H.R. 1606 Due for Vote

Lots of Bloggers are voicing this as Blogsphere vs. Elitist MSM. That does have much too it. Though I'm more in support of it just to whittle away some more of the McCain-Feingold Political Speech Repression act. There is a problem with this bill being far too broad.

One bill, the Online Freedom of Speech Act, sponsored by Texas Republican Jeb Hensarling, would treat political ads influencing federal elections and transmitted over the Internet differently from political ads that are broadcast on TV or radio or published in newspapers and magazines. Internet ads would not have to conform to rules in place for "public communications" as defined by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), which banned most soft money in federal campaigns, the huge unlimited contributions from corporations and other large donors to the national political parties. The result? A gaping hole through BCRA that would open the door for all kinds of backdoor funding, through soft money, of political ads on the Internet.

That bothers me, but then, I thought it would be better if all political speech would require complete disclosure of who paid for it. And not just in the microscopic print at the end of a commercial or on a website.

So you'd think the blogging community would have welcomed a new bill, developed in consultation with the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a DC-based nonprofit with a long history of advocating for free expression on the Internet. This new bill, the Internet Free Speech Protection Act, is also bipartisan, sponsored by Representatives Tom Allen (D-ME) and Charles Bass (R-NH).

The Allen-Bass bill does not exempt all paid political ads transmitted over the Internet from the campaign finance laws. But it includes very strong language that offers much broader protections to bloggers, websites and Internet journalists than are currently in place under federal law, and that are not even addressed by the Hensarling bill. "We want to keep the Internet free," Allen told Roll Call. "We just want to shut down the possibility of using coordinated campaign money through the Internet."

I like this bill better, in that it's less prone to abuse. At least that's how it appears at present.

I suppose my largest worry is the glacial nature of congress and the likelihood that nothing will be enacted in a timely fashion.

Now let's see what comes from the political games.