Kos He Says So (Campaign-Finance Edition)
"Any regulation presents a potential chilling effect on a medium that is truly the first democratic mass medium in the history of the world."
That's Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of The Daily Kos telling the Federal Elections Commission to flip off when it comes to stymieing blogs with campaign-finance laws. (Whole Fox News article here.)
And here's Kos telling Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) to stick it in his ear when it comes to regulating political speech on the Web:
Whether Feingold intends or not (and I don't believe he does), his actions will lead to a regulated blogosphere, even if indirectly. And once that happens, it will drive those seeking to pump money into the medium underground, while exposing those of us up in the light of day to malicious complaints and undue government interference.
Whole thing here.
Kos, alas, seems to believe that regulation of other media (due to "scarcity") is OK. And to that end, let's quote the greatest FEC capo in recent memory, Brad Smith:
The ideal system is the system we had that elected Abraham Lincoln and Grover Cleveland, which is no regulation. Or the system that elected both Roosevelts, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, which is a system that had virtually no regulation.