Some bloggers aren't taking the news well that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law may be applicable to bloggers.
I'm one of them.
A few things though. If the government ever feels foolish enough to do something like regulate or prohibit individuals from expressing political opinions online then odds are very slim they'd go after individuals. They'd be damned fools to try. What would be more effective would be to target ISP's & other companies that handle multiple bloggers. Face it; the government would have a hard time rounding up individual bloggers let aloe processing us. But threatening to make life unpleasant for those that provide out connections to the net wouldn't be a big deal at all.
They already do it with theft taxation. Most people have their taxes yanked from their checks by their employer every week. The IRSS simply doesn't have the manpower to go to every employee & oversee compliance.
They do it with firearms. FFL's are the channeling point for civilian commerce in arms so they lean hard on FFL's to make sure only approved firearms are sold. Much easier to send the BATFU after dealers (a few hundred thousand) than after individual gun owners (a few tens of millions) to see that those evil full auto's or suppressed or short barreled guns don't fall easily into our hands.
So if we were forbidden to write about politics it wouldn't be an enforcement action by the government against us. It'd be an enforcement action by our ISP's caused by the government leaning on them.
That's IF it happens. Things are still up in the air a bit. I wouldn't be surprised either way to tell you the truth. I simply do not trust government of any level with any task. But I doubt it would come to me barracading my door to make a few last posts before I start taking the bastards out with me.
Course that's no excuse not to be riled about the situation or to not state clearly the measure of our resolve. If you'll please excuse my inferior photo-shop skills I submit to you the following.
Use them any way you wish.
As I said I doubt it will come to door to door activity. It's simply not an effecient way of doing things of this nature. & there's a very good chance that enough hell will be raised to cause the government to think twice about stepping so blatently on the first amendment. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be pissed that they're even thinking about it. Write your congresscritters & tell them that they've gone too far & backing up would be a good idea for all concerned.
Posted by Publicola at March 7, 2005 08:38 AMSo now that your toes have been personally stepped on, it's line-in-the-sand time? M-F has been an affront to the whole country since its enactment, so where's the requests for your (and everybody elses) readership to write their congress animal and demand that the thing be scrapped in favor of something less onerous.
How about a "Take money from anybody you want, but report the amount and source on the 'net within 24 hours" law?
Billl,
Anytime it's come up I've usually mentioned that the M-F BCFR is an affront to the constitutional acknowledgement of free speech. But I'm a gun blogger mainly so I tend to concentrate on firearm related issues. If I tried to tackle all the things the government does that conflicts with either the constitution or natrual rights (or both) then I'd have to put in 22 hour days on this blog - which would severely cut my meager income to sub-sub meager levels in a heartbeat.
But I'd love to see the thing scrapped. replacing it with a "reporting the source" law wouldn't be cool with me either - as it simply isn't anybody's business where they get their money.
The sad part is that three branches of government have no problems with the BCFR so I fear that it's going to be with us for a while.
Posted by: Publicola at March 8, 2005 03:09 PM