Flanked by a bust of Julius Caesar, Beck brought out a literal red pill and a blue pill and after the viewer symbolically took the red pill (by not changing the channel), he broke into his version of HBO’s Rome, only one without nudity and done entirely on a chalkboard. Successfully connecting America to Rome. Easy. Successfully connecting Rome to The Matrix? That’s only something Beck could accomplish. As for that first connection, Beck had a lot of evidence to choose from. He pointed to the FCC’s proposed rationing of the Internet (making sure to note FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s first name) as well as the Senate’s passing of the Food Safety Bill as signs that America might be going the way of that great empire of old.

Really though, we should be more concerned about our country heading the way of the Matrix films. A period of prosperity and awesomeness followed only by a disappointing mess redeemed only by Monica Bellucci’s tight dress. Fortunately, as Beck promised later in the show, we aren’t at the end of the timeline and we can still save our nation. The choice is yours. We don’t have to be Neo.

Oh, wait. I’m sorry. I meant “Nero.”

Check out the clip from Fox News below:

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If no one stops them how long do you think it will take before four or five mega corporations effectively control the flow of information in America not only on television but online…how long do you think it will take before the Fox News website loads five times faster than Daily Kos.

Or the NBC website or the ABC website. But you get the point. The value of the Internet, says Franken, “is that it is open to everyone” and if you want to protect it you are going to have to force the government to hear your thoughts over those of the corporations. Watch below.

Franken did not make his opinion of the matter at all vague, explaining that, to him, “when the same company owns programming and runs the pipes that bring us programming, I think we have a problem. I’m interested in the ways the Supreme Court affects the info that you and I get when you turn on the TV or read the newspaper.” He continued his explanation, before asking Kagan’s opinion directly:

“If Comcast and NBC merge, I worry that AT&T and Verizon are going to decide that, well, they have to buy ABC, CBS to compete. And that will mean there will be less independent programming, fewer voices, and a smaller marketplace of ideas. That’s a First Amendment problem. It’s also an anti-trust problem.”

Kagan at first hesitates to answer, as the Comcast/NBC merger is still under judicial review, but “in general terms, the First Amendment does not provide defense to anti-trust laws,” and “the anti-trust laws are the anti-trust laws, and they apply to all companies.” Franken continues to pressure her on the First Amendment relevance to anti-trust laws, citing later the Net Neutrality issue and the fact that corporations control the online means of communication, but while she acknowledges “First Amendment values,” she still considers the matter to be primarily that of corporations, and “would defer to people who know a lot more about anti-trust policy than I do.”

Video below:

Beck is of the opinion that the real news is to be found on YouTube, not in the mainstream media: it’s where he has found “much of the video that took down Van Jones.” Beck further speculates that perhaps Obama’s aversion to said Internet is that he doesn’t want you finding out that very information. Which may inadvertently prove the point Obama was awkwardly trying to make, namely, sometimes the Internet doesn’t give you the full picture. It’s also an interesting argument for someone who is ostensibly against net neutrality. But the larger point being, information is power (“if it’s not, we should fire everyone at the CIA”…which is probably a different show entirely). Later Beck rehashes Bill O’Reilly’s GE/NBC/Immelt “schtick” from a few years back. Video below.

Considering that Hannity was pitching her extremely loaded questions, complete with Bill Ayers references and the suggestion that the attack on conservatives is a “coordinated effort by all people on the left,” Bachmann took the middle road. There was the typical Bachmann fear of being targeted, along with “whoever they see as an effective voice,” by the Democrats. She stuck to the talking points on financial regulation being a “permanent bailout” bill that the Obama administration wants to “ram down our throats.” But she deviated just a little to speak up for the internet, attacking Net Neutrality and claiming the Democrats want to censor everything on the internet that does not serve their purposes.

When she talks issues, Bachmann proves a formidable force within the Republican party– and that’s what makes it so difficult to understand precisely what her role is in the grand conservative revival mostly lead by amazingly talented orators and tamed agenda-spewing robots. What does the organized American right do with a more accomplished, more intelligent, more beautiful but insanely unreliable version of Sarah Palin? Bachmann is calm, collected, and convincing enough of the time to keep her House seat safe, but for every respectable performance on Fox News, there’s a call to armed rebellion or paranoid shouting about how some Democrat or another wants her dead. For now it seems that they are keeping her marginalized, limiting her to preaching to the choir on Hannity or being let out in public closely leashed to Sarah Palin. And there’s no telling whether she has it in her to polish up her act enough to convince the mainstream she’s not a nutcase.

Watch the segment below:

Beck’s latest grumble after a week away — other than the fact the country apparently went nuts while he was off the air — is Net Neutrality and the FCC hearing that is taking place this week regarding the latest Net Neutrality bill that is making its way through Congress. According to Beck, however, the world has as much freedom of Internet speech as it could ever hope for (cue basement blogger trope), and the people who think it’s a good idea that the government enforce some of restrictions on internet providers so that they themselves can’t restrict what users can access and/or jack prices up for that access, are clearly Marxists. CLEARLY. Marxists who are trying to stifle free speech by attempting to make sure you don’t have to pay extra for access to it. Admittedly, when read by Glenn Beck the words of Free Press founder Robert McChesney do sound a rather, um, revolutionary. At this point, though, I think it’s pretty clear that Beck could make the phone book sound secretly Maoist.

It should probably be noted the person who “alerted” Glenn Beck to this hearing was Phil Kerpen vice president of the group Americans For Prosperity. In light of the name you will likely not be surprised to hear that the group would prefer the market to be in control of the “neutrality” of the Internet. Video below.

The branding at work in the name of the The Internet Freedom Act is impressive, but the bill is aimed at preventing the government regulation from affecting corporate Internet strategy. From McCain’s Press Office:

“Today I’m pleased to introduce ‘The Internet Freedom Act of 2009’ that will keep the Internet free from government control and regulation,” said Senator John McCain. “It will allow for continued innovation that will in turn create more high-paying jobs for the millions of Americans who are out of work or seeking new employment,” McCain continued. “Keeping businesses free from oppressive regulations is the best stimulus for the current economy.

Maddow broke it down like so: “The government says the internet should be free — big companies should not be able to rig the Internet for their own purposes. John McCain’s bill says they should.” And then she cut to a clip of McCain confessing his computer illiteracy and pointed to a recent report that identifies McCain as the single largest congressional recipient of campaign contributions from the telecom industry.

Because the term ‘net neutrality’ doesn’t readily explain itself, it’s worth saying that the recent debate raises the question of whether or not telecom should be able to control the speed of Internet access to favor themselves and their content. For example if a telecom company owns stake in a media company, the telecom company might speed up internet access to the media company’s content and slow down access to content from competitors.

Maddow raised these questions to Boing Boing‘s Xeni Jardin, who said simply “all packets are created equal.” Or at least they should be. Later Jardin added:

“Whenever there’s a fight on the Internet it’s always good to side with the geeks who actually built the Internet rather than fat cat telecom lobbyists … the Internet is a basic right, it’s a basic necessity, such a fundamental way for communicating and accessing info now. Telecoms shouldn’t be able to throttle, to slow down or to block our access to something that might not be in their corporate interest.”

Rachel Maddow discusses John McCain’s net neutrality legislation last night: