I wasn't the only one ...

... to suffer cognitive whiplash from the abruptness with which the FEC Commissioner contradicted herself!

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?" [bold added]

This article, and, I am sure, the hearing it describes, are the kind of tiresome lunacy brought on when government force is arbitrarily unleashed against noncriminal activity. Nothing of any real substance -- like repealing all government regulation of political campaigns -- is discussed. That premise has been accepted and the whole thing is all about quibbling over such nitpicking points as: (1) Whether the FEC will wave the magic wand to make bloggers journalists, meaning "granted an exemption from campaign finance laws." (2) What dollar limit should there be on the expense of maintaining a blog for a federal candidate? And (3) Whether the internet could be treated like radio for the purposes of the FEC.

In other words, attending that hearing would be like being transported into some horrific, primacy-of-consciousness universe where bureaucratic whim trumps reality. You'd have to pray to the gods of the FEC to be reincarnated as a journalist or a radio host to live a freer life. (And then, in the latter case, hope that you weren't "reincarnated" at the same time as the Fairness Doctrine.) Your ability to act would depend, perhaps, on how well you prayed and, for certain, on the uncertain whims of the gods.

Except that the experience would, sadly, only be a concretization of the way things basically are now for bloggers, thanks to McCain, to Feingold, and, most of all, to everyone who decided to let checks and balances protect freedom rather than being men and protecting freedom themselves. Yes, Mr. President. I'm talking to you, at least while Ellen Weintraub lets me. Practice saying the manly Latin verb, "Veto!" a bit. Say it in Church-Latin for all I care. It means "I forbid." Use it some time.

Sadly, until McCain-Feingold is repealed outright, somebody will have to attend these meetings on behalf of bloggers in order to beg for whatever scraps of freedom the FEC will deign to give. My head throbs for those guys.

And if that isn't depressing enough, Instapundit points to a morbidly interesting discussion over at Red State about some possible implications of FEC regulation of blogging. Namely, how the regulations could affect people who blog using time at work or computer facilities at their place of employment. The whole thing is a good heads-up and should be read in all its gory detail if this describes your blogging habits even remotely. I'll put up a few samples here, with numbers added. Note that these comments come from a variety of people, some of whom may favor thse laws.

# 1. ...[I]f the blogger falls outside the safe harbor provision and a complaint is filed against the blogger, the burden will be on the blogger to show that (1) he was not prevented "from completing the normal amount of work" that he usually does during business hours and (2) will still most likely have to prove that his employer was not being lenient, which could get the business into trouble if it is a corporation.

For the blogger to answer this complaint, the blogger would need money to hire a lawyer. The blogger would probably also need a source of funds because his company would most likely fire him in an effort to show the company had no culpability for the blogger's actions.

# 2. Consider a professor at a private university, which is incorporated. He's at his desk all the time, often working on his work but often blogging about politics -- which his school encourages because it brings prestige and attention. Problematic? Under the law, maybe.

# 3. Corporations are barred from making expenditures on behalf of candidates through their general proceeds. So they shouldn't be able to circumvent those rules by encouraging their employees to use corporate resources (the phone bank, the xerox, the computers) to help preferred candidates, be it letting someone run off 10,000 copies of a pro-Bush flier or playing someone 80K/yr just to blog in favor of John Kerry.

# 4. Because in order to really enforce this, more organizations are going to have to start filtering traffic at the corporate firewall on Port 80. My guess is that rather than overburdening their already overstretched IT departments, they will simply say: "No internet weblog activity using work computers is allowed, period." Most employees will get the message and blogging will disappear from the workplace, even if it falls within the safe-harbor exemptions provided by the FEC. Employers aren't going to take the risk. What they will do is crack down with an iron fist

#5. I blog almost exclusively from work. Why? Because I have no work to do and I work in a service industry where all my hours are billed to one client regardless of the amount of work I actually do. And if I don't blog to fill up my time I am going to go slowly insane as my mind deteriorates from sheer boredom. (Doing nothing for 30 hours a week is a mental hazard.) I can't imagine that I am the only blogger who does this.

But my company has absolutely nothing to do with what I post on my blog except for the occasional diatribe about what a dumbass my boss is. (No names of course) So why should I be penalized for having nothing better to do with my time than argue about politics at work? Because somebody somewhere is paranoid that I might disagree with them and that someone else might agree with me.

And now I'm going to go home.

Whoever said, "Controls breed controls," was guilty of an enormous understatement.

-- CAV

Crossposted to the Egosphere