Posted on 03/15/2006 6:44:41 PM PST by Jean S
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) yesterday postponed a controversial decision on subjecting Internet political speech to campaign-finance regulations, raising the stakes for today’s scheduled House vote on a bill that exempts all blogs, Web ads and other online communications.
The heated debate over a proposal by Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) to exclude online content from the “public communications” covered by campaign-finance law has engulfed every corner of the political world, splitting both Democrats and Republicans and pitting mainstream editorial boards against left- and right-wing bloggers.
The House Rules Committee scheduled a meeting late yesterday to determine the ground rules for debate on Hensarling’s bill, as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) joined Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) in calling for an up-or-down vote on an alternative plan from Reps. Tom Allen (D-Maine) and Charlie Bass (R-N.H.).
FEC Chairman Michael Toner has thrown his weight behind the Hensarling bill. The bill attempts to resolve a federal court mandate for clear congressional guidance on how the commission should apply the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law to the Internet.
The court ruled last year in response to a complaint filed by Shays and Meehan and supported by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.). The McCain-Feingold law bans parties and federal candidates from raising and spending unlimited “soft money” donations, which can come from any entity, such as corporations, labor unions or individuals.
A hopeful Allen challenged the Rules Committee and House leadership, including Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), to allow his and Bass’s alternative a vote.
“Boehner said he would consult with more people and listen to members and, I hope, run the House in a different way,” Allen said, “and I would hope a bipartisan substitute would be allowed.”
Two of the Web’s most famous blogs, the liberal Daily Kos and the conservative RedState, have trumpeted the Hensarling bill since it failed on the suspensions calendar during a November vote, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed for passage but snagging more than half of the House. The bloggers of Daily Kos, RedState and other online forums argue that the Allen-Bass alternative, which would provide targeted exceptions from the law for individuals and some websites, would force them to register as political committees.
Allen did not dispute that possibility. He noted that his bill would allow websites unrestricted operations as long as their annual expenditures did not exceed $10,000.
“They might well have to file,” Allen said of blogs as large as Daily Kos, “but that’s the point. If the Internet becomes more important, the types of financial abuses that occurred within the campaign-finance system in general” are more prone to occurring.
“We want [the Web] to become as free as it possibly can without undermining the entire campaign-finance-reform legislation,” he added.
Many Democrats, along with a pack of centrist Republicans, have echoed Allen and Bass’s concerns, questioning whether the Hensarling bill would encourage labor unions and corporations to take advantage of the online exemption and spend soft money on Web advertising. Pelosi issued a statement clarifying that her support of the Allen-Bass bill did not equate to a crackdown on bloggers’ right to free speech.
“I will not support attempts to subject everyday bloggers to Federal Election Commission regulations or silence the rights of Americans to go online and voice their opinions,” Pelosi said.
Hensarling, a member of the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), has enlisted a Democratic ally of his own in Rep. Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), a Rules Committee member who helped him circulate a “Dear Colleague” letter this week. Lofgren cited the support of Democratic campaign-finance lawyer Bob Bauer for the Hensarling bill, charging the bill’s critics with spreading the “misconception” that its aim is to roll back McCain-Feingold.
“It isn’t true,” Lofgren said. “There has been a lot of rhetoric on this, fueled by editorials, that is simply mistaken.”
In the Senate, Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has sponsored companion legislation to the Hensarling bill, and Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) offered the bill as an amendment to the Senate’s lobbying-reform package late last week.
Two fellow RSC members, Reps. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) and Mike Conaway (R-Texas), have written defenses of the Hensarling bill for their own Web logs. Seizing on the populist appeal of the Daily Kos-RedState partnership, Kingston titled his post “Elitist Media vs. Blogs.”
Progressive bloggers, meanwhile, were circulating an FEC comment submitted in November by three watchdog groups that have vocally opposed the Hensarling bill, citing the comment as evidence that the bill’s opponents want to regulate blogging as partisan political speech.
The comment, signed by leaders of the Center for Responsive Politics, Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center, urges the FEC to deny a press exemption to a liberal blog based on its work on behalf of Democratic candidates.
“These purely partisan goals may be appropriate for a political organization, but they do not qualify a group as a ‘press entity,’” the watchdogs wrote.
Too bad, too sad, too little and too late. I think free speech loving bloggers on both sides of the aisle will be working overtime to see McCain/Feingold and all such infringements on free speech thrown out by the Supreme Court. What part of the first amendment do they NOT understand? I mean, besides all of it.
bump! I know Powerline and Captainsquarter has been following this, asking the same question...
Between McCain-Feingold, the Kelo decision, and numerous gun control measures, the government has turned the Bill of Rights into a hollow shell.
Clearly, if campaign finance reform gets in the way of free speech, then we must get rid of campaign finance reform.
That sounds as reasonable as, say, restricting all political expenditures by any candidate to no more than $10,000 (or permitting unrestricted editorializing by major newspapers as long as their annual expenditures do not exceed $10,000).
This idea is the purest form of fascism this country has seen since the day Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated, and the writer calls its supporters "centrists". God help us if we ever find something that writer calls "fascist".
I wish Republicans were the ruling party in Washington.
"If"?!
Dubya choked bigtime when he signed that one.
If the President gets in the way of free speech, get a new President.
Unconstitutional, just like everything government is doing these days and for the past 50 years or so. But the SC won't throw it out. Watch.
I love President Bush, but I cannot for the life of me understand WHY he signed McCain-Feingold!
Sad to see them actively attacking the first Amendment.
Me neither. Only thing I can figure is it must've been a secret deal between him and McCain during the campaign. But I don't understand that either. That'd be like making a deal with the devil.
Is FR doing anything to support this bill?
"'We want [the Web] to become as free as it possibly can without undermining the entire campaign-finance-reform legislation,' he added."
"We want the world to have free speech and lots of freedom, as long as it isn't in violation of UN government directives," the UN added.
If the FEC ever rules that it has the power to regulate blogging, they will find out that it only takes a New York Second to move the hosting of a blog from the US to a jurisdiction that does not restrict the freedom of speech.
A Google search of "anonymous offshore hosting" give 454,000 hits. Some firms, such as katzglobal will hold your domain name for you anonymously, so nobody can find out who controls the blog.
When I was growing up, people use to say, 'it is a free country'. It's not very free when you have to host your blog in Panama or Hong Kong in order to enjoy the First Amendment as it was written.
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