Mike Levin: “Mr. President, when the telecommunications reform bill was before the Senate in June, I supported giving the Justice…”

“Mr. President, when the telecommunications reform bill was before the Senate in June, I supported giving the Justice Department a role to ensure that existing monopoly powers are not used to take advantage of the new markets being entered. While the effort to give the Justice Department a role in this process was not successful at that time, I'm pleased to see a Justice Department role included in the final version of the bill. This is good news for American consumers. In addition to including a role for the Justice Department in determining when there is adequate competition in the local exchange, some of the other problems I had with the earlier bill have also been addressed in the conference report. For example, it protects the right of local governments to maintain access to their rights-of-way. I believe we should try to keep obscene material from being transmitted on the Internet and by other electronic media. That is a constitutional standard that is well known. But the words used in title V of the bill dealing with this matter include 'filthy' and 'indecent,' broad and vague enough so they are unlikely to meet the constitutional test.”