… and yet it’s being railroaded through the Congress.

Republican FCC chairman Michael Powell and the panel’s senior Democrat, commissioner Michael Copps, both said they are worried about exercising the authority Congress would grant the agency if the bills become law. Powell and Copps were attending an all-day broadcast industry summit to discuss the indecency issue.

“I understand it,” Powell said, referring to Congress’ desire to make performers pay. “But I have some reservations with the FCC going after performers.”

Powell said artists have always enjoyed protection under the First Amendment governing free speech and slamming them with large fines would be “a very touchy area for the FCC.”

Sign the petition if you haven’t already. Talk to your Senator. The FCC’s job is supposed to be administrating the airwaves, renew a license here and there, not scan the airwaves for disagreeable programming. Now the FCC wants to expand it’s content regulation to cable and satellite programming. This is a huge power grab by a commission that really doesn’t have much of a purpose anymore.

Here’s the dirty little secret of the indecency bill- if someone were to broadcast President Bush’s Adam Clymer comment (”Major League Asshole“) Bush himself could be ordered to pay up to $500,000 by the FCC.

Anybody have any tape of Rush Limbaugh playing that clip? (I don’t know if he actually did, I’m not a regular listener obviously.) If Rush played the clip unedited he could be fined personally and each of his 300+ radio stations could all be fined $500,000 each. Sure, the incident happened years ago, but It’s not like there’s a statute of limitations on this stuff. The FCC just fined Howard Stern last week for a conversation that took place three years ago. First it’s a boob, then it’s talking about a Cleveland steamer, next it’ll be talking smack about the president that gets you taken off the air.

Ahh… nice to get a good rant off right away in the morning.