According to Reuters, FCC commis­sioners voted 5–0 today to proceed with crafting a “net neutrality” rule, sending the current language (which would strip telecom companies of the right to control how they use their own property) to the printing office for public comment. Comments will be accepted until January 14th. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is available online here [PDF]. You can upload your comments using ECFS here, using proceeding number 09–191. You can read others’ comments on ECFS here. I’m writing comments to submit right now. I’ll post my comments here when I finish. I encourage everyone who loves the Internet [ . . . ]

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I just saw this ad on telly: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in conjunction with the Ad Council (both orga­ni­za­tions about which I have nothing positive to say), has funded and produced an adver­tisement featuring religious figures endorsing and promoting government programs. No mention of the featured anthro­po­morphic vegetables’ religious affil­i­ation is mentioned. Something about using explicitly religious char­acters to encourage children to follow government health advice strikes me as something less than neutral to religion, despite the secular purpose. But because promoting the health of children is a “legit­imate secular purpose”, this kind of thing doesn’t violate the [ . . . ]

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Maine legalizes same-​​​​sex marriage By legislative action, no less. Without a court telling them they had to do it. That makes Maine the second state to enact same-​​​​sex marriage without a judicial order to do so, and the first state to enact same-​​​​sex marriage without a judicial order to at least create a parallel licensing system (as the Vermont Supreme Court did back before that state created its civil union system). Also, the first state to legisla­tively dispose of a prior legislative ban (Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 19-​​​​A § 701 (2009)). My last law school exam ever starts in 10 minutes. Woo hoo!

“Who’s there?” “Orange.” “Orange who?” “Orange you glad you didn’t vote for McCain!” I still say Stevens is due — he’ll be 89 this year. And Ginsburg has health issues. Luckily all three are part of the liberal bloc and will be replaced with liberals — not likely to upset court balance. I’m in the middle of finals week in my last semester in law school. Assuming I pass every­thing, I’ll graduate on May 17th, which is inci­den­tally the septen­vig­in­tennial of my birth.