Comments on: Blog rolling? D.C.'s new spin on Net rules

CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh tells why government regulations for blogs put campaign reformers on the spot.

Mccain/Feingold

McCain/Feingold limits the opportunities of average citizens to band together and oppose "approved" politicians and issues.

Any attempt to stifle the free exchange of politic views on the web will guarantee those webbies will go offshore. What, is John McCain or comrade FineGold gonna put us all in jail for saying they are idiots?

Eliminate McCain Feingold and all restraints on free political speech so we can have a greater country.

Die gedanken sind Frei! Senators and don't you forget it!

Not quite...

I believe the so-called "whistle blowing" by Republican FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith is nothing more than pure partisan spin. The issue boils down to whether "in-kind" contributions count under McCain/Feingold-- they do not. So blogging about your favorite candidate is NOT the same thing as donating $20 to her campaign.

That Smith and his Republican colleagues say they can't tell the difference between those two activities screams hyperbole.

Meanwhile, as one earlier poster remarked, the conservative echo chamber is re-branding McCain/Feingold as something that "limits the opportunities of average citizens to band together and oppose 'approved' politicians and issues." That's backwards! McCain/Feingold is about limiting the ability of millionaires to have more say in the political process than you're average citizen.

And while we're on the subject, is anyone else getting tired of Declan's thinly veiled penchant for the libertarian/conservative side of every issue?

[declan00]

One "side" of every issue

This is a column, and it's intended to take a certain tone.

But you're incorrect to say that I'm siding with conservatives. Were you referring to my columns criticizing the expansion of the Patriot Act, criticizing the Bush administration for the Iraq war, criticizing the Bush administration for its deficit spending, criticizing John Ashcroft for his porn crackdown?

Time to buy new reading glasses, I'll wager.

[DeusExMachina]

Finally

Finally, someone outside the standard chicken-little, right-wing
reactionary nut jobs screaming about the end of freedom and
liberty, and the destruction of the world as we know it. There is
NO possible reading of McCain/Feingold that in any way
necessitates the regulation of bloggers, or any other individual's
online speech.
Declan's thinly-veiled cross-connection of points is smoke and
mirrors designed to misinform. The fact that Shays, Meehan,
McCain, and Feingold vehemently opposed an amendment
limiting the scope of the M/F legislation from encompassing the
internet is NOT the same things as saying that they felt that
everything online was suspect, merely that the simple fact that
a message was online would not exempt it. The inability to see
the difference between these two points, and to claim that
Shays, Meehan, McCain, and Feingold making this clear is a sign
of them running for cover, is absurd, illogical, and exactly the
Libertarian (as opposed to libertarian, which Libertarians are
NOT) conservative slant referred to here.
And no, Declan, he is referring to your tendency to knee-jerk
reactionary responses based not on logic or reality, but dogma.
And for the record, being against the expansion of the Patriot
Act, the Iraq war (when exactly DID Congress declare war,
anyway?) or Ashcroft hardly serves as a résumé of even-
handedness. The Republican Party, and conservatives in general,
are not unified, but split on these issues, with the radical
religious right and social conservatives on one side, and the
moderates and others on the opposite. In fact, per se, being
against these things is the only consistent stance for a
conservative, since by definition conservative means preserving
the status quo.
They are hardly a resounding example of even-handedness.

Oh, and BTW, if anyone is backing away from their original
positions, it is you, Declan. In both your articles and private e-
mail to me, you were quite adamant that regulation of bloggers
by the FEC was imminent. As the smoke clears and the picture
resolves itself, and it appears increasingly unlikely that this will
be the case, you increasingly temper the fervor of your
conviction of impending doom. As I said to you in private, just
like Jean Dixon, John Edwards, and Allison Dubois, simply saying
something with conviction and redirecting people's attention
when they start to catch on is not enough to make it so.