If you haven't read Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens' (R-Alaska) explanation for his opposition to net neutrality, you're missing out on a deeply disconcerting perspective. He asked, for example, "what happens to your own personal internet" when someone else tried to download 10 movies at the same time.

"I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially. [...]

"They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes."

Now, Ted Stevens is 85 years old, so it stands to reason that he won't fully understand the Internet. But as Christy Hardin Smith noted, Stevens, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, "is in charge of the bills that, among other things, control the internet."

Stevens is not only commenting on key issues like net neutrality without understanding the issue, he's shaping the government's policy.

The audio is here. It ain't pretty.

-- Guest Post by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report