Reading the Fine Print

Even that brave warrior, John Kerry, trembles before the great pajama-clad unwashed.

“… there's a subculture and a sub-media that talks and keeps things going for entertainment purposes rather than for the flow of information. And that has a profound impact and undermines what we call the mainstream media of the country. And so the decision-making ability of the American electorate has been profoundly impacted as a consequence of that. The question is, what are we going to do about it?"

Well. It appears that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has an answer. Since many others have long been on to the FEC’s attempt to expand the tenacles tenets of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002—better known as the McCain-Feingold Act--to blogs. While I did sign this letter for FEC Chairman Scott Thomas requesting an exemption for bloggers, Patterico thinks the letter should have a broader scope. He cites this portion of the letter,

While paid political advertising on the Internet should remain subject to FEC rules and regulations, curtailing blogs and other online publications will dampen the impact of new voices in the political process and will do a disservice to the millions of voters who rely on the web for original, insightful political commentary.

and responds,

In my view, political speech is speech at the core of the First Amendment. Neither the FEC nor any other government agency has any right to regulate it in any way. When my right to engage in such speech is threatened, my impulse is not to seek out a law carving out some exception for my speech. My impulse is to tell those responsible that they can go to hell.

Look at the big picture, folks. This isn’t about our precious Internet. It’s about the very concept of free speech.

What we’re seeing is not a crazy offshoot of campaign finance “reform” legislation. It’s a logical consequence of it. Something this important can’t be handled by legislation, and left to the whims of lawmakers and regulators. It is a constitutional issue, and affects all free speech. We must treat it that way.

Is anyone out there with me?

(Emphasis Patterico’s)

I think you may have a point, Counselor. Most of us--left and right--are in agreement that McCain-Feingold is unconstitutional, but I think that we were beginning to resign ourselves to its existence, which is reflected in the letter. You may just be shaking us awake.

So now what? How do we legally dispatch McCain-Feingold?

You’re the lawyer, dude.

(Thanks to Tim Blair and Charles G. Hill)

Comments

[Alnot]

Hi Julie, We need judges who follow the constitution and will rip the guts out of McCain-Feingold for just that reason. I cannot believe seventy percent of Arizona voters voted for McCain. I proudly stand with those who did not and will never vote for him again.

[Patterico]

I'll have something on this soon.

[Francis]

I suggest following the Samizdata advice and organizing a hosting service abroad, paid for and blogged at via a pseudonym.

http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/007329.html

The Junkyardblog also noted the problem that there is no way for a US judge to enforce this rule on Foreigners (e.g. me) so all you have to do is link to a post I make that links to the campaign in question.

[Persnickety]

Glad you posted this. I have a sinking, rotten feeling that there is only one thing to do: Find out exactly what the law is, then break it.

& it can't be one or two big blogs like yours - you'll get 'made an example of.' The feds can bust one or two big bloggers and have a domino effect. It's got to be thousands and thousands of little blogs. We won't make the news unless there are a bunch of us, but the sheer numbers of ordinary whatnots will, I think, have a more horrifying effect on the general populace than one or two large blog writers, who could be shoved off as 'one of those things, I'm sure they had their reasons for it.'

Blogs like - gulp - mine. So I suppose I will have to become a criminal.

I'm open to better suggestions!! but they have to work. Relying on our judges and/or legislators is obviously a false hope, else McCain-Feingold would never have made it this far.

[Persnickety]

I'm always a day late and a dollar short - Have you all seen The McCain-Feingold Insurrection?

[wayne]

I think a time is fast coming. A time that gets closer every day. A time when we as free citizens will have to make a choice: do we continue to allow ourselves, our dreams, and our lives to be controlled by the twin tyrannies of politicians (who are owned by special interests) and robed fascists who want to impose their vision on us; or do we follow in the footsteps of our Founding Fathers (before governmental pirates are able to take this right away as well!!).

If we wish to have the nation (to which God in His Love granted us when it was created thru His laws) we must soon exercise the very ideals that were enshrined when the second amendment to our Constitution (which the pirates have violated and are therefore no longer govern within its umbrella) was created. The ideal that if a government becomes a tyranny we have the right to remove that tyranny by force of arms.

Every day the pirates move closer to imprisoning us within a Socialist state the very likes of which Orwell wrote in his book 1984. Are we sheep to be led oh so willingly to slaughter by those who violate the very Constitution that they swore to uphold? Or are we the free peoples we have always claimed to be, wolves of freedom. The time is coming when each of us much chose to die like a wolf or to die like a sheep.

We have freed so many other peoples. It is time that we must stand up before God and liberate ourselves!!!

[Adam]

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