In re: Commissioner Bradley Smith

Winfield Myers of Democracy Project definitively answers the question related to our discussion this morning of the regulatory threat to political speech on the internet posed by McCain-Feingold and the Federal Election Commission: “Why are they smearing Bradley Smith?”
Commissioner Smith hews to the traditional American view that political speech should be unregulated. Commissioner Smith makes the compelling case for letting freedom ring in Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform. In the eyes of McCain and company, this view warrants the branding of Commissioner Smith as a pariah, i.e., “a right-wing ideologue.”
UPDATE by HINDROCKET: The wonderful Chris Muir weighs in with his vision of cartooning in the era of McCain-Feingold; click to enlarge:

I’ve often wondered what James Madison and the other Founders would make of the “political speech exception” to the First Amendment that Congress and the Supreme Court have fashioned.

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