Whatever one might think of John Ashcroft as U.S. Attorney General, he has a new gig now - lobbying against the merger of Sirius and XM. Which essentially leaves him on the side that believes that satellite radio is not in the same market as every other form of mobile audio - as idiotic a position as I can imagine, on this issue. I have nothing against the principle that every cause should have the right to an advocate, but equivalently there ought to be a rule that ideas that are intuitively, instinctively too dumb to see the light of day can be tossed aside without hesitation. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Update: On the topic of dumb, WSJ reports that XM has stated that before he flacked for the NAB against the merger, he offered to flack for XM in favour of it. The NAB says he didn’t tell them about the offer. Ashcroft, who lost his U.S. Senate seat to a dead man, and then became U.S. Attorney General as a sop to Shrub’s evangelical base, is, of course, pitching himself as an antitrust expert, and was (certainly!) not hired for his lobbying (nor apparently, his judgement). Naturally, he’s entitled to service either side of a dispute, as his spokesperson points out: “We are often in contact with opposing interests on almost every major antitrust issue when the news first breaks,” said Juleanna Glover Weiss, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ashcroft. “Working for the National Association of Broadcasters was a clear call for Ashcroft — there are simply no substitutes in the marketplace for the product XM and Sirius sell.” And his pitch to XM was what, exactly? Jarvis is right. This one smells.