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March 5, 2005
McCain–Feingold Outrage to Be Extended to the Internet?
Posted by Dave Blount at March 5, 2005 1:38 PM
This is ominous, to put it mildly:
According to CNET News.com, Federal Election Commissioner Bradley Smith foresees the application of the extremely ill-advised McCain–Feingold bill (officially known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002) to the Internet.
Apparently Democrats see freedom of expression on the Web as a threat, and want to shut it up before it can do more damage to their already sinking ship, despite the fact that new DNC Chairman Howard Dean is famous for his ability to raise cash online.
In 2002, the Federal Election Commission exempted the Internet from McCain–Feingold by a 4–2 vote, but last fall a judge overturned that decision. According to CNET:
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.
To give you an idea of how bizarre, it has been floated that if you own a computer, you will have to calculate what percentage of the computer's cost — and even your electric bill — go toward political advocacy. The idea of course is to regulate political speech by the unwashed masses out of existence, so that we can return to the days when reality was defined by liberal establishment ideologues like Walter Cronkite.
McCain's campaign finance bill is an absolute travesty. It never would have been signed into law if not for the irresponsible assumption that the Supreme Court would strike it down for being a blatant violation of the First Amendment. Its extension to the Internet would spell doom for the blogosphere, and give us the sort of online political discourse they have in communist China.
