The law of unintended consequences

McCain-Feingold meant to regulate campaign financing could now be used to regulate political blogging.

It don't matter, left or right or in between we have a freedom in this country to speak our political views. The finance law was bad when it was passed and could possibly get worse. I'll continue speaking my mind here. So should Moulitsas Zuniga at yahoo news article. First let me say that Ms. Theimer shows her bias right off the bat. Not everyone, and I doubt even a majority of bloggers on the internet is anti-establishment. Wake up and smell the 21st century.

WASHINGTON - Bloggers who built their Internet followings with anti-establishment prose are now lobbying the establishment to protect their livelihoods from federal regulations.

Some are even working with lawyers, public relations consultants and a political action committee to do it.

"I like to think of myself as just a guy with a blog, but it's clear that 'just a guy with a blog' is different today than it was when I started three years ago," said Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of the Web log www.DailyKos.com. "One sign of having arrived is when government regulators start wanting to poke their fingers into what you do."

Moulitsas testified Tuesday at a hearing on a Federal Election Commission proposal that would extend some campaign finance rules to the Internet, including bloggers. He urged the FEC to take a hands-off approach.

"Anybody can participate. Anybody can have a voice. And any regulation that potentially chills that participation, I think, is a net detriment to the medium," Moulitsas said.

Moulitsas also is working with a lawyer who volunteered to help bloggers fight new government regulations and whose efforts were promoted in a PR firm press release Monday. He is prepared to lobby Congress himself if necessary, and he is the treasurer of BlogPac, a political action committee formed last year by bloggers.

Michael Krempasky, founder of RedState.org, said the FEC should treat bloggers like traditional media and exempt them from campaign finance regulation.

"What goal would be served by protecting Rush Limbaugh's multimillion-dollar talk radio program, but not a self-published blogger with a fraction of the audience?" Krempasky asked during his appearance before the commission.

Duncan Black — who founded the www.atrios.blogspot.com blog — featured a headline Monday on his Web site, "Bite me, Congressman," that linked to criticism of a Republican House committee chairman over global warming.

Asked whether the use of hearing testimony and PACs is a sign that bloggers are succumbing to mainstream political techniques, Black said he and his colleagues have no choice.

"I think once you do achieve a certain degree of traffic, influence, notoriety — however you want to call it — eventually the outsider label is not perfectly applicable anymore," said Black, who describes himself as a "recovering economist." He too planned to testify before the FEC.

Federal election officials until now have steered clear of Internet oversight, siding with bloggers and other online activists who portray the Web as a laboratory of grass-roots political participation and an outlet for free speech that should develop unhampered by the government.

But online political activity has become increasingly more sophisticated since the FEC last examined it a few elections ago.

Since the 2000 presidential campaign, when Arizona Sen. John McCain made a splash by raising millions online, candidates have raised tens of millions of dollars, and online political ads, consultants and organizing have become commonplace. Political parties and campaigns have added blogging to their Web sites.