And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day—
Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s right about that threat to poliblogging that might not even really be a threat: Nathan Newman has the best take:
The FEC is making noises to limit the speech of blogs in the name of campaign finance reform. Josh worries that this “would mean the end of what this site and so many others on the right and left do.”
Only if we follow the rules. I won’t. Free speech is worth fighting for and the best way to do it is to refuse to be silent. There are a lot of bloggers out there and that’s a lot of people to throw in jail if they all pledge to defy the rules.
I think most campaign finance rules restricting contributions are worthless and lead to idiotic proposals like this one. This is a good place for the insanity to stop. The more bloggers who pledge to defy the FEC, the less likely they are to move forward.
I’m down with that. If we take this sort of naked moonshit lying down, then the Medium Lobster will have won:
Certainly the excesses of the blogosphere will now be held in place, but how can there be true campaign reform when the spoken word goes unchecked? Every day, millions of Americans make unchecked and unregulated political contributions by making political endorsements on sophisticated verbal logs—or “verblogs,” if you will—comprised of billions of currently untracked sound waves transmitted through the atmosphere. Until these words are properly tracked, counted, and restricted by the FEC according to the arbitrary limits of McCain-Feingold, American democracy will forever remain a prisoner of Big Speech.
Commenting is closed for this article.
It's easy to have a blog that violates FEC rules.
Just add this text: "Vote for Smith!"
In my case, my blog header has said "Andy Horning for Congress" for about a year now.
it is a very good article