Not that it's anything really new, but this week Obama’s pick to head up the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) renewed his calls for federal regulation of the Internet. In fact, The FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, promised to “enforce any violation” of their new, ill-defined (more) pro-regulatory principles. Never mind that Congress hasn’t passed any new bills in the area. Specifically, Genachowski is aggressively pursuing an FCC attack on Comcast for protecting its networks from being swamped by software overwhelmingly used for the sole purpose of stealing music and stealing porn.

Comcast has been fighting back, pointing out the FCC has no such authority.  Apparently that’s making Genachowski mad. Genachowski, like the Obama administration as a whole, is interested in the federal government controlling the marketplace and thereby whichever products are marketed. If Genachowski gets his way and the badly misnamed “net neutrality” becomes the law (or federally administered rule—what’s the difference again?) of the land, network operators won’t be able to turn a profit from their investments in infrastructure because they can’t manage their networks. Next step, private industry quits building infrastructure.  Next next step, government steps in to solve the problem it just created with public spending and the necessary control of networks. Now all your bandwidth belongs to Genachowski. Maybe Obama will make him Internet Czar.

Does this sound familiar?  It should.  It is the same strategy the left is using to drive private health insurance out of our health care system and set us on the path to a government takeover. First, states place unreasonable burdens on insurance providers. Next, insurance costs skyrocket. Next next, here comes the “private plan” to the rescue. Private plans won’t be able to compete or turn a profit. By default, government runs everybody’s health care delivery system.

Unless Americans are able to stop it, at the end of the day, both our health care and our Internet access are likely to be managed and controlled by the federal government. That’s a disturbing prospect in both instances.  One may mean you’re dead, but the other may mean you’re free speech rights are in constant jeopardy.

It is turning into a pattern of the Obama administration and it’s a playbook we’re going to see brought out again and again.  The “public option” meme is going to be the most predictable part of the Obama administration; heath care, energy, Internet access, even automatic compulsory tax collection (just wait till December). The Obama presidency is going to be known as the Public Option Presidency.