May 2012

It's happening in several congressional races, in states like Nebraska, Montana and Ohio — millions of dollars from out-of-state donors and outside groups are fueling candidates' war chests. When did so many Americans decide races outside their backyards were important enough to back financially? “Across the United States, money is pouring into congressional races that comes from outside the congressional district, and there's another thing that's happening at the same time, which is a lot of the money is increasingly coming from donors who identify themselves as strongly partisan," NPR's science correspondent Shankar Vedantam explains.

The Federal Communications Commission should “act decisively” to make high capacity broadband service cheaper for businesses and other large customers, said Members of the House Communications Subcommittee in a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Reps Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Henry Waxman (D-CA), Ed Markey (D-MA), Doris Matsui (D-CA) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) ask what the FCC is doing to make sure that rates for dedicated high capacity Internet lines known as “special access” are “just and reasonable” as required by the 1996 Telecommunications Act. They note that the market has long been dominated by three incumbent telephone carriers, giving them the ability to “raise prices and impose anticompetitive terms and conditions,” and complain that a 1999 commission order has preserved the situation.

[Commentary] There’s been a lot of attention paid to Facebook’s business model recently, especially with the news that General Motors has killed a $10-million advertising campaign devoted to the giant social network — not exactly a great sign of confidence in advance of the world’s most eagerly anticipated IPO. And GM’s move is only the latest indication of discontent, as other advertisers are also questioning their spending. What all of these moves reinforce is that while Facebook may look like and function like a social network for the majority of its users, on the business side it looks almost exactly like a traditional media company, and that is both good and bad.

[Commentary] The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 30 years ago that public schools cannot engage in viewpoint-based censorship of library books. Schools can keep books off the shelves if they are poorly written or inappropriate for a particular age group, but they cannot limit access to Harry Potter books out of a concern they glorify witchcraft, or remove Kurt Vonnegut novels because they perceive the books to be anti-American, the court held in Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico. That also means that if a library includes novels about star-crossed teenagers in love, it can't selectively remove similar novels about gay and lesbian teenage romance. If an elementary school library includes children's books designed to teach kids about family relationships, it can't remove similar books discussing families with same-sex parents. Technology may have changed since that ruling, but the law has not. Schools cannot block access to information on the Internet any more than they can engage in viewpoint-based discrimination toward the books on the shelves.