On the Road to Regulation

Looks like the FEC may get their way and be allowed to restrict free speech on the internet:

Online political expression should not be exempt from campaign finance law, the House decided Wednesday as lawmakers warned that the Internet has opened up a new loophole for uncontrolled spending on elections.

The House voted 225-182 for a bill that would have excluded blogs, e-mails and other Internet communications from regulation by the Federal Election Commission. That was 47 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed under a procedure that limited debate time and allowed no amendments.

The vote in effect clears the way for the FEC to move ahead with court-mandated rule-making to govern political speech and campaign spending on the Internet.

The only good news is that a majority of the House does support the bill. Hopefully it can be reintroduced without the procedural pitfalls. But it is extremely disappointing to see 182 members of the House oppose free speech online. It will be interesting to see when the Library of Congress posts the vote total to see who did and who did not support free speech in this bill.