Shut It Down!

Here's a shock: some judicial activists are attempting to shut down our free speech by mandating that blogs come under FEC election rules.

Luckily, somebody's trying to stop it.

The House was set to vote on the bill that would exclude blogs, e-mail and other Internet communications from regulation by the Federal Election Commission.

The bill, if passed by the House and Senate, would stop the FEC from moving ahead with court-mandated rulemaking to govern political speech and campaign-related spending on the Internet.

Anyone care to guess which side is supporting our free-speech rights and which side is opposing them? Silly question.

"The newest battlefield in the fight to protect the First Amendment is the Internet," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling ), R-Texas, sponsor of the legislation. "The Internet is the new town square, and campaign finance regulations are not appropriate there."

Opposition was led by Rep. Marty Meehan , D-Mass., who with Rep. Christopher Shays , R-Conn., championed the 2002 campaign finance law that banned unlimited "soft money" contributions that corporations, unions and individuals were making to political parties.

For all of the whining from the Left about the Bush administration "shutting down freedom of speech" in front of 300 million people, they sure don't seem to like it very well when it's not to their advantage.

The ironic thing is that during the last election, it was to their advantage. Mooreon.org and the rest raised ungodly amounts of money for John LeKerry. So what are they afraid of?

Simple. They're afraid that we on the Right, being adults, are even better at organizing than the Children of the Left are, and we're not about to let them beat us in online fundraising again. So now they want to shut it down before their own tactics can be used against them. Freedom of speech be damned.