Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, the longest standing Republican in the Senate and previously famous for his absolute idiocy in the face of technology - including making the stunning assertion that the internet is “not a big truck” but is in fact “a series of tubes” - has been indicted on seven felony counts of concealing more than a quarter of a million dollars in house renovations and gifts from an oil contractor:

The Justice Department accused Stevens of accepting expensive work on his home in Girdwood, Alaska, a ski resort town outside Anchorage, from oil services contractor VECO Corp. and its executives. VECO normally builds oil processing equipment and pipelines, but its employees helped do the work on Stevens’ home.

Prosecutors said that work included a new first floor, garage, wraparound deck, plumbing and electrical wiring. He also is accused of accepting from VECO a Viking gas grill, furniture and tools, and of failing to report swapping an old Ford for a new Land Rover to be driven by one of his children.

From May 1999 to August 2007, prosecutors said, the senator concealed “his continuing receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of things of value from a private corporation.”

Satellite Radio might finally stop sucking 98 dicks now that the Justice Dept has approved Sirius Satellite Radio’s $5 billion buyout of rival XM Satellite Radio:

The Justice Department, in a lengthy news release explaining its decision, said the two companies compete not just with each other but also with other forms of radio and entertainment.”The likely evolution of technology in the future, including the expected introduction in the next several years of mobile broadband Internet devices, made it even more unlikely that the transaction would harm consumers in the longer term,” the Justice Department said. “Accordingly, the division has closed its investigation of the proposed merger.”

The downside is, of course, that once Satellite Radio overcomes terrestrial radio as the new standard it will make music just like TV and water:one of those things that used to be free but now you have to pay for. Its cool though, I don’t really like music anyway.