It's never good when a key member of Congress makes a negative comment about a merger, especially when it is aimed at the Justice Department and FCC.

Sen. Herb Kohl, the chairman of the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee, said that the merger of Sirius (NASDAQ: SIRI) and XM (NASDAQ: XMSR) would create a monopoly [subscription], plain and simple. In a letter to the two agencies he wrote that the combination "would cause substantial harm to competition and consumers, would be contrary to antitrust law and not in the public interest."

This is not the end of the merger, but it may be the beginning of the end. XM recently took its morning hosts, Opie and Anthony, off the air for lewd remarks. The move may have been taken so that the FCC would not feel that the merger would open the door to a business supported by off-color programming. Howard Stern, the shock jock, is the morning host at Sirius.

Sirius is still a fairly small business with big debts, In the last quarter, it had revenue of $204 million, slightly below Wall St. estimates. The company has over $1 billion in debt.

In other words, it may need the merger to stay viable.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Some BloggingStocks readers have been kind enough to comment on my blog post regarding the tax protest undertaken by Mr. and Mrs. Brown of New Hampshire. It seems to me that in light of the many ways in which our government has mishandled issues with its citizen over the last several decades, the issue of taxation should be taking more of a front seat. Not a one of us enjoys paying taxes, but most all of us agree that they are a necessary evil. Many of us see serious inequities and abuses in the system. I'll clarify some of my positions on the subject and I'll certainly provide some fuel for debate.

I don't disagree that the Browns have a right to protest their taxes in their own way, but what they are doing is, in my opinion, selfish, short sighted, ill-thought-out, and probably illegal. They are acting like the little child who hurls insults at the boogie man from under the covers. They buttress their actions by claiming that the system is so completely broken that any attempt to work with it is useless. Therein lies my reason for suggesting they should go elsewhere. There are a hundred ways that the Browns could stage an open, effective, and legal protest. They, however, have chosen to hide themselves in protest. In my opinion, they are shameful, loud-mouthed cowards.

Does our government overtax us? You damn bet they do. When hard-working citizens reach a certain income level, their governmental tax load is between 30% and 40% of their income. It approaches 50% if you add in all the permits, licenses, user fees, and a host of other city, county, and state hidden payouts. To me this is completely unacceptable. I've been saying for quite some time that, if you consider that our incomes start with a finite 100% and the governments keep taking one additional percent after another, how long will it be before we no longer have the funds to effectively operate as a public? Even more upsetting to me than the amounts of the funds taken is the fact that we have little to no say in how that money is spent. Taxation without (effective) representation? It wouldn't be too hard to argue that such is the case.