Will on Incumbent Protection

This is Mr. Will at his very best. Every now and then, George tends to slip up and publish some libertarian thoughts - "Tommy like wingy..." - such as this:

When writing regulations to implement McCain-Feingold, the Federal Election Commission in 2002 declined to bring Internet political speech, meaning bloggers, under the metastasizing federal apparatus of speech regulation. McCain-Feingold does not mention the Internet when listing forms of "public communication" (e.g., mailings, billboards) the FEC should regulate. But unregulated speech is an affront to today's liberalism. And a federal judge with an interesting theory of liberty—that whatever Congress does not specifically exempt from regulation should be regulated—decided that the FEC's exempting the Internet from regulation is impermissible because Congress was silent on the subject. She ordered the FEC to write regulations. This, even though Internet communication is limitless, virtually cost-free and, hence, wonderfully anarchic.

So Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a 48-year-old Texan, tried riding to the rescue. Hensarling is a Republican, which means next to nothing nowadays, but also a libertarian, which means he believes, as Republicans once did, in limited government. He proposed the Online Freedom of Speech Act, to exclude blogs, e-mails and some other Internet communications from federal regulation. He got 55 percent of the House votes, but two thirds were needed to get expedited action. The speech rationers, a.k.a. the "reform community"—abetted by much of the unregulated mainstream media, which advocate regulating rivals—will redouble their efforts to clamp the government's grip on the Internet, and require bloggers to hire lawyers.

Good job, George.