JOHN HAWKINS IS HOSTING A BLOGGER SYMPOSIUM on news media and the blogosphere.

HERE’S A STORY from Wired News about the FCC’s decision on media deregulation. Interestingly, the FCC release is available in Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word formats, but not in plain-vanilla HTML. It’s also somewhat disingenuous in that it casts the FCC’s action as limiting concentration, rather than relaxing limits.

The real question, though, is whether the FCC – and in particular Michael Powell, who enjoys the bully pulpit — will support Internet freedom so as to promote the kind of alternative media channels on which the new ruling was based.

UPDATE: Duane Freese, who thinks that all the controversy over this matter is overblown, says that the answer is spectrum for everyone.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING PIECE on scholar-bloggers, from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

A MAJOR RESTRUCTURING of the U.S. presence abroad:

In the most sweeping realignment of American military power since World War II, the United States is planning to shift most of its forces from Germany, South Korea and the Japanese island of Okinawa, U.S. and foreign military officials say. The plans, still the focus of intense negotiations and debate among America’s allies and inside the Bush administration, would reorient America’s presence in Europe eastward to Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, and shift U.S. power in the Far East toward southeast Asia, with options for new bases in northern Australia, the Philippines and even Vietnam being explored.

The notion of Vietnamese negotiating the presence of American bases is deeply amusing, but overall it makes sense to rethink this sort of thing. The Cold War is over, the threat is different, and we probably don’t need bases as much as we used to.

I’VE GOT MORE on the international politics of space and GPS over at GlennReynolds.com.

YOU CAN’T USE TRADEMARK LAW to create a sort of pseudo-copyright. That’s the very condensed version of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dastar case. You can read the syllabus of the opinion here, and the full opinion here. (Via Howard Bashman — of course.)

IT’S “CIVIL WAR” — “the whole place is in total rebellion” — and it sounds like a serious failure of leadership to me. I’m referring, of course, to The New York Times.

FROM THE FRONT: LT Smash has written an open letter to President Bush.

UPDATE: In a related vein, William Safire is weighing in on intelligence failures.

EVAN COYNE MALONEY has a new video online regarding the exploits of Protest Warriors in the face of efforts to crush their dissent.

And he’s selling DVDs now!

PRIOR RESTRAINT IN FLORIDA: Another jackbooted judge, it would appear, who either doesn’t understand that the First Amendment applies to the Internet, or who just doesn’t care:

The order, entered by Judge Diana Lewis of Circuit Court in West Palm Beach, forbids Mr. Max to write about Ms. Johnson. It has alarmed experts in First Amendment law, who say that such orders prohibiting future publication, prior restraints, are essentially unknown in American law. Moreover, they say, claims like Ms. Johnson’s, for invasion of privacy, have almost never been considered enough to justify prior restraints. . . .

Judge Lewis ruled on May 6, before Mr. Max was notified of the suit and without holding a hearing. She told Mr. Max that he could not use “Katy” on his site. Nor could he use Ms. Johnson’s last name, full name or the words “Miss Vermont.”

The page has been taken down, but I believe that this is the Google cached version. Judge Lewis appears to have been recently elected, though anyone admitted to the bar should, in my opinion, know better.

UPDATE: What’s funny is a just-repealed Florida law actually required women to publish their sexual histories. Hmm. What’s not required is forbidden? That seems to be the mindset, here.

I LIKE THIS TAKE on the FCC’s decision: “Readerless papers may buy viewerless stations.”