Keep the Internet free

The FEC continues to try and piece together a set of rules to regulate political speech on the internet, particularly to limit the free speech of bloggers.This is all because some federal judge some how decided that McCain-Feingold requires it. Finally congress has gotten off their collective dead asses and decided to take some action to protect free political speech on the net.

Source

"The Federal Election Commission is busily working on new rules to regulate political speech on the Internet - not because it particularly wants to, but because a federal judge ruled that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act made such rules mandatory. Now it's up to Congress to set matters straight."

Some times you just have to wonder how some of these judges find things in laws that are not specifically there.

"The FEC's proposed rules - you can read them at here - would entangle potentially millions of people who write about politics on the Web in miles of red tape. They would be a nightmare to administer - not to mention the fact that suppressing political debate during a campaign is a bad idea."

The FEC proposed rules are in the pdf format. As with any government regulation, it is very convoluted and a mess to try and administer. Of course, it has been my opinion that both McCain-Feingold and these proposed rules are unconstitutional assaults on free speech. Now it would appear that the American people were duped on campaign finance reform. See this post.

"To address the court's concern, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has introduced a bill that says public communication "shall not include communications over the Internet." Regulation of the Internet, Reid said, "would blunt its tremendous potential, discourage broad political involvement in our nation and diminish our representative democracy."

A Texas Republican, Jeb Hensarling, has introduced the same measure in the U.S. House. This is truly a bipartisan measure that Congress should approve quickly."

Once again, it is time to put pressure on our representatives in Congress to get this legislation approved. At the same time, we should demand that Congress launch an investigation into how eight liberal/leftist groups and George Soros managed to frauduently foist McCain-Feingold on us. - Sailor