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Thursday, February 12, 2015

FEC to Consider Regulating Online Political Speech

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is holding a hearing today to receive public feedback on whether it should create new rules regulating political speech, including political speech on the Internet that one commissioner warned could affect blogs, YouTube videos and even websites like the Drudge Report.

The hearing is a response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in McCutcheon v. FEC last year, which struck down the FEC’s previous cap on aggregate campaign contributions from a single donor in an election cycle.

Before the decision, individuals were limited to a combined total of $46,200 in contributions to all federal candidates, and $70,800 to federal political action committees and parties.

Individuals are no longer restricted by aggregate limits, which Chief Justice John Roberts said "intrude without justification on a citizen's ability to exercise 'the most fundamental First Amendment activities'."

Last October, FEC Chairwoman Ann Ravel issued a statement in which she complained that the agency was not doing enough to monitor activity on the Internet.

However, the commission’s three Republican members – Lee Goodman, Caroline Hunter, and Matthew Petersen – responded to Ravel’s comments in a joint statement.

“Despite the Internet’s growing importance as a tool for all citizens to engage in political debate, and notwithstanding this Commission’s promise to take a ‘restrained regulatory approach’ with respect to online political activity, [Ravel] apparently believes the time has come to impose greater regulation on political speech over the Internet,” the group wrote.

According to Commissioner Goodman, who served as chairman of the FEC last year, regulation of content placed on the Internet is a very real possibility.

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Legislators are beginning to believe that the problem with the internet is that it reveals their lies and people rally on line to change things. Freedom of speech is a very valuable thing. Beware of change.

lmclain said...

This is called the "slippery slope".
Sheep are having a lot of fun playing around on this slope, but they are too stupid to realize there's a meat grinder at the bottom.
You gave up our God given rights and let other men tell you what you can and cannot say or do.
You are going to be SO sorry.....so are the rest of us.
Keep cheering.

Anonymous said...

This is very, very, scary.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Anonymous said...

Just like the ChiComs and Ruskies!
Obama is a Communist agitator that wants total control of the printed press, the TV Media and cyberspace.

Anonymous said...

it's because the lying, cheating, corrupt pols have NO control as to what we can seen on the inet.

back in the day, uncle walter could keep a lid on all the above and the citizens would never know. NOT so today and they don't like it.

we better fight this with everything we have or we will have to go underground to get any semblance of truth.

Anonymous said...


In other words: The internet is serving to keep citizens informed about what we've (Obama, his cronies, banksters, whomever you might suspect would benefit from suppression of free speech) been up to.

Therefore in order to control what is said about us we need to put a chokehold on it.

"You got your mind right, Luke?"

Dagger pointed at the First Amendment!