WASHINGTON – The federal agency that monitors gun sales wants weapons dealers near the Mexican border to start reporting multiple sales of high-powered rifles, according to a notice published in the Federal Register.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has asked the White House budget office to approve an emergency request requiring border-area gun dealers to report the sales of two or more rifles to the same customer within a five-day period.

The emergency request, published Friday in the Federal Register, is likely to face stiff opposition from gun rights advocates, including the National Rifle Association. ATF wants the Office of Budget Management to approve the request by Jan. 5.

Tomorrow morning the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will mark the winter solstice by taking an unprecedented step to expand government’s reach into the Internet by attempting to regulate its inner workings. In doing so, the agency will circumvent Congress and disregard a recent court ruling.

Nothing is broken that needs fixing, however. The Internet has been open and freedom-enhancing since it was spun off from a government research project in the early 1990s. Its nature as a diffuse and dynamic global network of networks defies top-down authority. Ample laws to protect consumers already exist. Furthermore, the Obama Justice Department and the European Commission both decided this year that net-neutrality regulation was unnecessary and might deter investment in next-generation Internet technology and infrastructure.

Analysts and broadband companies of all sizes have told the FCC that new rules are likely to have the perverse effect of inhibiting capital investment, deterring innovation, raising operating costs, and ultimately increasing consumer prices. Others maintain that the new rules will kill jobs. By moving forward with Internet rules anyway, the FCC is not living up to its promise of being “data driven” in its pursuit of mandates—i.e., listening to the needs of the market.

Still feeling quixotic pressure to fight an imaginary problem, the FCC leadership this fall pushed a small group of hand-picked industry players toward a “choice” between a bad option (broad regulation already struck down in April by the D.C. federal appeals court) or a worse option (phone monopoly-style regulation). Experiencing more coercion than consensus or compromise, a smaller industry group on Dec. 1 gave qualified support for the bad option. The FCC’s action will spark a billable-hours bonanza as lawyers litigate the meaning of “reasonable” network management for years to come. How’s that for regulatory certainty?

To date, the FCC hasn’t ruled out increasing its power further by using the phone monopoly laws, directly or indirectly regulating rates someday, or expanding its reach deeper into mobile broadband services. The most expansive regulatory regimes frequently started out modest and innocuous before incrementally growing into heavy-handed behemoths.

Setting the stage for a major social change, the Senate voted Saturday to overturn the military’s policy banning openly gay and lesbian troops, know as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” sending the repeal to President Obama for his signature.

The 65-31vote, with eight Republicans joining Democrats, marks the beginning of the end for the 17-year-old policy, though the Pentagon and White House will need to make certain certifications before the ban officially is repealed.

Senate Democrats conceded defeat Thursday and pulled their $1.1 trillion spending bill loaded with earmarks from the chamber floor, stymied by Republicans who unified to block the massive bill in the final days of a contentious session of Congress.

Angered at what happened, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said nine Republicans, who had earlier promised to vote for the bill, had withdrawn their support in the last 24 hours. And he berated fellow lawmakers for ceding spending authority to the executive branch.

But Republicans said one lesson they learned from last month’s election that big spending bills – in this case, a 1,924-page measure Democrats produced just two days earlier – shouldn’t be jammed through the chamber with short-circuited debate.

That had marked a reversal from earlier this year, when Mr. Obama had decried pork-laden bills and had even vowed to veto a bill that included funding for an alternate production line for an engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter – both of which were included in the spending bill.

That’s our job. That’s what we’re supposed to do,” Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, said as he chastised fellow senators who, while having requested pork-barrel spending earlier this year, are now decrying their inclusion in the spending bill.

Mr. Reid challenged those senators to voluntarily agree to strip their own earmarks out of the bill, and said so far, nobody has taken him up on that.

Earmarks are just one of the fights that have broken out over the 1,924-page spending bill, which Democrats unveiled this week and have said they’ll soon push to have lawmakers vote on.

As of noon, official copies of the bill were still not available in the Senate’s document room, though versions were available online and in the Congressional Record.