“The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.” - Adlai Stevenson

Blog? Online Magazine? Journal? Does it matter what you call that place where you place those thoughts, precious to you, for the world to see? It seems as if it does. If you haven’t been keeping up with the debate over FEC regulation of blogs you need to take a quick look at fec.redstate.org and bring yourself up to speed. Go on. I’ll wait. Are you back? Great. Are you mad? Even better. You may be saying (and it’s been said by many) “I don’t sell political ads, so this doesn’t apply to me. Let’s take a look at US Code (2 USC 431 via Redstate.org)

(A) The term “contribution” includes— (i) any gift, subscription, loan, advance, or deposit of money or anything of value made by any person for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office. [emphasis mine]

Is that post you just made, the one favorable to candidate Blah B. Blah that you hope will help get him elected, a thing of value? Did you file a report with the FEC? Should you have to? What’s at the bottom of this slope?

I know, that’s a lot of questions, but the main one is this, can the government regulate my speech, particularly my political speech? To some the answer is, “I’m not a blog, I’m an Online Magazine. Cover me with the blanket of the Media exemption.” Others, including this new little adventure in free speech, say no. Captain Ed looks at the controversy and says, “I will not allow the FEC to chase me from my rights as an independent voice in politics to write what I please and to post what I want based on a silly bit of nomenclature.” A point I could not agree with more. Others chiming in:

FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog - Flap disagrees and is ready to fight for his blog’s right to freedom of speech without regualtion from the FEC and without a slight of hand such as a name change to an on-line magazine. How stupid!

Kerfuffles - “Every Blogger’s Doing It”

Art of the Blog - Welcome to “The Art of the Online Magazine”

Finally, as OTB puts it,

“The transformation of blogs into “online journals,” a meaningless distinction, does serve the purpose of illustrating absurdity by being absurd, as Rush Limbaugh likes to say. But I agree that, if the government really wants to treat online speech as a limited commodity, they’re not going to be put off by the technicalities of what a site calls itself.”

Just to add to the absurdity I’ve created the “Blogs4Blogs” blogroll. If you’re a blog and are going to stay one send me an email using the link on the left or at the top of the page.

We can (and will) have fun, but this remains a very serious issue. This serious - “If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” George Washington

UPDATE: Welcome The Art of the Blog Readers

High Speed merge to today’s OTB Beltway Traffic Jam

UPDATE II: We lost one. Bill Hobbs says, “And I Shall Blog No More Forever“. The fact that he obviously has tongue firmly in cheek is missed by some of the commenters there. If you read the article, don’t miss the comments. You’ll get a smile.

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