The eighth floor of the FCC headquarters is a quiet place. You step off the elevator, visitor pass pinned to shirt, and you fall under the watchful gaze of yet another security guard. The five FCC Commissioners occupy the floor, their offices ensconced within closed suites that house their staff and support personnel. The hallways themselves are empty, enlivened only by lobbyists scurrying past in groups of two or three.

I’m at the FCC to sit down with Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, a two-term Commissioner who has adopted as his guiding principle the idea "that the public interest means securing access to communications for everyone, including those the market may leave behind."

We cover the FCC almost daily on Ars, but what we rarely get is a chance to hear the Commissioners speak at length and in their own words, especially on big-picture items. How do they think about "regulation" and the role of government in tech policy? Can they truly make decisions based not just on ideology but also on facts? What brand of loafers do telecom lobbyists really wear? These answers, and a lengthy history lesson on the link between Internet freedom and the Stamp Act, follow in our interview with Commissioner Adelstein.

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