I was surfing the Internet while waiting in the Columbus Airport to leave for my interview in Richmond with the IMB. I came across this news article today talking about "campaign finance reform."
The Federal Election Commission's announcement that it intends to extend campaign finance restrictions to Internet communications is generating plenty of hostility online, particularly among the Web diarists known as bloggers….
…Most of the FEC commissioners insist that they have no interest in regulating the political speech of individual Web users. In draft regulations approved on March 24, the agency says that the proposed rules are designed to "have an extremely limited impact, if any, on the use of the Internet by individuals…."
Most? Most?! "Most…have no interest in regulating the political speech of individual[s]…." What is that? What ever happened to an individual's freedom of speech? Last time I checked the US Constitution, it contained a thing we like to call the first amendment that said:
Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech
I don't get this. People can make smut and porn and liberal courts say "freedom of speech." So called artists can make "art" funded by our tax dollars and everyone says "freedom of speech." But the minute I stand up for what I believe on the Internet, only "most" FEC Commissioners would not want to restrict that? This is out of control. The freedom of speech is one of the basic foundational rights we need to have for democracy (well, a representative republic) to work.