Hold the Mayo

March 25, 2006

Thanks for Nothing.

Bloggers are breathing a sign of relief that they have been spared from John McCain and Russ Feingold. For now.

The FEC has announced regulations for the internet that leave blogs relatively untouched.

The Federal Election Commission last night released proposed new rules that leave almost all Internet political activity unregulated except for the purchase of campaign ads on Web sites.

"My key goal in this rule-making has been to make sure that the commission establish clear rules to exempt individuals who engage in online politics from campaign finance laws," said Chairman Michael E. Toner, a Republican.

"We tried to craft a regulation that would allow the maximum amount of freedom for people as possible," said Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub, a Democrat.

Most bloggers, individual Web users, and such Web sites as Drudge Report and Salon.com are exempted from regulation and will be free to support and attack federal candidates, much as newspapers are allowed. (emphasis added)

How nice that the FEC put some thought into abridging freedom of speech as little as possible.

In fairness to the FEC though, the fault is not entirely theirs. The bulk of the blame for this goes to the Congress for passing BCRA, President Bush for signing it into law, and the Supreme Court for buying the load of crap that it does not regulate speech. The FEC is just following orders, which has never been that much of a good defense.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 07:30 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment

1 What I wanna know is: Where in Article 1 section 8 does the congress find authority to even consider regulating the internet? Someone had the idea, a few years ago, that every proposed piece of legislation must attach a written explanation of how congress has the authority to even vote on it. I likey that idea.