Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski continues his persistent push to dramatically increase his Commission’s regulatory authority over the Internet.

He remains just as persistent in refusing to offer a substantive legal authority for doing it.

This could be because there really isn’t one.  And it’s not just me saying it.  It’s also a unanimous D.C. Circuit Court (in the Comcast-BitTorrent case), 282 members of Congress – including 74 House Democrats, and even seventeen minority groups who almost NEVER line up against any Democrat anywhere.

The consensus being that legislation is required to better delineate FCC authority over the Internet.

Way back on May 27, Michigan Democrat John Dingell sent Genachowski one of his famous “Dingell-grams” requesting an explanation.  On July 26 – nearly two months later – Genachowski finally responded.  Dingell was underwhelmed.

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We open up this week as Rob, Peter, and Mark discuss our upcoming launch, Peter reveals a personal connection to “The Sound of Music,” Rob reveals a man crush on a dead president, and Mark reveals that those cruises and conferences are more stressful than you might think. All that and we meet Dr. Robert Steele, Republican challenger for the Dingell “throne” in Michigan. Questions? Comments? Join or Facebook page or write us at podcast@ricochet.com

Barack Obama came into office with a promise of ushering in a new post-racial era.  One year into his term and Chris Matthews has already declared, “Mission Accomplished!”  He forgot Obama was black, you see.  America is now post-racial!  Sadly, the facts tell a very different story.  Over the last year, we have witnessed a proliferation of indiscriminate accusations of racism, or a period of what I like to refer to as hyper-racialism.

Paul Krugman insured that 2009 got off to a fast start when it came to race-mongering, writing on January 1st that the GOP is the “party of racial backlash.”  It turns out, according to the Nobel Prize bearing economist, that skeptics of big government aren’t concerned about upholding the constitution or protecting liberties.  Oh, no.  Our real motivation for opposing liberalism is that it means giving money to “Those People.” Wink, wink.

Paul Krugman must have been on to something, because as we saw throughout the rest of the year, pretty much everything said by the right turned out to be code for racism.

MSNBC’s Carlos Watson wondered whether “socialist is becoming a code word.”  CNN questioned whether there were “racial overtones” at the Tea Parties, while David Shuster dubbed them an “intolerance festival.” Janeane Garofalo out and out pronounced all Tea Party attendees as racist.

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But, we can’t say we’re surprised. Now that House leadership has committed itself to bringing the 2,000+ page bill to a vote, every tool and lever at their disposal will be used to get to 218. There is not a small percentage of the Democrat caucus who believes a vote for this bill is very close to political suicide. And their leadership will ask them to make that sacrifice, if for no other reason than they need the ‘win.’ Kind of like the British General Staff at the Somme.

Stay tuned to Big Government throughout the day for updates.