The Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission are crowing today. Yesterday the United States Senate overwhelmingly voted for a resolution condemning the FCC's recent relaxation of its newspaper/TV cross ownership ban. Only the Georgia twins, Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, expressed opposition to the resolution. It now goes to the House, where a parallel measure will be debated soon.

Happy are FCC Dems Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps. Here is Copps' press comment:

The Senate spoke for a huge majority of Americans last night by voting to overturn the flawed FCC decision gutting our long-standing ban on newspaper broadcast cross-ownership. With courageous leaders like Senator Byron Dorgan, the Senate has struck a blow for localism and diversity in a media environment crying out for more of both."

And Adelstein:

The Senate's complete rejection of the FCC's attempt to permit greater media concentration represents a great victory of the people over the powerful. In light of the Senate's action, any proposed transaction seeking to exploit the new rules will likely face intense scrutiny. This vote reflects a strong consensus across the ideological spectrum against further media concentration, from left to right and virtually everybody in between. The FCC veered dangerously off-course from the American mainstream, so our elected representatives are trying to steer us back. This unequivocal, bipartisan rebuke of the FCC is a wake-up call for us to serve the public rather than the media giants we oversee. Chairman [Dan] Inouye, Senator Dorgan, Vice Chairman [Ted] Stevens, Senator [Olympia] Snowe and the many other Senate leaders and public interest organizations who pushed this forward deserve our congratulations and the thanks of the American people.

President Bush has promised to veto the measure, of course, citing the "changing media landscape," and asserting that the FCC's denounced rule takes

"into account the abundance of news and information outlets that exist today and furthers the public interest by providing greater financial flexibility to newspaper and broadcast outlets struggling to survive in today's intensely competitive media environment. In addition to reducing the prior rule's excessive regulation of well-functioning markets, the new FCC rule includes substantial constraints to guard against excessive concentration. The administration supported this FCC action and strongly opposes any attempt to overturn this rule by legislative means."

And so if the House passes the parallel resolution, and Bush indeed vetos it, Congress is poised for a veto override debate that will force Republican presidential contender (and Arizona Senator) John McCain to decide how much he wants to run against the White House in his campaign. It will also catapult an FCC media ownership issue to national prominence, something that very rarely if ever happens.

In fact, I can't remember a single instance in United States history when it actually has happened. I seem to recall that when Herbert Hoover was Secretary of Commerce and was just starting to regulate radio, he got some flack from parties who feared that Hoover was constructing the service to suit his presidential ambitions (he ran for and won the White House in 1928). FCC Chair Newton Minow's Vast Wasteland speech, in which he condemned the low quality of television, made headlines. But Newton gave the speech before the National Association of Broadcasters in 1961, a year after his boss John F. Kennedy was elected President.

I guess one could go wayyyy back to the presidential election of 1892, when Populist candidate James Weaver called for the creation of a publicly owned national telegraph system. Weaver won a million votes, but I'm not sure how much national play his telegraph proposal got. The election mostly focused on the debate over the tariff, with Democrat Grover Cleveland trouncing Republican Benjamin Harrison.

Big telecommunications controversies just seem to miss Presidential campaigns. The 1913 Kingsbury Commitment, in which AT&T conceded the rights of independent telephone companies to connect to its national system, took place a year after the turbulent four way race of 1912. The creation of the FCC was accompanied by a debate over whether to create a non-commercial zone of spectrum. But that fight took place in 1934, two years after FDR won the White House.

AT&T agreed to break up during the Presidential election of 1984, but this was a done deal, and went undebated by either Ronald Reagan or Walter Mondale.

I guess that I could cook up some lefty explanation for this lack of a national footprint: the media deliberately silences these sort of discussions. That sort of argument. And I suppose there is some truth in that. But I think that it is also true that this stuff is often way too geeky to generate national froth. It just doesn't have the juice that you can squeeze out of national security, health care, the economy, Hillary's husband, Barack's minister, and John McCain's age.

But this time around could be different. Golly. We'll see. . .

Announcing the Bernal Heights Non-Diet, which has nothing to do with Bernal Heights, San Francisco. It just happens to be the place where I live. And, as the title suggests, I'm not trying to diet. I'm trying to come up with a structural eating plan that will help me lose weight.

I can't figure out in what order to put these rules, some of which I have stolen from the food advice I get from my health plan. Anyway, I've got nine of them. Here goes:

Rule #1: If you eat out, eat half.

It took me a long time to figure this rule out. One of the reasons why we are all getting fatter is because restaurants have doubled the portions of basic retail food items. Supersized hamburgers are the most famous example here, but just about everything seems to have been blown up to 200 percent, including bagels and plates of spaghetti and meat sauce.

So I assume that I should eat about half of what the restaurant sells me. What do I do with the rest? I shove it to one side of my plate, get a second plate to put it on, get somebody to help me eat it, ask the waiter to put it in a doggy bag, or just dump it in the garbage if I can.

I know, throwing it in the trash is a terrible waste of food. But the food is no better used sitting on my belly or rump as fat. It's not my fault that restaurants sell me too much of the stuff. If you are with me, I'll be happy to split it with you, especially those huge chocolate muffins they sell in cafes.

Rule #2: Drink a lot of water.

We all need to drink lots of water. So get a water bottle, fill it up and drink! Drinking water keeps me from craving snacks. Unfortunately, it also makes me have to run to the head at inappropriate moments.

But the more water you drink, the less soda you'll drink. Soda is really bad. If you drink a sugary soda every day, you'll gain about 25 pounds in a year.

Rule #3: Eat carrots and apples.

They're very good for you, and they're convenient, crunchy, and sweet. I have an apple and coffee for breakfast, and it keeps me nice and filled up until lunch time. Carrots are just perfect in the afternoon because they're so easy to handle. I can eat them while writing. We're all supposed to eat five servings of fruit and vegetables, you know. Apples and carrots fill the bill, but you obviously can substitute your favorite crunchy veggies and fruits for mine.

Rule #4: NEVER eat anything out of a bag.

If I buy a big bag of potato chips and start eating out the bag, as sure as E = MC squared I will eat that whole bag of chips. God apparently intended it to be this way. So I never eat out of the bag. I take the bag, pour some chips into something smaller, and put the bag away. Or I offer the rest to someone else. Or I throw the goddman thing out (See Rule #1). This applies to everything you buy in a bag: nuts, candy, chips, trail mix—all of it.

Rule #5: Don't forget to share.

If you absolutely cannot resist buying some candy—M&Ms, peanut butter cups, yogurt chips, whatever—pour half in your hand (remember Rule #4) and offer the rest to somebody else: a friend, a stranger, whoever happens to be around. If they won't take it, toss the rest in the trash. Most bags of candy are huge like restaurant meals, anyway.

Notice that the Bernal Heights diet doesn't forbid you from eating junk food. It just offers you structured ways to eat less.

Rule #6: The deck of cards meat principle

Most of us eat way too much meat—beef, pork, chicken—and not enough vegetables and grains. The amount of meat on your dinner plate should approximate no more than the size of a deck of cards. And guess what? You don't have to eat meat every day. Eating meat isn't a symbol of prosperity; it's a symbol of waste.

Rule #7: Small is beautiful

Order a taco, not a burrito. Order a cup of soup, not a big bowl. Order a small latte, not a big one. Don't worry. If you don't feel like you got enough, you can always order more.

Rule #8: The three hour "Am I Hungry?" rule

Generally speaking, if I want to eat something substantial, I ask myself the following question: When was the last time I ate? If I ate something serious within the last three hours, it usually means I'm looking to fill some anxiety or strong feeling with food.

Rule #9: Ignore these rules from time to time.

If you are at the house of someone who has prepared an enormous, sumptuous meal for you, don't be an asshole: eat! Next day, exercise a little more. There's no better way to show your apprecation for someone else's cooking than to throw off the guilt and enjoy the meal.

The point here is that I'm not trying to diet; I'm trying to structure my eating so that most of the time I eat healthy. Bitter experience has shown me that if I try to reach dietary heaven, eventually I'll rebel and descend into dietary hell.

I hope you've found my rules at least somewhat helpful. If you've got similar, I'd like to learn about them.

This continues from Part II of "How Henry Got Her Name."

One warm Sunday afternoon I was sitting here in my basement writing, when I heard a great ruckus above my head.

"No! Henry! No! No!" It was Sharon's voice, accompanied by some kind of scuffle. I ran upstairs and into our bed room. There crouched Henry, hunched over a mourning dove. Its neck had been neatly snapped. Blood covered the poor thing, and was seeping into the rug.

Sharon and I stood there in a state of shock. I can't imagine why. What did we expect? This cat had been living in the feral jungle for months prior to its adopting us as its "owners." It had regularly deposited half masticated rats on our back yard stairs. Just about every day we'd witnessed it lurking in the grass staring lustily at finches, doves, jay birds, and starlings. This corpse should have come as no surprise.

But of course it did. We had gotten used to Henry as a nuzzling, purring, affectionate accompaniment to our lives, not Jack the Ripper. Here, however, was Jack, grimly and obstinately pawing over her prey, wondering what possible objection Sharon or I could have to this dead bird oozing its guts into the floor of our sleeping quarters.

I have to give credit to the cat. Some felines will play with and torture a bird or rodent for hours before bumping it off. Not Henry; she broke its neck as soon as she got her claws on the critter. That dove was meant for eating.

And so you can imagine the stiff, groaning indignation that accompanied Sharon's firmly picking Henry up and taking her out of the room, while I put the dove in plastic wrap and gingerly deposited its corpse in the garbage.

We spent the rest of the afternoon emotionally torturing ourselves in various ways. We looked out the window at the surviving mourning doves, which gravitated around our back yard to eat from the bird feeders we hung from various tree branches. There they nested as before. Which One Was Next, we wondered? It was Our Fault, we concluded. We speculated about which dove had been the partner of Henry's prey, and now wandered about in a traumatized state of widowhood. In short, we did everything we possibly could to construct the Disney version of this incident.

Meanwhile, Henry sat in a corner of the house for the rest of the day, no doubt wondering what lapse in judgment had caused her to cohabitate with traitors like ourselves. She gave us various looks that I translated into "Do I Know You?"

But by the late evening All Was Forgiven, especially after we put an extra dollop of wet canned food in her dinner dish.

That's about all I have to write about Henry, which I think has been plenty. I could tell you about how the first time we took her to the veterinarian, she managed to eat through the cat carrying box we'd purchased (I guess I just did). I could tell you about what I said to the vet when she told me that Henry will need expensive periodontal surgery soon (So will I, I replied, and predicted that I'll get mine first).

Obviously there are far more important things to read about besides our cat: the Middle East, Britney Spears' paternity suits, what Vladimir Putin really wants, what kind of cell phone you should buy next year, and who could knock you unconscious faster: Michelle Obama or Cindy McCain.

But cats should have their literary moment as well. They deserve some words, and thus I have given our cat Henry some. Although I cannot match the eloquence that former Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson composed upon vetoing Senate Bill No. 93, an ill-considered 1949 law that would have allowed the trapping of stray cats:

"I cannot agree that it should be the declared public policy of Illinois that a cat visiting a neighbor's yard or crossing the highway is a public nuisance," Stevenson wisely wrote.

"It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming. Many live with their owners in apartments or other restricted premises, and I doubt if we want to make their every brief foray an opportunity for a small game hunt by zealous citizens—with traps or otherwise. I am afraid this Bill could only create discord, recrimination and enmity. Also consider the owner's dilemma: To escort a cat abroad on a leash is against the nature of the cat, and to permit it to venture forth for exercise unattended into a night of new dangers is against the nature of the owner. Moreover, cats perform useful service, particularly in rural areas, in combating rodents—work they necessarily perform alone and without regard for property lines.

We are all interested in protecting certain varieties of birds. That cats destroy some birds, I well know, but I believe this legislation would further but little the worthy cause to with its proponents give such unselfish effort. The problem of cat versus bird is as old as time. If we attempt to resolve it by legislation why knows but what we may be called upon to take sides as well in the age old problems of dog versus cat, bird versus bird, or even bird versus worm. In my opinion, the State of Illinois and its local governing bodies already have enough to do without trying to control feline delinquency.

For these reasons, and not because I love birds the less or cats the more, I veto and withhold my approval from Senate Bill No. 93."

Continued from here

And so we began feeding the next door neighbor's now abandoned cat. This immediately presented several problems. The first was that it lurked about the back yard more often, stalking the finches and mourning doves that ate bird seed off of our various feeders. We headed off this threat by putting out cat food towards the evening, which successfully resulted in the feline gravitating to our yard around 5 pm when most of the birds had gone away.

The second problem was that, being typical anthropomorphizing human beings, we wanted to talk to the cat when it arrived. That meant that we had to give it a name.

I came up with Henry because, at least to me, the cat looked like a Henry. It had a sort of gray siamese-ness to it that was (again, to my thinking) just very Henry-like. I experience "Henry" as a sort of quiet and fuzzy personae. I think that Sharon went along with the name because she was a big fan of the west coast modernist composer Henry Cowell. In any event, by various means we got to the name Henry, and it stuck, at least for us. We were aware, of course, of the possibility that Henry was a she, but decided that this didn't mean very much in the cosmic scheme of things; we living in San Francisco and all.

Getting to know you

In any event, Henry liked our grub but was quite suspicious of her benefactors. She usually skulked in around five o'clock and chowed down the dry food we'd left out. We called the cat by its new name, and Henry usually ran away at the sound of our voices. But, as always, after she'd gotten a safe twenty feet back, she would usually just stand her ground and look at us.

One evening, after Henry had finished her dinner. She started meowing again. Sharon went out into the back yard to say hello, and Henry walked up to her and allowed herself to be petted. It wasn't easy petting Henry, at first. She paced back and forth while the stroking took place, and meowed rather frantically through the whole experience. The next night I got to pet Henry. Then she pulled away and just stared at us from a distance again.

Several weeks later, however, Sharon called me into the kitchen. There was Henry, who had come in through the back door while we had left it open for a few minutes. Henry stood in the center of the kitchen and looked at us. She walked quickly up and down the floor as she had outside, meowing away and letting us each pet her for a few minutes, then pacing again. Then she ran out the door and into the night.

Moving in

Then one Wednesday evening when I was out of town, Sharon called me to let me know that Henry had stayed the previous night. Apparently it was an exhausting experience. The cat wandered about the house moaning and pacing, and then jumped into our bed, demanding to be continuously petted. Then in the morning Henry ran out of the house again.

This event repeated itself for the next three nights. "I don't know how much longer I can take it," Sharon told me.

By the time I got back Henry had more or less calmed down. After a week or so our interactive pattern had stabilized. Henry usually arrived at the back door for dinner at around 5 pm. Then she watched TV with us while we ate. Then she stayed the night and usually slept in our bed. Then in the early morning after breakfast, she ran out the door for her day of stalking birds, hanging around alleys, and groaning menacingly at other cats.

Slowly but surely, Henry moved in. She found a comfortable place in our bed upon which sunlight from the window always shines, and she sleeps there through much of the day. She does most of her hunting around the house now, episodically attacking and shredding editions of The Economist, The New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker (we try to remember to keep the real estate pages out so that she'll assault them instead). She is always on the lookout for a comfortable lap to sit on during the evening.

On the other hand, Henry does occasionally revert back to the old ways.

To be continued . . .

Who knows what the Federal Communications Commission will do with John Dingell's petition for an investigation of the Pentagon's fake news spree, as revealed by the New York Times. We're talking about the Times' expose revealing that dozens of military retirees functioned as Pentagon trained TV news flacks on behalf of the Iraq war. Pretty disturbing stuff.

Word has it that the FCC has already agreed to look into the matter, although its unclear whether that will result in much more than some agency spokesperson announcing that "we've looked into the matter, and there is nothing we can do."

On the other hand, it might go differently this time, because Dingell's House Committee on Energy and Commerce is conducting an extensive investigation of the FCC. The Committee wants written records on dozens of proceedings, including any directives involving "limitations or restrictions imposed on FCC employees' ability to communicate with each other concerning official agency business"; records that illuminate the Commission's policies on "communications between FCC personnel and outside entities"; documents that explain how the agency decided who would go to the recent World Radio communication Conference in Switzerland; a list of all new FCC employee hires and reassignments from March 2005 to the present; and the individual meeting schedules of all Commissioners and all Bureau Chiefs and the FCC's Inspector General since January 2005.

This probe gives Dingell a lot more leverage over FCC Chair Kevin Martin than Congress has had in the past, so maybe the FCC will actually do something about the Pentagon problem, or at least act like it is for a while.

Then again maybe not. Several years ago Massachusetts Congressmember Edward Markey was furious when Martin ducked out on investigating the National Security Agency for buying millions of phone records of AT&T and Verizon customers. The Massachusetts Congressmember denounced the Federal Communications Commission for "taking a pass" on the issue.

"If the oversight body that monitors our nation's communications is stepping aside then Congress must step in," Representative Edward Markey, a Democrat, declared on his Web site in May of 2006. Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat too, also called for an FCC investigation.

Martin had just sent Markey a letter explaining that the FCC could not comply with the request. He cited warnings by White House Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and NSA Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander that disclosing information about the alleged relationship between AT&T and the NSA could hurt national security.

These statements, Martin told Markey, "make clear that it would not be possible for us to investigate the activities in your letter without examining highly sensitive classified information. The Commission has no power to order the production of classified information." Both companies denied charges that they had worked with the NSA.

So it's anyone's guess what Martin will do now, even with a Congressional investigation of him underway. He's a pretty tough figure to call.

BTW: I put together a timeline of the FCC/NSA controversy. Here it is:

May 10, 2006: USA Today reports that "NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls." The story cites "people with direct knowledge of the arrangement" as sources, one of whom is quoted as calling it "the largest database ever assembled in the world." The article says that the database uses records provided by AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth. QWest declined to cooperate with the project.

May 12, 2006: Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte files a declaration on behalf of AT&T, which is being sued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in Federal District Court for its alleged cooperation with the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. Negroponte invokes the "states secrets privilege," stating that he has "determined that the disclosure of certain information implicated by Plaintiffs' claims . . . could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States and, thus, must be protected from disclosure and excluded from this case."

National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander files a similar statement with the court.

May 15, 2006: Congressmember Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts writes a letter to FCC Chair Kevin Martin asking the FCC to investigate the controversy. "Please provide me with a response which outlines the Commission's plan, in detail, for investigating and resolving these allegedly violations of consumer privacy," Markey writes.

May 15, 2006: FCC Commissioner Michael Copps calls on the FCC to "get to the bottom of this situation" by opening an inquiry into whether the phone companies violated Section 222 of the Communications Act:

"Every telecommunications carrier has a duty to protect the confidentiality of proprietary information of, and relating to, other telecommunication carriers, equipment manufacturers, and customers, including telecommunication carriers reselling telecommunications services provided by a telecommunications carrier."

May 15, 2006: BellSouth issues statement on the controversy: "Based on our review to date, we have confirmed no such contract exists and we have not provided bulk customer calling records to the NSA."

May 16, 2006: Verizon issues statement on the controversy: "Verizon will provide customer information to a government agency only where authorized by law for appropriately-defined and focused purposes. When information is provided, Verizon seeks to ensure it is properly used for that purpose and is subject to appropriate safeguards against improper use. Verizon does not, and will not, provide any government agency unfettered access to our customer records or provide information to the government under circumstances that would allow a fishing expedition."

May 22, 2006: FCC Chair Kevin Martin replies to Congressmember Edward Markey, declining to open an FCC investigation on the matter, and citing Negroponte and Alexander's court statements:

"The representations of Director Negroponte and General Alexander make clear that it would not be possible for us to investigate the activities addressed in your letter without examining highly classified sensitive information. The Commission has no power to order the production of classified information."

May 24, 2006: Markey discloses Martin's letter on his Web site, declares that the FCC is "taking a pass" on the issue, and calls on Congress to initiate an investigation of the matter.