Last night CNN aired a story during the Situation Room highlighting two participants in the first round of the broadband stimulus.

The first was Hiawatha Broadband, a terrific rural broadband deployer in southeastern Minnesota. They interviewed a host of people about how the hardscrabble rural towns Hiawatha was aiming to serve don’t have broadband at all, and as a result their public safety is in jeopardy as they have no efficient way to communicate during an emergency. Unfortunately, despite the fact that they’re a poster child for the types of communities the broadband stimulus is intended to help, their application was denied.

Then CNN went up to Bretton Woods, NH, where RUS did find a project it deemed worthy of funding, namely building fiber to 400 skiing chalets. I’d been suspicious about this program already, but CNN put an even finer point on it: only 40 of those homes actually have full-time residents.

H.R. 3125, the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act, requires the FCC and the National Telecommunications & Information Administration to conduct an inventory of how spectrum is being used, by whom and how efficiently.

House Communications & Internet Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Rick Boucher, who co-sponsored the bill, said the new four-year time frame was “in recognition that the agencies simply need time in order to perform the complex evaluations that will undermine these evaluations.”

[FCC Chairman Julius] Genachowski said that rural, minority, low-income, seniors, the disabled and tribal communities have fallen behind in broadband, and the cost of digital exclusion is “high and growing higher every day.”

Other inclusion proposals include creating an “online skills” portal with free lessons and digital education, though of course that will require broadband availability.

The FCC will also recommend public funding for the National Telecommunications & Information Administration to support public-private partnerships for outreach and education and targeted support for senior citizens.

Now, Ars Technica reports, ICANN may be exploring the idea of .xxx again:

Two weeks ago, an independent panel from the International Center for Dispute Resolution said that ICANN goofed when it rejected .xxx. The decision was not a binding one, but ICANN clearly feels that the issue is worth reconsideration after all; the organization confirmed to the BBC that it would discuss the TLD again this week to decide whether it wants to move forward on it—again.

[I]f the government doesn’t clarify whether the grants are considered taxable income, onlookers fear recipients won’t use the money any time soon – defeating the purpose of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

When asked whether recipients would be taxed on the stimulus funds, the Treasury Department reportedly offered no concrete answer. Stay tuned…

In comments filed with the FCC in February, the San Francisco-based organization said the agency lacks the authority to issue neutrality regulations that would ban Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Comcast from favoring some forms of Internet traffic over others.

“Congress has not deputized the FCC to be a free roving regulator of the Internet,” the group argued in a filing that came as a shock to net neutrality supporters such as the intensely pro-regulation “public advocacy” groups Free Press and Public Knowledge.

“So while EFF strongly endorses the goals of this commission ... a limitless notion of ancillary jurisdiction would stand as an open invitation to future commissions to promulgate ‘policy statements,’ issue regulations, and conduct adjudications detrimental to the Internet,” EFF wrote.

Read the full Heartland Institute report, which also quotes IIA Co-Chairman Bruce Mehlman.