Bachmann Opponents Favor Censorship

Even though bloggers won some of the same protections from speech-rationing laws that the dead tree media enjoys (and, hello John McCain and Russ Feingold, that the First Amendment supposedly grants all of us), some local agendabloggers apparently are pining for the soothing balm of government intervention to do their work for them.

Eva Young over at The Dump (a site that has featured crude photoshops of Senator Bachmann in Nazi regalia, and which is more given to ad-hominem than discussion) notes the creation by a group of District Six bloggers (Winger, Jules, and the indispensible Jeff Kouba and Andy "Triple A" Aplikowski) of the "Bachmann Vs. Wetterling blog - an indepenent, grass-roots effort by a group of citizens, some of whom are GOP activists - and plaintively asks "Will Bachmann v Wetterling Show Up on Bachmann's FEC Reports".

Then, after an off-topic wander through an unrelated Jeff Kouba statement, she asks again: "Will any of the bloggers show up on Michele Bachmann's FEC reports?"

Well, since the FEC has ruled that blogs don't count as campaign contributions, I'd suspect not.

But since Eva and the rest of the Dump crowd are running and tattling to teacher bringing it up, I have to ask: have Bachmann's various opponents listed The Dump as a contribution? And since The Dump is so conscientious about these things on the parts of other bloggers, have the Dumpers declared themselves a contribution, since they are no less so than the campaign groupblog?

And why is The Dump advocating censorship? Because listing blogs as a campaign contribution, and making them subject to the FEC's burgeoning array of speech rationing laws most certainly is censorship, albeit wityh a dull, bureaucratic face rather than a black marker.

Patty Wetterling: Do you favor subjecting your opponents to speech-rationing laws, as your de facto supporters suggest?

Enquiring minds may or may not want to know - but I bet they don't get their answers at The Dump (beyond the inevitable rambling ad-hominem).