In one of today's Supreme Court decisions, the court sided with the FCC by saying the FCC could decide whether or not high-speed cable internet services were "information services" or "telecommunications services." The FCC had previously ruled cable internet to be "information services" and thus unregulated and not subject to the common carrier rules that regulate phone lines (and hence DSL internet). A lower court disagreed with the FCC and the Supreme Court today reversed saying it was up to the FCC to decide because the statute was ambiguous. (If the FCC had decided cable internet was "telecommunications", then that would be ok too.)

Interestingly, Justice Thomas wrote the majority decision and Justice Scalia wrote the dissent (proving yet again that Thomas is not Scalia's lapdog as most lefties believe).

The NYT had this to say in reference to Scalia's dissent: In a dissent, Justice Scalia, wrote that the commission's ruling was trying to further a free-market agenda through "an implausible reading of the statute, and has thus exceeded the authority given it by Congress."

I haven't read Scalia's dissent in its entirety (here are the opinions if you want to read them) but I'm trying to figure out why the Times had to drag the "free-market agenda" stuff into the article. Scalia's point (right or wrong -- I don't know or really even care that much) is that the FCC misread the statute. Whether or not the FCC's decision was pro-free-market or anti-free-market was not Scalia's concern. His concern was the statute and the FCC's (mis)interpretation of it.

But the NYT never misses a chance to take a shot at the "free-market agenda".