Campaign Finance Reform Act
|
The Federal Election Commission has decided that they have the power to regulate political speech, including bloggers. Apparently the First Amendment isn't on their radar screen. Declan McCullagh broke the story and Captain's Quarters has more details. The decision to do defecate upon the Bill of Rights comes to us by a complicated path. The original bill (the so-called Campaign Finance Reform Act) was written by Senators McCain (RINO) and Feingold. In the 2000 campaign, Bush promised to veto the bill, but once in office reversed himself and signed it. The bill was fast-tracked to the Supreme Court. No one seriously expected it would survive. In a world where penumbras and chilling effects receive Constitutional deference, how could legislation that blatantly violated the First Amendment survive a Supreme Court review? Nevertheless, it did. After the FEC declined to regulate internet speech in the 2002 and 2004 campaigns, Senator McCain filed a lawsuit demanding that the FEC regulate internet speech on top of everything else. Clinton appointee Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the exclusion of internet communications severely undermines the purpose of the law, thus requiring the FEC to regulate political speech on the internet. The three Republican commissioners wanted to appeal the decision. The three Democratic commissioners refused to allow an appeal. And that is how we got stuck with this steaming pile of unConstitutional bullshit. Do you run a political blog? Do you link to candidate's websites or post information on your weblog which they provided to you, perhaps via a mailing list or on their own webpage? Do you carefully account for the value of these "contributions" to those campaigns? Do you stop using their material, or providing links to their campaign websites, if your contributions exceed the legal maximum? If you don't, you too can become acquainted with Federal prison. Well, I've been mad as hell about this law ever since it was passed. And now that the last gasp of sanity has been removed, and this law stands at the very threshold of affecting me, personally, because I do run a blog about politics, I have this to say: I do not intend to stop.You can take my gun and my blog from my cold, dead hands.I will not register my guns, and I will not register my First Amendment rights. |
Check the groups below and enter your email address to receive updates by email:
The trackback URL for this entry is: http://triggerfinger.org/weblog/servlet/trackback/6287
No trackbacks have been posted so far.