Earlier today, the FCC and the Justice Department ruled in favor of the merger between Comcast and NBC Universal, creating one of the largest media conglomerates in the world and setting an unadvisable template for one company to combine the power of media and the Internet.

Sen. Al Franken, who has been a lonely critic of the proposed merger, released a caustic statement on the FCC action today.

Two FCC Commissioners and one US Senator slammed the Google-Verizon joint policy agreement and strongly endorsed the principle of net neutrality last night at a hearing before hundreds of citizens in Minneapolis, giving the Chairman of the federal agency Julius Genachowski all of the support he would need to regulate broadband Internet, if he so chose.