Political Forecast

It looks I’m among the first generation of an entirely new Internet writing system. And we’re getting big play time in the media.

CNN’s Inside the Blogs and MSNBC’s Connected Coast-to-Coast covered a lot of the blogs, especially Talk Left and a few others who will soon be joining my blogroll in the left column. Give them a visit, please. (The Talent Show blog online magazine has the CNN transcript here).

Anyway, I think this really is a good thing. First of all, it automatically gives us MSM credibility and that means we don’t have to criticize anyone and always talk about our great ethics. Secondly, we get to be real journalists who don’t have to fact check and are really great and stuff. Finally, we get to be part of the Gang of 500 and get talked about in The Note!

Ok, on the serious side now, it gets our point across to the FEC. We’re not playing games and neither should you. We’re serious about our causes–on both sides of the aisle–and individual political speech on the Internet shoudln’t be regulated, its just that plain and simple. Markos, Atrios, and Krempansky, as well as the thousands of other individual political commentators out there who sent in their comments or actually testified have stood up to the attempts to restrict our speech. And we can’t stop now. Whether or not this turns into a full-fledged movement is yet to be seen. Should the FEC inact regulations however, consider the online magazine a permanent response.

I agree with what Greg over at The Talent Show said:

“How would the FEC define “blog”? Like every other website you visit, this site is serving content via HTTP protocol on port 80. As far as the guts of the site, Movable Type considers itself a “publishing platform” these days. Like Slate, this site has multiple authors, covers a variety of topics, and updates sporadically throughout the day. If the FEC wants to draw a line between the online world and print, I’d love to see a comparison between the traffic statistics of NYTimes.com and the circulation numbers of The New York Times print version. Then again, the difference between whether or not I’m allowed to discuss politics could be as simple as not using the word “blog” anymore. Semantic restrictions are meaningless when you’re a template change away from avoiding legal scrutiny.”

These efforts are becoming meaningless. Sometimes groups like the FEC need to take the higher ground and worry about the real threats to fair political speech and campaign finance issues.

Maybe things like 527s. . .