The letter to acting FCC chair Michael Copps — signed by Klobuchar and Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) — doesn’t name iPhone, but the language makes it clear that the phone’s exclusive contract with AT&T is a concern: It asks Copps and the FCC to “examine this issue carefully and act expeditiously should you find that exclusivity agreements unfairly restrict consumer choice or adversely impact competition in the commercial wireless marketplace.”

At the committee’s hearing yesterday, Paul Roth, an AT&T president, defended the exclusive deals like the one they have with Apple.

Exclusive handset distribution arrangements encourage the necessary collaboration that optimizes handset performance and accelerates the delivery of next-generation features. They increase a carrier’s incentives to make purchase commitments and to invest in promotions, network improvements and special training of sales staff. They lower manufacturer entry barriers and serve as a key tool to maintain brand value. And, as an important form of competition, they encourage other carriers and manufacturers to do better, by improving their own handset portfolios or the prices, features and other characteristics of their existing offerings.

BoingBoing’s Joel Johnson says it’s an issue of consumer choice: Cellphone customers should have the option of using the phone they choose with the provider they prefer — say running an iPhone on T-Mobile or Sprint. But he wonders about the technical aspects.

“It’s certainly fair to consumers to have the most choice, especially when carriers have created a false economy to force customers into long-term contracts through the sale of ‘subsidized’ phones,” he writes. “But it might be sticky for the manufacturers of the phones — would Apple, for instance, be forced to make different models of iPhone that worked with other wireless standards like Verizon’s CDMA?”

That’s what bloggers and reporters have been asking in recent days. Well, on Saturday at midnight he was greeting union picketers with a hug and a kiss in the sleet in downtown Minneapolis. Video (and update) after the jump.

Franken’s Republican rival for the U.S. Senate, Norm Coleman, has been all over conservative radio and TV since a March 31 ruling that seemed to seal the former senator’s defeat in Minnesota’s election contest trial. On Tuesday judges will oversee the opening of only 400 absentee ballots — likely not enough to erase Democrat Franken’s 225-vote recount lead.

Franken, by contrast, has been little seen or heard from since March 28, when he told a gathering of young Democrats in St. Paul: “We will be seated — and by we, I mean we.”

But Saturday night, Franken was there when a small group of Communication Workers of America Local 7250 held an impromptu informational picket in the falling sleet outside the AT&T building in downtown Minneapolis. The occasion: Their contract with AT&T expired at midnight.

UPDATE: Walking with Franken under umbrellas were U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and Paul Begala, the CNN commentator and former aide to President Clinton, who that evening delivered keynote speeches at the DFL Party’s annual Humphrey Day Dinner at the nearby Hilton Hotel. (The event was not open to the media.) Obama himself headlined the event in 2006 (video and audio) and the young Franken campaign made a video for the 2007 event.

Apparently not joining the after-party stroll was the third keynoter at the event, Mitch Stewart, director of President Obama’s new campaign group, Organizing for America, who last year ran Obama’s successful efforts at the Iowa caucus and in the general election in Virginia.  (I’ve e-mailed the Franken camp to ask what Kennedy was doing in town with Franken.)

In a video shot by the picketers, it’s not clear whether Franken and Kennedy sought out the protest or merely happened by. (Franken’s downtown townhouse is nearby and, as it happens, Franken’s old show, “Saturday Night Live,” had just wrapped up on NBC.)

In any case, Franken and Kennedy hear out a union member’s frustration with negotiations and Franken gives her a hug and a kiss.

Here’s the video:

Franken has spoken at the CWA hall the picketer mentions — “7200,” the offices of another CWA local on East Lake Street in Minneapolis. Franken addressed an enthusiastic crowd there only days after winning the DFL Party endorsement last summer.

In 2006, for example, the company donated $200,000 to the International Republican Institute, a Washington organization where McCain served as chairman of the board. This was the year that, not coincidentally, McCain was also chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, the group responsible for overseeing the telecom industry.

Yet AT&T has wormed its way into policy and campaign issues beyond just giving millions in coercive, soft-money donations to McCain’s campaign: A total of 12 of McCain’s campaign advisers and/or staff are either registered as lobbyists for or served as an executive of AT&T. His chief adviser, Charlie Black, is the former chairman of lobbying firm BKSH & Associates, which has represented AT&T for the last decade.

In the case of McCain, such close ties have paid off for the telecom giant: As a senior member of the Senate Commerce Committee (he twice served as chairman), McCain voted to allow the AT&T merger in 2005, when SBC Communications bought AT&T for $16 billion. And he introduced a measure that would limit the Federal Communications Commission authority to review telecom takeovers and monopolies. As chairman of the committee, he also voted to ban state and local taxes on Internet access, a bill supported by the AT&T and the rest of the telecom industry. McCain won praise year after year from the industry for his support of bills that favored the giants but not the public at large.

It makes sense then that AT&T, the biggest telecom company in the country, will be the biggest party thrower at the RNC next week, hosting nearly 20 parties across the Twin Cities for Republican lawmakers. That’s because, with net neutrality a campaign issue, AT&T has the most to gain. McCain has vehemently opposed net neutrality, meaning that he thinks Internet Service Providers, such as AT&T, for example, can own and restrict content on the web.

To get access to such “privileged” content, users like you and me would have to pay for an expensive, multi-tiered service package. In other words, McCain wants to give his buddies at AT&T and other telecom industries major tax breaks (25 percent, according to his most recent tech plan) and the ability to censor and control content. Such a trampling of net neutrality would result in billions of dollars in profits for AT&T, which is in the wireless, internet, and satellite TV business and has more than 100 million customers. But it would mean consumers and businesses would have to pay a lot more for access, and even then companies like AT&T could block content, services, and applications.

Next week, AT&T parties will dot the Twin Cities day and night, its party goers/lawmakers lit up by the blue glow of their AT&T iPhones and telltale smiles. As the second-largest campaign contributor in the country, donating a total of $39.5 million since 1989, just ahead of the National Association of Realtors, AT&T is going all out for the shindigs, hosting one every day for various state delegates. And while it’s illegal for private companies to host a party specifically for individual lawmakers, it doesn’t stop the companies from courting them and schmoozing them. Here are just a few of the parties AT&T will be throwing for lawmakers next week:

August 31
Salute to the Screen Actors Guild at the Fine Line Music Café (10pm-2am)

September 1
AT&T reception for California delegates at Brit’s Pub (5pm-7pm)

September 2
Young Guns reception at Brit’s Pub (5pm-7pm)
African-American voter reception at Karma (7pm-10pm)

September 3
The One campaign featuring “A-list” musical guest at Epic (10pm-2am)