Get Your Hands of My Blog

My close friends know that while I respect Senator McCain, I have serious policy differences with him. And on one issue, I think he's full of crap.

Campaign finance reform.

He's not the only idiot in Washington to blame. Russ Feingold put his name on the bill as well. Plenty of folks in both parties voted for it, proving that stupidity is a bi-partisan exercise. Hell, the President I support signed this asinine law, on the theory that the Supreme Court would surely find it unconstitutional. Placing that much faith in Sandra Day O'Conner is a recipie for disaster, and we've got one.

Why am I so ticked off? The next place for the campaign regulators to attack will be the Internet. Check out FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith's interview with CNet, especially this excerpt...

It's going to be a battle, and if nobody in Congress is willing to stand up and say, "Keep your hands off of this, and we'll change the statute to make it clear," then I think grassroots Internet activity is in danger. The impact would affect e-mail lists, especially if there's any sense that they're done in coordination with the campaign. If I forward something from the campaign to my personal list of several hundred people, which is a great grassroots activity, that's what we're talking about having to look at.

Senators McCain and Feingold have argued that we have to regulate the Internet, that we have to regulate e-mail. They sued us in court over this and they won.

If Congress doesn't change the law, what kind of activities will the FEC have to target?
We're talking about any decision by an individual to put a link (to a political candidate) on their home page, set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet.

Again, blogging could also get us into issues about online journals and non-online journals. Why should CNET get an exemption but not an informal blog? Why should Salon or Slate get an exemption? Should Nytimes.com and Opinionjournal.com get an exemption but not online sites, just because the newspapers have a print edition as well?

Why wouldn't the news exemption cover bloggers and online media?
Because the statute refers to periodicals or broadcast, and it's not clear the Internet is either of those. Second, because there's no standard for being a blogger, anyone can claim to be one, and we're back to the deregulated Internet that the judge objected to. Also I think some of my colleagues on the commission would be uncomfortable with that kind of blanket exemption.

So if you're using text that the campaign sends you, and you're reproducing it on your blog or forwarding it to a mailing list, you could be in trouble?
Yes. In fact, the regulations are very specific that reproducing a campaign's material is a reproduction for purpose of triggering the law. That'll count as an expenditure that counts against campaign finance law.

This is an incredible thicket. If someone else doesn't take action, for instance in Congress, we're running a real possibility of serious Internet regulation. It's going to be bizarre.

Great. We've got the world's greatest low-cost mass communication medium ever invented, and the government can regulate speech on it, but only if it's political speech. Feel free to keep downloading as much porn as you like (even in libraries) because the First Amendment is absolute... except for political speech.

What's funny is that more people get worked up about the FCC banning Janet Jackson's nipple than this egregious law. Michelle Malkin has a great set of links on her site regarding this issue, which is one where right-wing and left-wing bloggers should unite. Instapundit also has some links, including this appropriately titled post from Professor Bainbridge...

Yet, the oddity of campaign finance regulation is that we have ended up in a place in which pornographers apparently have greater constitutional protection than political bloggers. It's like we live in the First Amendment's Bizzaro World.

You can email John McCain here and Russ Feingold here. Please let them know that some of us still believe in free speech.

I don't think that's going to get the job done. But feel free to also register your feelings with the FEC at Federal Election Commission, 999 E Street, NW, Washington, DC 20463 [(800) 424-9530]. Captain Ed summarizes the situation nicely...

The FEC, thanks to a John McCain lawsuit, will have to calculate the value of a link on a political website in order to determine whether the owner has overdonated to a campaign -- in other words, committed a felony. Bigger blogs will come under closer scrutiny, which means that any expression of support on CQ with a referential hyperlink may well get valued at more than the $2,000 maximum hard-cash contribution.

In order for me to operate under those conditions, I will need to hire a lawyer and an accountant to guide me through the election laws and calculate my in-kind donations on almost an hourly basis. How many bloggers will put up with that kind of hassle just to speak their minds about candidates and issues? John McCain and Russ Feingold have effectively created an American bureaucracy dedicated to stamping out independent political speech, and the courts have abdicated all reason in declaring it constitutional.

You know, for months I've read how some people think Bush won the Presidential election by distracting people with a topic like gay marriage when the real issues were the war in Iraq and the economy. The numbers don't bare this out, but it's entertaining speculation regardless. But here's one thing we should consider... while everyone else focuses in on the supposed First Amendment dangers posed by the FCC crackdown, we're distracted from the true danger to free speech posed by overzealous campaign finance regulation.