UPS has a great new television ad in which a woman refers to the "lunchtime line" -- that is, the line at the post office. She now avoids it by using UPS to send her packages.

Although I am usually the first to defend the U.S. Postal Service (contrary to popular belief, it doesn't receive any tax dollars; flat-rate postage regardless of distance within the US is still the easiest system to use), this ad launches a fair criticism to stake out a competitive advantage. And why not? At my local post office, the automatic postage vendors are almost always down, and a self-service station has been promised for months. UPS and FedEx should capitalize on this perception of bureaucracy.

This is especially true because the USPS is trying to have it both ways. It has the domain names usps.gov and usps.com. The commercial suffix (".com") is designed to distract the public from its status as a government entity. The USPS should not have been allowed to have anything besides ".gov." I'm not allowed to have ".gov" and pretend I have regulatory authority, so why should the USPS be able to pretend it's in the private sector?

The United Parcel Service TV ad assault is fair game. If the USPS is going to pose as a free market player, it has to take the heat that comes with it.