Above It All
The recent declaration by the Federal Election Commission that it shall not endeavor to regulate or control bloggers (for now) has been greeted as a stupendous victory, but our victory is pyrrhic.
Bloggers’ rights wouldn’t have faced the FEC knife had Congress not passed legislation allowing itself to regulate political speech.
Cleverly, Congress assigned the dirty work over to the FEC, enabling those same politicians to decry any unpopular restriction as a rotten regulatory application of their sweet-smelling law. But does law matter to them? They ignore the ultimate law regarding speech, the First Amendment. This most important chunk of our Constitution specifically denies to Congress any lawmaking role that would “abridge” freedom of speech.
Today, when most congressmen hear the word “abridge,” they of course think of “nowhere” and some of the all-time great pork-barreling feats. But the word actually means that Congress cannot — may not — in any way diminish or lessen our rights to speak freely.
So Congress’s creation of a complex regulatory system for political speech — with the McCain-Feingold statute, with all the other campaign finance laws going back to the aftermath of Watergate isn’t even a close call constitutionally. They can’t do what they’ve done.
“Cannot”? “May not”? What do these words mean to those who have placed themselves above law, above the Constitution?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
