When They Came for the Special Interests I Said Nothing Because I Was Not a Special Interest
The rare palatable George Will column today about the asinine Campaign Finance Reform that George “Split-Screen Republicanism” Bush signed on his way out of town last week.
The day after Congress passed it, The Post’s lead editorial celebrated the bill, which includes restrictions on political advocacy by such organizations as the National Rifle Association, which has 4.2 million members. Indeed, a number of senators and members of Congress cited the NRA as an organization whose advocacy they sought to inhibit.Below the editorial celebrating passage of the bill, The Post ran an editorial urging Virginia’s governor to support a gun control measure opposed by the NRA. So The Post editorial page that day illustrated the system toward which the bill that Bush cavalierly signed moves us. It will be a system in which the media exercise an unabridged freedom of political speech while championing successive weakenings of the constitutional protection of rival voices.
CFR has been a much-blogged subject. What’s striking is a naive lack of explicit self-interest on the part of those blogging.
Here is the question: Is your weblog safe? Are you quite sure some item you post won’t fall afoul of the “60-day window?” Think a thin-skinned politician or other complainant might not report an “offending” weblog to the FEC? Do you have a tip jar? Does the phrase “disclosure form” resonate with you? Oh it will, it will. Before you brush these questions off, read, if you haven’t, Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s recent indispensible item about “responsible blogging” and “officially-certified reporters,” and extend the shape of his arguments into the dimensions of McCain-Feingold.
Keep your powder dry and your budgeted contribution to the Ginger Stampley Legal Defense Fund in escrow.
