President-elect Barack Obama's transition team today asked key members of Congress to consider delaying the nation's switch to digital television scheduled for Feb. 17, saying there is "insufficient support" for the problems consumers will experience during the shut-off of analog signals.

In a letter sent to Capitol Hill this afternoon, the transition team said congressional action is needed. The action would be the "first step" toward helping consumers get ready for the transition to digital television. It also called funds provided to support the conversion "woefully inadequate."

Mercer Island High School's radio station, KMIH-FM/88.9, recently turned on an FM translator at 94.5 in Seattle, vastly improving the station's reception for listeners on the west side of Lake Washington.

That was one more step in a lengthy and complex series of moves set up to accommodate a move into the regional market by an Oregon-based commercial station.

Which brings up a question: Whatever happened to that station?

We live in a civil society – a place where primary education is freely available to all, where anyone can enjoy a walk through our public parks or down our sidewalks and freely drive through the streets. Libraries across the country loan out books for free – literature that you can read on a spring day in our parks or beneath the streetlights on main street on a warm summer's evening. You don't have to tip the firemen who show up at your house or pay for police protection – in a civil society, public safety is freely available to everyone.

We enjoy myriad services and resources that we don't pay for each and every time we use them. Yet each of these key facets of contemporary society was part of a new social contract, often adopted only after years of battle and turmoil to overcome a prior status quo (from private fire and educational services to for-fee libraries and parks). Eventually, however, new models are seen to provide such an enormous benefit to the entire population that we're willing to invest in ideas that lift all boats. We realise that, as a society, each of us is better off when certain basic services are freely available to all.

In the media coverage of the violence in Gaza, the voices of Palestinians are, as usual, absent.

The voices of the Israelis have proclaimed defense. Ehud Barak, Israel defense Minister was quoted as saying“There is time for calm and time to fight.” Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated on NBC news that Israel has the right to defend itself from Hamas and has the right as a sovereign country to defend itself. Outgoing U.S.resident George Bush told the Israeli government that the U.S. will stand by Israel. Our incoming President Barak Obama is refraining from taking a stand at this time, but when the commentator on this subject pressed his aid David Axelrod, he responded that Israel has the right to defend itself.

Am I surprised?