The coming crackdown on blogging

Ok, this story, to me, underscores exactly how the campaign finance laws impact free speech.

The FEC exempted the Internet from the talons of McCain-Feingold in 2002, but a District Court decision overturned that exemption. Accordingly, a blog linking to a candidate's homepage could theoretically be considered an ad and a donation that would have to be valued and disclosed.

And exactly how are they supposed to value that? And if I link to, say, a press release on the Rice for President '08 website (it could happen...) I have to coordinate a filing with the U.S. government. This seems amazingly chilling on free speech, to me.