Democrats push heavy regulations on Internet

As traditional media prepared to vacate newsrooms for the weekend, Democrats snuck in a last minute proposal that the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) be allowed to heavily regulate political content on internet sites such as Youtube, blogs, the Drudge Report and Tulsa Today.

Obama FEC Vice Chairperson Ann M. Ravel announced late on Friday that the FEC was preparing new regulations to give itself control over videos, Internet-based political campaigns, and other content on the web. She insisted that, "A reexamination of the commission’s approach to the internet and other emerging technologies is long overdue."

This snap decision came after the FEC deadlocked 3-3 over whether or not an anti-Obama Internet campaign in Ohio had violated FEC campaign disclosure rules. The videos were placed for free on Youtube and were not paid advertising, but they also did not disclose who made them.

Until now, videos and other political content that is not posted for a fee are unregulated by the FEC. Only paid advertising is regulated under election rules. It is this that the Democrats want to change.

"FEC Chairman Lee E. Goodman, a Republican, said if regulation extends that far, then anybody who writes a political blog, runs a politically active news site, or even a chat room could be regulated," the Washington Examiner reported on October 24.

"I have been warning that my Democratic colleagues were moving to regulate media generally and the Internet specifically for almost a year now," Goodman told FoxNews.com. "And today's statement from Vice Chair Ravel confirms my warnings."

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Our Story

Tulsa Today is the oldest independent online local news service in the world.

Established in 1996, we have always produced original content and solicited dissenting diverse perspectives. Over the years, Leftists have faded from regular publication here primarily because their positions lack intellectual honesty, scientific and historical facts. Typically, they resort to anger and personal attacks when their policy positions are challenged. As this publisher is conservative, I have been attacked physically and this site hacked on multiple occasions.

In September 2012, a hacker began exploiting a known weakness in our then PHP based programing. Every day, we applied the patch to fix the site and the next day the hack was back. This continued daily until the tropical storm "Sandy" rolled onto the East Coast of America and, on that day, that particular hacking effort forever ceased.

Other hack attacks have been identified from Russia and China, but those are more easily defeated as they primarily seek to sell product "knock-offs."  The East Coast hack is more troubling in that the timing appears specific to the U.S. Elections.

In short, if some totalitarian personality is motivated personally in New Jersey to spend their time daily hacking a small site of free speech in the middle of fly-over country then there is a problem with Free Speech in America.

More dangerously, if totalitarian personalities continue to control the Democrat Party, ignore the U.S. Constitution and betray the Rule of Law then the Freedom generations of Americans have fought and died to protect will be gone. We will be gone - maybe one early dark morning as a SWAT team rolls through our front doors. Tyranny always eliminates the independent writers of contrary opinion first, but by that time they usually have regulations and law on their side.

This FEC effort is the beginning of the murder of Freedom - the first of many cuts by which individual Liberty and civil societies bleed to death.

For more click here for The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).