Officials at the Federal Election Commission hope to rein in all this free speech going on over the internet. Bradley Smith, one of the six commissioners at the FEC says that "the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over." CNET has more:

In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

Good luck trying to enforce that. Think of all the email spam and anonymous posting going on out there now. Obviously these six bozos don't know much about the internet, computers, or how they work.

What worries the FEC is that people who run websites are basically giving free advertising to political candidates. If I take a position one way or another and endorse a specific candidate who supports my position, the FEC considers that to have monetary value. If the value exceeds the contribution limitation, I can be fined or put in jail. Ha!

Certainly a lot of bloggers are very much out front. Do we give bloggers the press exemption? If we don't give bloggers the press exemption, we have the question of, do we extend this to online-only journals like CNET?

Here we go down the slippery slope, with the government trying to decide who gets press exemptions and who doesn't. What you should be asking yourself is what the hell the government is doing trying to keep people from expressing their opinions (online or otherwise). On the subject of speech, the First Amendment clearly states "Congress shall make no law. . .abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" Yet here we are with an arm of the Federal Government trying to decide how best to abridge freedom of speech and the press.

Of course the root of this goes back to the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Act which repealed the First Amendment. Smith notes:

It's going to be a battle, and if nobody in Congress is willing to stand up and say, "Keep your hands off of this, and we'll change the statute to make it clear," then I think grassroots Internet activity is in danger. The impact would affect e-mail lists, especially if there's any sense that they're done in coordination with the campaign. If I forward something from the campaign to my personal list of several hundred people, which is a great grassroots activity, that's what we're talking about having to look at.

Senators McCain and Feingold have argued that we have to regulate the Internet, that we have to regulate e-mail. They sued us in court over this and they won.

McCain and Feingold can bite me. I cannot speak for other bloggers, but if told to shut up, I will not. If my site is shut down, I will use offshore hosting. If I'm fined, I will not pay it. If I'm jailed, I will not go. They can have my mouse when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

UPDATE: Geek is circling the wagons.