Senator Feingold speaks out on the FEC, Campaign-Finance Reform and Blogs...

H/T to Jiblog for this, which apparently appeared first on myDD.com. Boots & Sabers has an excellent comment from Sunday, March 13 on Senator Feingold's letter. You can read the Senator's complete letter here at the DailyKos I agree fully with Boots & Sabers, and Jiblog, and have a few comments of my own to add below. But before we get started, the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In his letter, Senator Feingold states that

"As one of the main authors of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, also known as BCRA, it is particularly difficult to hear the mistaken belief that the law was somehow an attack on our cherished First Amendment rights. It is not. The law was found to be constitutional and it accomplished what we wanted it to do without infringing on First Amendment rights: stopping Members of Congress from soliciting enormous campaign contributions from monied interests; and reducing the corrupting influence of big money donations."

First, it is an attack on our First Amendment. Specifically it restricts what membership organizations can say about a candidate or incumbent before an election. Is a membership organization not a part of the First Amendment when it refers to the “right of the people peaceably to assemble”? Membership organizations like the NRA and Right to Life, as well the ACLU are just people getting together to express their opinion and petition the government.

Second, so the Supreme Courts declared that his cherished law is “constitutional”. Big deal. The Supreme Court also once ruled that slavery was constitutional. Justice Clarence Thomas, in his dissenting opinion in the 5-4 split of the Supreme Court on the Campaign-Finance issue stated that

“With breathtaking scope, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) directly targets and constricts core political speech, the ‘primary object of First Amendment protection…’”

That aside, what Senator Feingold really seems interested in however is

“...stopping Members of Congress from soliciting enormous campaign contributions from monied interests; and reducing the corrupting influence of big money donations.”

So in reality this has nothing to do with us, does it? We can infer from Senator Feingold’s statement that those Members of Congress who solicit (and receive) big money donations are being corrupted by its influence.

If Senator Feingold knows about all this corruption going on in the House and Senate (and we can only assume that he must know about it because he put so much effort into getting this law passed, and in defending it now), then maybe he should stand up and name the people taking bribes, and the companies offering bribes (bluntly speaking, that’s what we are really talking about here is bribes, right?). New flash: we already have laws against both those things: offering and taking bribes.

Finally, in talking about blogs and bloggers he states that

“The definitions and rules relating to "coordinated activity" should be clarified, so legitimate bloggers and journalists alike don't have to worry about vague rules for legitimate activity.”

And as Jiblog pointed out, exactly who is going to define what or who a “legitimate” blogger is? Every time the Senator mentioned blogs, bloggers or other media, he prefaced it with ‘legitimate’. Why Senator did you feel the need for the word 'legitimate'? What exercise of our First Amendment right isn’t legitimate to you?

In my most humble, Wisconsin opinion, anyone who wants to express his or her thoughts is “legitimate”, regardless of whether or not we agree with what they say. Period. The whole idea behind the First Amendment is that no one decides what is or is not appropriate speech!