Blogs now to be subject to campaign finance regulation

By Aussiegirl

Get your red hot political speech out of the way now, folks, because come campaign time we are all going to be silenced now that a bill to protect bloggers was just defeated in the House. The legislation would have exempted blogs and emails from the abominable McCain - Feingold campaign finance bill, but now it appears we will be liable. This is something I predicted during the last election cycle, that after the elections we were going to see efforts to shut down political speech on blogs and the internet. It's not only happening in China - it's happening here too. We need to squeal loud and long to our so-called "representatives" in Washington, and see if they can manage to represent something other than their own fat self-interest in staying in power and stifling free expression and open criticism. This is no way to win friends and influence bloggers. Contact your state representative and find out how they voted.

Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | House Defeats Bill on Political Blogs

WASHINGTON (AP) - Online political expression should not be exempt from campaign finance law, the House decided Wednesday as lawmakers warned that the Internet has opened up a new loophole for uncontrolled spending on elections.

The House voted 225-182 for a bill that would have excluded blogs, e-mails and other Internet communications from regulation by the Federal Election Commission. That was 47 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed under a procedure that limited debate time and allowed no amendments.

The vote in effect clears the way for the FEC to move ahead with court-mandated rule-making to govern political speech and campaign spending on the Internet.

The bill's sponsor, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, said the federal government should encourage, rather than fetter, a phenomenon that was bringing more Americans into the political process.

``The newest battlefield in the fight to protect the First Amendment is the Internet,'' he said. ``The Internet is the new town square, and campaign finance regulations are not appropriate there.''

Without his legislation, Hensarling said, ``I fear that bloggers one day could be fined for improperly linking to a campaign Web site, or merely forwarding a candidate's press release to an e-mail list.''

Bloggers from liberal and conservative perspectives made similar predictions at a hearing on the subject in September. ``Rather than deal with the red tape of regulation and the risk of legal problems, they will fall silent on all issues of politics,'' said Michael J. Krempasky, director of the Web site RedState.org.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., writing Wednesday on a blog he recently started, said the bill ``is about all the folks out in the blogosphere. It's going to protect what you say. It keeps the hand of the federal government out of Internet speech.''

But Meehan said no one wants to regulate bloggers. He said he and Shays have an alternative that would protect the free speech rights of bloggers while closing the cyberspace loophole where a lawmaker could vote for a prescription drug bill and then ask pharmaceutical interests to write six-figure checks for campaign ads for them to run on the Internet.

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