March 3, 2005
ONE OF US IS GOING TO JAIL, YOU OLD FOOL. WELL, IT'S NOT GOING TO BE ME:
The coming crackdown on blogging (Declan McCullagh, Mar 03, 2005, C-Net)
Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.
Smith should know. He's one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, which is beginning the perilous process of extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet.
In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. "The commission's exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines" the campaign finance law's purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
Smith and the other two Republican commissioners wanted to appeal the Internet-related sections. But because they couldn't get the three Democrats to go along with them, what Smith describes as a "bizarre" regulatory process now is under way.
As we said at the time, George Bush who signed it and everyone who voted for CFR should have been impeached. It's anti-constitutional, barring the only kind of speech, other than religious, that the Bill of Rights is intended to protect. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 3, 2005 11:11 AM
And McCain is already brewing up new "legislation" to further restrict political speech.
This problem won't be resloved until the composition of the Court changes.
Posted by: ratbert at March 3, 2005 11:24 AMHow is posting a link to SchmendrickForPresident.com on a web site any more "coordinated" than scribbling it on a napkin for a cocktail party guest? Of would her honor want that quashed as well?
Posted by: Axel Kassel at March 3, 2005 1:39 PMEgomaniacs like McCain won't be satisfied until congress-critters have the same exalted (protected) status as the Justices currently enjoy. Of course, McCain goes further, because he wants to punish anyone who threatens his standing as a Senator. Wait until the whining starts when he flames out before or early in the GOP primaries. He and Kerry can go on with Russert and cry a river.
Posted by: jim hamlen at March 3, 2005 2:08 PMNon-starter issue if McCain is actually serious about running for president in 2008. While the bill might excite his supporters in the media who are mad at the bloggers for their actions in exposing press errors and outright frauds, the bill would unite both the left and right of the blogging community against McCain.
Uniting people as diverse as OJ, Glenn, the Powerline guys and folks like Atrios or Kos for a common cause could be called "bringing people together," but I don't think that's the kind of unity the senator from Arizona really would have in mind.
Posted by: John at March 3, 2005 2:45 PMAren't you glad that the supreme court is zealously protecting your rights.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at March 3, 2005 2:51 PMLike all reforms, when they fail the solution is always more of the same because the first didn't go far enough. Only this time it'll be bigger and faster and harder and better and stiffer penalties and a greatly expanded budget for enforcement and implementation. What was that definiton of insanity again?
As for the Supreme Court , it only "zealously protect[s] your rights" when these rights are found in enanations and penumbras of a Living Constitution consisting of only the 9th Amendment. When they are spelled out in easliy understood English in the actual document, that's when they find it trivial to ignore them.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at March 3, 2005 3:59 PM