FEC To Regulate (Censor) Political Blogs

We know that the FTC wants to regulate Internet providers in the name of "net neutrality." Now we find out that language in the DISCLOSE Act would give the FEC the power to censor political blogs.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/18/from-banning-books-to-banning

Last week, a congressional hearing exposed an effort to give another agency—the Federal Election Commission—unprecedented power to regulate political speech online. At a House Administration Committee hearing last Tuesday, Patton Boggs attorney William McGinley explained that the sloppy statutory language in the “DISCLOSE Act” would extend the FEC’s control over broadcast communications to all “covered communications,” including the blogosphere.

The DISCLOSE Act’s purpose, according to Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Chris Van Hollen and other “reformers,” is simply to require disclosure of corporate and union political speech after the Supreme Court’s January decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission held that the government could not ban political expenditures by companies, nonprofit groups, and labor unions.

The bill, however, would radically redefine how the FEC regulates political commentary. A section of the DISCLOSE Act would exempt traditional media outlets from coordination regulations, but the exemption does not include bloggers, only “a communication appearing in a news story, commentary, or editorial distributed through the facilities of any broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication…”

So the blogosphere would be subject to content restrictions as set forth by the FEC.

Not good.


Keep in mind that most blogs are not financed by anybody. An informal canvas of Alabama political blogs a month or two ago revealed that the only blogger receiving money for their efforts was a newspaper reporter who blogged FOR THE PAPER. In all other cases, we do what we do on our own time... nobody pays us.

There is no "campaign cash" to monitor, here... but the FEC would nevertheless have the power to regulate our speech in the name of "campaign finance reform."

It's amazing how our government can make these arguments, in light of the following words: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech."

And yet, Kagan, PresBo's nominee for SCOTUS, argued before the Supreme Court that the federal government had the power to ban books and political pamphlets. So why not blogs, as well?