BILLBOARD: The Department of Justice will announce today that it will approve the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger after a nearly a year of investigation and due diligence.

REUTERS: Ticketmaster sells more than 140 million tickets a year and also owns Front Line Management, the leading artist management firm founded by Ticketmaster Chief Executive Officer Irving Azoff. Its roster of 200-plus artists includes The Eagles and Miley Cyrus. Live Nation owns major venues like the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles and the House of Blues chain, and has long-term contracts with top artists like Madonna, U2, Jay-Z and Nickelback. Although a relatively small combination in U.S. business terms, the deal has attracted criticism from artists, fans and politicians since it was announced. Some view it as a test case for the Obama administration’s pledge to get tough on mergers. MORE

BUSINESS INSIDER: The news comes a few days after the UK Competition Commission officially cleared the merger. The CC, an independent public body which conducts in-depth inquiries into mergers, markets and the regulation of the major regulated industries, concluded in its final report that the merger will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in the market for live music ticket retailing or in any other market in the UK. MORE

From THINK PROGRESS:

Sen. Whitehouse Reveals Secret DoJ Legal Memos: Bush Determines What Is Constitutional

[Friday] morning, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) delivered an impassioned floor speech to help frame the debate over FISA reform. Using his privilege as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Whitehouse said he has “spent hours poring over” secret opinions issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) — and he took notes.

Whitehouse is a lawyer, a former U.S. Attorney, a former legal counsel to Rhode Island’s Governor, and a former State Attorney General. He said he sought and received permission to have his notes declassified because he wanted to show the public “what the Bush administration does behind our backs when they think no one is looking.”

“To give you an example of what I read,” Whitehouse said on the Senate floor, “I have gotten three legal propositions from these secret OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note-taking could reproduce them from the classified documents”:

1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations. MORE

RELATED: What Is The CIA Torture Tape Scandal?