Big news on Friday evening, folks.

The President intends to nominate Robert D. Lenhard, of Maryland, to be a Member of the Federal Election Commission, for the remainder of a six-year term expiring April 30, 2011. Mr. Lenhard currently serves as Associate General Counsel for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO.

The President intends to nominate David M. Mason, of Virginia, to be a Member of the Federal Election Commission, for the remainder of a six-year term expiring April 30, 2009.

The President intends to nominate Hans von Spakovsky, of Georgia, to be a Member of the Federal Election Commission, for the remainder of a six-year term expiring April 30, 2011.

The President intends to nominate Steven T. Walther, of Nevada, to be a Member of the Federal Election Commission, for the remainder of a six-year term expiring April 30, 2009.

Ok - good news: Thomas and McDonald have been retired to private life - or will, as soon as the nominations get approved in the Senate. The two most anti-freedom (let's call them "regulators") members of the current commission are out. David Mason, a solid vote against increased regulation has been renominated.

Some great news out of the Federal Election Commission today. In a unanimous 5-0 vote, the Commission voted to approve an Advisory Opinion for FiredUp, agreeing that the partisan Democratic sites were entitled to the "press exemption" from campaign finance regulations.

This is a victory for free speech, whether right or left. The fight over these issues is hardly over - and considering the 5-0 vote from the Commission, I'm especially looking forward to the Democracy21 press release calling the FEC a 'feckless agency gripped by partisan deadlock, unable to do anything.'

To their credit, Chairman Ney and the House Committee on Administration has the archived webcast of today's hearing online already. You can find it here.

Duncan Black and I are on the second panel - he starts around 1:20 and I'm at about 1:24.

I suppose good marketers can market everything - even themselves. But please. If I find one more self-styled and self-lauded “blog consultant” who can’t keep the porn trackbacks off their own site (or, failing that - at least remove the nice shiny “recent trackbacks” sidebar), I’m going to start naming names. If you’re in the business of advising companies about joining the online conversation, you have to be able to demonstrate at least a little bit of sensitivity and understanding about what actually happens on the web.

By all means, we need more professional marketers communicators, they have skills and training that many bloggers sorely lack (punctuation and a deep hatred for sentence fragments come to mind) - but at least take a minute to *appear* to grasp the ramifications of stepping out into the blogosphere. Because if your client all of a sudden can't see their consultant's website because its blocked by their own subscription to WebSense. That’s bad.

Ah, if it were only me making the case, you'd rightly dismiss me as a right wing yahoo. But today brings Bob Bauer (whose progressive credentials are unimpeachable, if you'll pardon the pun) whose remarks to the American Constitution Society ought to be required reading for progressives who cling to the ideal of campaign regulation like a drowning man to a bouy.

"In this situation, more than anything else, progressives have to depend on politics—energetic and uninhibited politics—to advance their program. This is where a campaign finance reform supporter heads down the wrong path. The campaign finance reform supporter assumes that entrenched power, possessing the lion’s share of the resources, will have an insurmountable advantage that may be overcome only with legal controls. So we have detailed regulation of the rules of politics in the name of "political equality," which, it is assumed, will give the "average citizen" a fighting chance.

This is delusional, on several grounds."

I very much enjoyed Kate's piece on Bret Schundler and his new foray into the software market. I thought it might be interesting to share an chat I had with Schundler at the RNC convention in New York City last summer. Obviously this was done before any real analysis of the effectiveness of his software was done, but I'd like to see if his characterizations were accurate.

We've had it drummed into us that as folks that support technology's influence on politics - especially as a democratizing force, it follows that we must then support widespread deployment of municipal or government-sponsored wi-fi networks. (In fact, if I remember correctly, at the recent PDF conference - this was the only topic for which only one position was presented)

Not so fast...I'd have to say that as a limited-government conservative who doesn't believe in the appropriateness of government competing in the marketplace - you've got to do a much better job of convincing me.

There are a lot of arguments against municipal wi-fi, but you'd never know it. All we hear are broadsides against bills like the one Pete Sessions (R-TX) just introduced to forbid government-sponsored networks. A good friend of mine called it "hit-me-with-a-shovel stupid" to oppose them.

I'd like to participate in a series of back and forth on the issue here at PDF - but for starters I have to say that to play on the (mostly accurate) stereotype of progressive opposition to the Patriot Act, have the privacy concerns no impact?

The Online Coalition is pleased to release our official comment to the Federal Election Commission in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding political activity on the internet. This comment will be transmitted to the FEC this afternoon.

You can read the full comment below - in both a full-featured paginated HTML format (useful for cutting and pasting), as well as the standard Adobe PDF.

(pdf)

(paginated HTML)

We've written thousands of words about the FEC and bloggers. But lucky for us, Allison Hayward just left the employ of the Federal Election Commission - and started a blog, The Skeptic's Eye. Today she outlines, in plain terms, how the FEC operates when it comes to an investigation and enforcement action.

Venkman: Rivers and seas boiling!
Egon: 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanos.
Winston: The dead rising from the grave!
Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together... mass hysteria!

Also known as the Reid-Coburn Online Freedom of Speech Act?

In rare bipartisan fashion, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has finally gotten his first co-sponsor to exempt the internet from regulation by the Federal Election Commission. And as fate would have it - turns out to be the arguably the most conservative member of the Senate.