I've got a cover story in today's Phoenix about the suddenly white hot debate over Internet piracy - a debate that has fired up the netroots and split Rhode Island's Congressional delegation.

The opposition to a pair of anti-piracy bills in Congress, aimed at blocking the illegal distribution of music, film, and pharmaceuticals, was already bubbling.

With the tide quickly turning on a pair of anti-Internet piracy bills before Congress - the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate - Senator Jack Reed has come out in opposition to the legislation. In a statement just released to the Phoenix:

“I am opposed to passage of this legislation as currently drafted.

The US Senate last week, in a vote that scrambled the usual partisan calculus, approved a controversial detainee policy - with Rhode Island Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse on a different side than you might expect.

The policy, which both senators voted for along with 15 of their Democratic colleagues and nearly every Republican in the chamber, would require the government to place suspected Al Qaeda figures, or members of allied groups, in military detention - even if arrested on American soil.

Ian Donnis over at WRNI chats with Senator Jack Reed, who remains hopeful that Congress, afte the failure of the supercommittee, can work out a deficit-cutting deal before automatic defense and social services cuts take hold in 2013.

Other observers have suggested that the deal will come after the 2012 elections - perhaps in early 2013 - when one party or the other can claim the upper hand in Washington and steer matters to a conclusion.

UPDATE: Chip Unruh, spokesman for Senator Reed, sends this comment: "This is an important issue. The senator always appreciates hearing from Rhode Islanders and takes their input into consideration."

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A coalition of local and national advocates for same-sex marriage have launched a campaign urging Senator Jack Reed to join the other three members of the Rhode Island delegation in supporting a repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Senator Reed's quirky housing fix lands on Time's web site:

There’s an old Lily Tomlin joke where she says, “Wouldn’t it be great if all the people in New York who talk to themselves were paired off, so it looks like they’re talking to each other?”

In a similar spirit, apparently, Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.) has proposed a solution to America’s foreclosure problem (i.

Senators Jack Reed and Tom Harkin demanded in a conference call with reporters this morning that the GOP take Medicare reform off the table in the debt-ceilings negotiations. From The Hill:

The attempt by Republicans to tie Medicare reforms to negotiations on raising the debt ceiling is "absolutely irresponsible," Sen.

Government shutdown averted, the next major battle in Washington will be over raising the federal government's debt ceiling. Republicans are threatening to vote against it unless Democrats agree to major spending cuts. The government, they say, cannot continue its free-spending ways.

A failure to raise the debt ceiling would lead to an unprecedented default that could have disastrous effects.

Senator Jack Reed issued his 12,343rd denial of interest in the Secretary of Defense post today. You've got to wonder when the national press corps will catch onto the trend. From Politico:

Sen. Jack Reed, a retired Army paratrooper who is on the short list of candidates to succeed Defense Secretary Robert Gates, said Tuesday he would not be the “one” President Barack Obama picks to lead the Pentagon.

The alleged $10 million kickback scandal involving a Rhode Island-based Navy official and defense contractor Advanced Solutions for Tomorrow (ASFT) has focused attention on campaign contributions offered up by ASFT to members of the Rhode Island Congressional delegation.

There is nothing to suggest anything untoward by members of the delegation.

Senator Jack Reed, who serves on the Appropriations Committee, is in line to become Rhode Island's first chairman of a Senate appropriations subcommitee since John Pastore. He's expected to head up the Interior, Environment, and related Agencies Subcommittee, with budget-writing power over the Environmental Protection Agency, national parks, and National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities.

A new issue of the Phoenix hits the stands today. And I've got pieces on Teach for America, the controversial program that recruits top-tier college graduates to teach in some of the nation's toughest schools, and the outlook for the Rhode Island Congressional delegation - in Washington and back home.

Of particular interest, I think, will be watching the trajectory of Congressman James Langevin, now that he's out of the shadow of retiring Congressman Patrick Kennedy.

UPDATE: Senator Reed's office writes to say that his bling is a West Point class ring. Here's a Wall Street Journal piece on the significance of the rings:

Yesterday the first class cadets at West Point, also known as firsties, changed from their drab, gray class uniforms to the crisp and seldom-worn India Whites, belted with the red sash that denotes a senior.

With President Obama under fire for supporting the proposed mosque and community center near Ground Zero in Manhattan, Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed played the increasingly familiar role of Democrat-with-military-bona-fides in defending the administration on the Sunday talk show circuit yesterday. From the Washington Post:

Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed is one of seven Senate Democrats named to a House-Senate panel that will iron out the differences between the two chambers' versions of a sweeping financial overhaul bill.

Reed, a senior member of the Senate banking committee, helped craft the legislation. But he enters the conference amid significant disappointments: