Can a company be both a crony capitalist boondoggle and a shining light of American entrepreneurship that will create a wealth of jobs?

If you think the answer is “no,” then you've never heard of Lightsquared. It's a small company with a big idea: using satellites to build out a nationwide wholesale wireless network. And it's currently pulling double duty in two opposing anti-Obama narratives.

It goes like this: Lightsquared needed a waiver from the FCC to build out their network of signal towers. The FCC granted them the waiver in January 2011 with the condition that the network not interfere with GPS signals. This became a minor outrage among conservative bloggers who claimed that the company obtained the waiver because of its political connections to the Obama White House, and the fact that owner Michael Falcone had made donations to the Democratic National Committee. They jumped on board with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and the surprisingly powerful GPS lobby, who argued that Lightsquared's proposed network would necessarily interfere with GPS signals. Words like “cronyism” and “boondoggle” were thrown about by Lightsquared's opponents, who demanded investigations.

However, the scandal mongering hit a sizeable bump when the FCC suspended Lightsquared's waiver in February, saying the GPS interference issue could not be resolved. Clawing back the waiver essentially ruined the company; it's currently running on a brief extension of already borrowed time.

But now, after months of attacking Lightsquared as a boondoggle intended to line the pockets of the well-connected, the right is attacking the regulation-happy Obama administration for shutting down Lightsquared and killing the scores of jobs it would have created.

Here's Karl Rove writing in Politico last night:

This will have consequences. Consumers will lose the chance to get better, cheaper wireless service. Owners of tablets, smartphones and other new devices won't get faster downloads and greater bandwidth. The country would miss out on a valuable infrastructure improvement based on cutting-edge technology. Thousands of workers in construction, steel, transportation and other industries won't get work, along with the good paychecks that a privately funded $14 billion project like this generates.

Why? Because the Obama administration, which first endorsed and encouraged LightSquared, has now reversed course and gutted it.

Given that this is the slowest, most anemic recovery from any recession since World War II, you might expect the administration to be eager to encourage companies to invest in creating jobs, making the economy more productive and increasing economic growth.

And here's Grover Norquist and Kelly William Cobb writing for Fox News in March:

This is a case of anti-free market regulatory capture, where GPS companies and the federal agencies they do business with coordinated to stop LightSquared, as e-mails between Defense Department officials recently revealed. The GPS industry even teamed up with bureaucrats in the Pentagon and other departments to leak a preliminary report on interference issues solely to undermine LightSquared.

Government should not pick winners and losers in the market. Yet, in this instance government chose its long-standing, entrenched friends and business partners above a free-market and property rights.

Meanwhile, Grassley is still "scrutinizing" the Lightsquared saga to find out if the FCC acted as a “cheerleader” for what he says was “an obviously flawed project.”