On the video franchising rules: while this is not an issue I live and die on, I wrote a paper on this (and muni wireless) for a conference on preemption. I had trouble coming up with good reasons as to why franchising should be done at the federal level, rather than at the state level or locally. I am certainly in favor of more video entry, hence why I can only be so upset of the feds move on this, but I don't see the principle at work as to fed/state allocation. The paper is here if you are interested: http://www.federalismproject.org/preemption/papers/Picker_Telecommunications_Entry_and_Preemption.pdf