major pieces" of the bill, from the telecom and cable-TV lobbies down to the Christian Musician Publishers Association and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Sen. Stevens' brochure defends the bill's hands-off treatment of net neutrality with a string of quotes from favorable newspaper editorials. "I've never seen anything like this," said Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge, a communications think tank that opposes the bill. "It's just amazing."