Nice bill, but Herman is an empty suit.  And he's pro-life.

I should say anti-choice.

Please see "Crashing the Gates" for why single issue voters lose a lot.

You'd think more Congresspeople would support Net Neutrality. The Netroots won this election and their jobs. Women and minorities won this election and their jobs. They're a bunch on entitled ingrates.

We should ride their asses on everything from Iran to Network Neutrality because they owe us BIG TIME. Otherwise, we should start supporting the third party.

What this bill does --

initiates oversight -- currently broadband is unregulated in MD.

starting point to address equal access in all neighborhoods in response to complaints.

Ethan Strimling just introduced a Net Neutrality bill in Maine as well.  My take is that Ethan knows it's a big deal to some of the Big Dogs in the blogosphere, and he wants to get on your good side in his fight against former Common Cause director Chellie Pingree in the '08 primary battle for Maine's 1st CD (doesn't help that Kos trashes Pingree for some past purported slight against "the blogosphere".)  

Strimling's moral compass points to Strimling first, but he, like a growing number of politicians knows red meat to the netroots when he sees it, and hopes you don't look any further under the hood.

Matt, may I suggest adding "D-14" to your references to Delegate Taylor in your post, and conforming the spelling of his name to the above?  Delegate Taylor is from Montgomery County's northeastern border with Howard County and includes Damascus, a conservative alcohol-free town within an otherwise liberal District 14 and a very liberal county.  The district is moderate, conservative by Montgomery standards.  A lot of Donna Edwards' voters came from this district.

It's a 3-member district. My site Crablaw Maryland Weekly did not follow District 14 intensely this election season, but it would not surprise me if having a pro-life Democrat in 14 helped keep down the influence of the religious right in the northern corner of the district near Damascus.  One of Taylor's fellow Democratic Delegate in 14 is openly lesbian, which works fine in much of Montgomery but less so in Damascus.  This paragraph is speculative on my part, I did not follow the race.

Frankly, it may well be a Democrat with some conservative instincts who can get this thing sold.  I don't know how well you know local Maryland politics, Matt, but I will assume you know it well.  For other readers, there is a lot of tension growing between Peter Franchot, a sapphire-blue newly elected State Comptroller from a sapphire blue speck in sapphire-blue Montgomery County, and the relatively conservative old-school Senate President for Life Thomas "Mike" Miller who is from the distant ex-urb/tobacco country of lower Prince George's and Calvert Counties.  I suspect the two won't come to blows, but arrogance and ego are the only things they have in common.

It is perhaps helpful that a bill like this one should come from a Democratic delegate who is not from lower Montgomery and who catches flak for being, for example, pro-life.

Enough local "inside baseball."

I voted too late. But for what it's worth, not sure and other were my votes at one and two, because of Edwards spineless reaction to the blog blitz. I'm not sure whether I will continue to thing of that as serious a character flaw in the longer term or not, but for now I'm less than happy with Edwards.

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