Redstate

By krempasky Posted in FEC — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

[UDPATE] - several days, no satisfactory response from the CJR Daily (and no response whatsoever from McLeary. The only thing they've taken issue with is my characterization that they hate bloggers. Good grief, I have to conclude that they've mistaken my frustration for stupidity. Luckily, their reticence in admitting that McLeary screwed up - and badly (the equivalent, at this point, of admitting that the sky is blue) probably speaks much more to their lack of character than anything else.

Why does the Columbia Journalism Review hate bloggers so? Why would a site whose mission is"to promote better journalism" twist a story to the point of falsehood, just to take a slap at poor self-published pundits?

On July 19th, four days after the DC Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a ruling in the Shays-Meehan v FEC case, Paul McLeary ("a reporter for Columbia Journalism Review's Campaigndesk.org,[who has also] written for the San Francisco Chronicle, MSNBC.com, Salon, The Center for American Progress, In These Times, New York Observer and Christian Science Monitor") wrote this laughable piece of excrement, explaining that "bloggers potentially took one between the eyes in their quest to be granted whatever rights and protections journalists have."

Really? It was that bad? Here I didn't think the July 15th ruling said anything about that.

The latest round came when a federal appeals court ordered the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to expand the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law to include the Internet -- thereby making it more difficult for candidates and political groups to raise money via the blogosphere.

The Court said that? No kidding. I could have sworn that the Court ordered the FEC to go back and address the internet question in a ruling last September. (page 48) When the Court handed down that ruling, I seem to remember something about the FEC not appealing that part of the ruling. Now...where might I have heard such a quiet whisper? I seem to remember that this was a story that might have actually garnered some attention - even in the mainstream press.

But wait, there's more hackery yet to be had.

McLeary writes,

Judge David S. Tatel, in the majority opinion for the three-member panel, wrote that excluding the blogosphere from McCain-Feingold would "fly in the face of [the purpose of the law]," because leaving the Internet regulation-free would "reopen the very loophole the terms were designed to close." As a result, this would allow candidates and private groups to "rely on winks, nods and circumlocutions to channel money in favored directions -- anything that makes their intention clear without overtly 'asking' for money."

Problem: the "fly in the face" quote has nothing to do with the internet. Let's look at the actual opinion, eh? That's something McLeary didn't seem to do. If he had, he might have saved himself the ridicule he so desperately deserves. The actual quote, without McLeary's meddling:

The FEC’s definitions fly in the face of this purpose because they reopen the very loophole the terms were designed to close. Under the Commission’s interpretation, candidates and parties may not spend or receive soft money, but apart from that restriction, they need only avoid explicit direct requests.

Now - if you didn't catch McLeary's David Copperfield impression - he substituted a single word - "they" with half a sentence: "leaving the Internet regulation-free would."

Even more unfortunately for McLeary, "they" doesn't have anything to do with the Internet - it refers to the regulations that the FEC promulgated to deal with the solicitation and direction of soft money by federal candidates and national parties.

If you read the rest of the aforementioned piece of excrement, you'll see that McLeary is the gift that keeps on giving.

The ruling is a switch; until now, the federal government had shied away from regulating Internet content, with the FEC voting in 2002 not to extend campaign laws to Internet activity. That's the ruling the appeals court has now shot down.

Um, no. Once again, please read above: the exemption of internet activity was struck down in September 2004. That's why bloggers testified at the Commission a couple weeks ago. If McLeary had bothered to read any one of the HUNDREDS of stories about this issue, he might have saved himself the embarassment.

The best part of this? McLeary's piece of excrement has a goal in mind: to argue against expanding the media exemption to include bloggers. You know, because the press is so..neutral. And objective. And...well, honest. You can't make this stuff up. And would someone tell McLeary that a broad extension of the media exemption would protect folks that use corporate facilities to engage in political hackery - even folks at Columbia University.

So: liar, nincompoop, or hack? I report, you decide.