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Bloggers Exempted From Campaign Laws
MaceyHW writes "The Federal Election Commission ruled today that the only online political activity subject to Campaign Finance Laws are paid advertisements on a third party site. Today's ruling extended the regulations to paid advertising as required by a 2004 Federal Court ruling, but explicitly exempted all other forms of online activity: 'For example, the rule says individuals can use union or corporate computers or other electronic devices for political activity, as long they do it on their own time and are not coerced to engage in such activity by the union or corporation. Bloggers would be entitled to the same exemption from the campaign finance law that newspapers and other traditional forms of media receive. "There will be no second class citizens among members of the media," [FEC Chairman Michael T.] Toner said.'"
The tone of this post is misleading, making it sound like bloggers (online sites, actually) get special privilege. Nothing is farther from the truth. The FEC decision is that the internet community is to be held to the same standards as traditional media. This is a great thing, I just hope it holds. The FEC commissioners now get that the internet is just another media outlet, like print or television. In fact it is more egalitarian; the corporate owners of Gawker Media (for example) can't dictate the political bent of internet content the way News Corp. (FOX) or GE (NBC) can with their large-scale dominance of the limited bandwidth of television. There are hundreds of thousands of web servers on the internet, but only a few hundred broadcasters on both over-the-air and cable television.
No, they're not all okay, that's what McCain Feingold is all about! For example, you can make som kinds of independent expenditures (so-called "soft money"), but you can't coordinate with the campaign while doing so. Also, there are now limits to what you can do within a certain time period of the election, and so on.
But to give unlimited contributions directly to a presidental canidate or political party is wrong.
There are already laws that govern how much you can donate directly to a campaign (it's not a whole lot.) As for donations to the party organizations, why should giving money to them be different than giving money to any other private organization?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
The South offered to pay full compensation for all federal facilities with its borders. Lincoln and Seward strung them along for weeks, all the while planning to force the issue at Sumter in order to provoke war. Sure enough, in the middle of negotiations, an armed naval convoy shows up, in violation of all the promises Seward had made.
So the South took the fort. Shots were fired. Zero Yankees were killed. They were all allowed to return home, and did so.
Even after the event, and in fact throughout the war, the South was looking for peace and to buy out the federal presence in the region.
Looks like the shoe's on the other foot here.