TechBytes

A Tennessee legislative proposal would allow pole attachment rates to rise radically—effectively creating a broadband tax—to 371 percent of the national average. Justification for such a stunning increase is scant, since the electric company’s costs do not increase because of the pole attachments.

Doctors are increasingly seeing patients via computers or mobile devices, which may actually achieve some of the goals of health care reform.

Government has plenty to do without getting into providing Wi-Fi especially when the decision maker’s heads are in the clouds, and the taxpayer money is gone.

Though a Wall Street Journal story implies Internet-deprived students are resorting to McDonald’s for access, affordable broadband is available even at Dollar Menu prices.

Blaming video games for the acts of evil people is just a way for policy makers to appear to be doing something. Ironically, it’s games played in DC, not in people’s homes, that are most harmful.

The stuff of science fiction is now becoming medical reality as innovation, rather than legislation, improves the health care system.

Mark Lynas, leader of the movement against genetically modified crops, has embraced the technology and apologized for his misguided efforts.

Over the last few years regulators seem to have been handing out gifts to those they deem worthy even as they bestow lumps of coal and switches to others who have not caught their fancy, most recently in Kansas City, Kansas. Call it a regulatory Santa Clause workshop.

Last week state elected officials swarmed Capitol Hill to pressure Congress to support the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act. Congress owes the country an open, recorded debate before risking the United of our United States.

The U.S. will need to hang tough in the global debate about who controls the Internet, stay committed to its fundamental principles, and perhaps convince the members of the ITU that only a unanimous vote will change the rules so that a block of repressive regimes cannot force a change. If not the only option may be a disconnecting from the global Internet.