Michael P. O'Connor

My Life

Democrats defeat election-law aid for bloggers

Categories: News, Politics

Comments: 2 Comments

Published on: November 3, 2005

C-Net is running an artical on a bill in the house that failed. the bill was a good one, it would have codified that blogs are free expresion, and therefor immunize bloggers from campain fincance reform, the democrates want to regulate what is said on blogs. We might not be able to link to canidates, that we support, web sites.

2 Comments

Patrick Wagstrom says:

November 3, 2005 at 8:34 am

Mike,

The issue that many people had with it, myself included, is that it was brought up in a method that allowed no amedments.

Now, you’re probably wondering what sort of amendments could be made to a one sentence bill?

The issue is that while volunteer and personal style websites are okay, both parties are guilty of funneling money to bloggers to write biased articles (think Thune in SD and Howard Dean). Under the language of the law, this would be codified as permissible.

Thus, a campaign could spend lots of money to create thousands of fake weblogs and not have to declare who their really being paid for by. With the growing power of the internet, this is a bad thing.

Please familiarize yourself with the vote information and see that the motion was “To suspend the rules and pass”. Also notice that if the this bill had been presented through normal channels, it would have passed with a majority vote. However, the method of calling the vote required a 2/3rds majority in order to pass.

I can’t help but find hypocrisy in the republicans in this case for getting so angry at the democrats for using the rules of the senate for force a closed session, but then getting angry when they can’t suspend the rules.

In short, a good idea, but it was rushed. Most bills take several rounds to reach consensus, it’s part of the system. Don’t worry, it will be back.
Ken / WA3FKG says:

November 3, 2005 at 7:40 pm

Mike,

I feel the only REAL answer to this problem is to force ALL money transactions into the open. Let anyone who wants to give as much as they want to any person or party. But the record of who is doing the giving and how much has to be public record. Do I think this will ever happen? No. I am encouraged by the fact that most of the Harrisburg crowd is running scared right now but I don’t know if the public will maintain its interest long enough to bring about real change. Only time will tell.