Pi**ing on the Nation's Treasury

We all know that Kevin Martin is an ideologue with a capital "I". Nothing necessarily wrong with that. Among other tenets of faith, he wants to protect the nation's kids from indecency. Definitely nothing wrong with that. Of course, Martin also wants to punish the cable industry, which is not so swell. And for some time now, conventional wisdom has held that the Martian's problem with the cable is that the ops couldn't guarantee him that only G-rated programming would appear during family viewing hours. Of course it was really the programmers who wouldn't make that guarantee (too much money involved in some of those racy evening shows) but Martin apparently didn't understand that operators don't control programmers and the MSOs have been taking the fall ever since.

But that's beside the point.

Also on Martin's hit list are broadcasters who say or do naughty things during primetime. And apparently the Martian is willing to go to extreme lengths, and extreme costs, to make sure that said "naughty things", much like those naughty MSOs, are punished.

Case in point is the endlessly discussed "wardrobe malfunction" that took place during the 2004 Super Bowl. Martin wants to fine CBS $550,000 for the remarkably tasteless undraping. For sure the incident had no place in a family viewing event but a unanimous court, ie the Third Circuit Panel , decided that the FCC did not have grounds for the fine.

End of story? Not for the Martian. Buoyed by some of the Supreme Court's questions in a separate cast against Fox Broadcasting, the Martian decided not to let the CBS incident rest. So he, or more specifically the Solicitor General's office, filed a petition to have the court hear the CBS case, pending the outcome of the Fox case.

So here we are: The current administration in its last days, the nation in a $10 trillion deficit hole, millions of people out of work, financiers and automakers jetting into D.C. to ask for bailouts, Food Centers running out of food, and the Martian wants to spend the nation's money to impose his personal ideology.

Kind of makes you want to cry.