April 13, 2005

Smokey the Blogging Bear

You can help prevent the small flickering smolder of the Federal Election Commission's move toward regulating political speech on the Internet from exploding into a raging conflagration of regulation, by calling your Congress critter and senators and urging them to support new legislation sponsored by U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, that would block the FEC from regulating online political speech.

Mike Krempasky over at RedState.org writes:

Today in the House of Represenatives, Congressman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) introduced a companion piece of legislation to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's bill (S.678) to exclude the Internet from the definition of "public communication" in the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002.

This is a bill that deserves bipartisan support, and it's exciting to see it off to a good start.

In short - if this bill passes both houses and becomes law in the next 50 or-so days, the disastrous FEC rulemaking process will be rendered moot. Remember, the FEC is only creating regulations for Internet activity because Congress didn't specifically mention the Internet at all, and a federal judge ruled that even in the absence of specific direction of Congress, the FEC had to do so anyway.

This bill provides that direction, and creates that exclusion. It might not solve *all* the problems of regulation, but it's miles and away the best solution right now. I've already heard from some liberal colleagues in the blogosphere, and we're going to push this bill - and hard.

When Congress passed campaign finance reform in 2002, the legislation did not identify the Internet as a target of regulation, and rightly so. The explosion of new technology has done much to democratize our politics, encourage grassroots political involvement, and act as a tremendous catalyst for civic engagement across our country. With the emergence of blogs, the Internet truly puts the power in the hands of the people.

Unfortunately, a federal judge has ruled that the FEC's previous broad exemption of the Internet was impermissible absent clear direction from Congress. Within the next sixty days, the FEC is expected to finalize rules and regulations that could squash not only free speech and citizen activism, but could well impede innovation and technology – unless Congress acts now.

Today, I introduced the Online Freedom of Speech Act to offer that direction, amending federal election law to specifically exclude communications over the Internet from the definition of "public communication" for purposes of regulation. It will allow the growth and expansion of new voices in our political process without interference. An identical bill (S.678) has been introduced in the Senate by the distinguished Minority Leader signifying that this effort is not a partisan one.

We ought to embrace these newcomers to our political process instead of applying complex and chilling regulatory burdens. Please cosponsor this important legislation and help me protect bloggers and online activists from the heavy hand of federal regulation