Regulating Bloggers

The blogosphere has come in for some unwanted attention from Federal regulators who are trying to figure out if the McCain-Feingold finance reform nonsense can be applied to free speech on the Internet. The regulators have already made a complete mess of campaign finance reform, with changes that were supposed to take money out of politics, but instead created the multi-million dollar 527 groups. Now they're trying to figure out how to prevent websites from providing "too much" support for a particular candidate or party:

Political bloggers on Tuesday urged federal regulators to keep the Internet as free as possible from campaign finance laws.

At a public hearing convened by the Federal Election Commission, both liberal and conservative political commentators lauded the brand of freewheeling online politicking that has characterized recent elections. The FEC is under a court order to extend campaign finance rules to the Internet, and the Democratic commissioners voted not to appeal.

Mike Krempasky, a conservative activist and contributor to the RedState.org blog, said he hopes the FEC will "ensure that no blogger, no amateur activist and no self-published pundit ever need consult with legal counsel." The FEC's 47-page proposed rules, which are not final, cover everything from candidate endorsements to fund-raising, bulk e-mail and paid advertisements.

Online politicking should not be subject to onerous federal rules, Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said. "We're all agreed about that." But, Weintraub added, "What is the best way for us to regulate bloggers?"

The best thing for them to do is leave the bloggers alone. Number 1, there are so many blogs now, and more coming on each day, it would be an impossible task to try and figure out who is supporting what, and what value that might have. Number 2, bloggers are pretty independent cusses and likely will ignore any regulation that comes down anyway. Given the numbers involved, only the largest of the blogs will be under the microscope - everybody else will keep on doing what they're doing.

Newspapers have an exemption from the campaign laws, and just because you print on dead trees, your opinion should not be considered any more sacrosanct than mine. Blogging is one of the most democratic institutions in the country, because anyone with a computer can set-up a blog and run it for basically nothing. There's no purer form of free speech.

Believe it or not, I don't think that everything in this world requires Federal regulation, and certainly not something that is as pure a form of political speech is as blogging. Let's hope they don't screw it up they way they have campaign finances.