Proving that the elves of Washington never sleep, the FCC moved to defy the DC Court of Appeals, which last month ruled that the FCC lacks the authority to impose ‘net neutrality’ on internet providers like Comcast. Whoever thinks Washington bureaucrats are lazy does not know how to motivate them: simply try to impose legal and constitutional boundaries to their authority. The FCC took less than a month from the time the DC Circuit struck down its authority over the internet to formulate a sleazy workaround, publish the sleazy workaround, and trumpet the sleazy workaround in the press. This from an organization that took years to shut off old fashioned TV and then delayed it several more months out of an abundance of caution. The important lesson is that Washington’s sleeping bureaucrats are best not disturbed.

As Shout Bits discussed regarding the EPA, the FCC is an expert agency. Expert agencies are created by Congress and then take on lives of their own. The FCC is generally empowered to interfere with all aspects of the telephone business. The FCC’s stranglehold on innovation is such that a 90 year old telephone must still work when connected to today’s network. Ever wonder why long distance calls are free on a cell phone, but not a home phone? The FCC’s rules effectively outlaw the kind of innovation found in wireless and VOIP services. Of course, the FCC wants to do for the internet what it has done to the plain old telephone.

For those who think the internet works OK as is, a little background on Washington regulation. As Shout Bits reported, in 2007, Comcast was caught secretly slowing down the traffic of its customers who were sharing very large files – bit torrent traffic. Internet content companies like Google manufactured outrage; while Comcast claimed that it was trying to prevent a small number of its customers from slowing down access for everyone else. Over a nearly two year (not 30 day) period, the FCC issued regulations to control the likes of Comcast, and along the way regulate internet content.

Fortunately Comcast sued the FCC and won. It is quite a mystery why companies sue regulatory agencies, for the outcome is invariably enough to make Pyrrhus shrug and go home. Washington bureaucrats never lose. Every time, when faced with court defeats they rewrite the rules to have the same impact without running afoul of the courts. The FCC has played this game over and over, rewriting the same rules, having them struck down, and rewriting them again. When ordered to rewrite an illegal rule, the FCC can delay compliance for years, tempting sanctions normally reserved for organized criminals. While Washington bureaucrats are indeed corrupt, Comcast seems foolish to challenge them.

Still Comcast did challenge the FCC, and won. The court found that the FCC could not regulate net-neutrality because Congress forbade them from doing so. The FCC’s response? The internet is no longer the internet. The FCC, rather than simply move on to other power grabs, simply reclassified the internet into a brand new category of regulation beyond the law’s reach. Even though nobody noticed, the internet was reborn this week into a third variety of service that the FCC hopes it can control.

What gives the FCC the right, on 30 days’ notice, to declare a whole new field of regulation? The true culprit is Congress that routinely abdicates is responsibilities and punts them over to the hidden gnomes of Washington. The result is a rule of man, not law. The FCC does not answer to the courts. The EPA can regulate carbon against the will of the People or Congress. This week’s FCC ruling on net-neutrality reveals more than the government’s desire to regulate internet content. The FCC bared its fangs and showed how much Washington bureaucrats covet their shadowy powers. If the FCC would make such a bald faced power grab over internet traffic, what might the new legions of Obama Care regulators do to control medicines? Congress must restrain these rogue regulators that limit prosperity and insult liberty with their arrogance.