• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, February 23, 2011

Former presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and three other Democratic colleagues on Tuesday urged the Senate leadership to reject a Republican-led attempt to vacate the Federal Communications Commission's new neutrality rules.

The new open Internet rules "are built on things everyone should support -- transparency of broadband service operations, no blocking of legal content and websites, and nondiscrimination against or for specific firms or people trying to communicate and compete over the Internet," the senators said in a letter to Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "In the wake of the order, the original investors in Google and Netflix, the father of the Internet Tim Berners-Lee, a host of companies, venture capitalists, and hundreds of thousands of users of the Internet expressed their approval."

Joining Kerry in signing the letter were Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.).

GOP lawmakers in both the House and Senate last week introduced resolutions of disapproval which, if passed and signed by the president, would vacate the FCC's neutrality order. Additionally, the House passed a spending bill on Saturday that includes an amendment blocking the FCC from using federal funds to implement neutrality regulations.

The FCC's neutrality order, approved 3-2 in December, bans all broadband providers -- wireline and wireless -- from blocking sites or competing applications. It also prohibits wireline broadband providers from engaging in unreasonable discrimination.