Internet campaign

A tiny group of Republican voters — 4 percent — wants GOP leadership to pick the next presidential nominee in a party fight, believing instead that the candidate with the most delegates going into the July convention should get the job.

Under a 2006 FEC rule, free political videos and advocacy sites have been free of regulation in a bid to boost voter participation in politics. Only Internet videos that are placed for a fee on websites, such as the Washington Examiner, are regulated just like normal TV ads.

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 chat room could be regulated. He added that funny internet campaigns like “Obama Girl, ” and “Jib Jab” would also face regulations.

“I told you this was coming, ” he told Secrets. Earlier this year he warned that Democrats on the panel were gunning for conservative Internet sites like the Drudge Report.

Also from the Washington Examiner

The National Rifle Association is raising the likelihood that President Obama will be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by a Democratic president and act like a "wrecking ball" against the Second Amendment, including confiscating guns.

Ravel plans to hold meetings next year to discuss regulating the internet. She charged that groups placing paid TV ads use the FEC exemption to disseminate similar messages on the internet, regulation free. But Goodman says that Ravel misconceives the exemption. If the same message that is run on TV also is posted online, it is regulated, he said. The Internet exemption applies only to videos posted for free, solely on the Internet.

Blasting the exemption, she said, “Since its inception this effort to protect individual bloggers and online commentators has been stretched to cover slickly-produced ads aired solely on the Internet but paid for by the same organizations and the same large contributors as the actual ads aired on TV, ” Ravel argued.

The trio noted that the goal of setting aside regulations to let the Internet blossom is working and shouldn’t be tampered with.

Despite promises by Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz to reverse key environmental regulations leveled by the Obama administration, those rules are set in law would would require years of court fights to change, according to the EPA boss.

“This freedom has gained wide acceptance, as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of political videos, websites, blogs and other social media posted on the Internet without so much as an inquiry by the Commission, ” they wrote.

“Regrettably, the 3-to-3 vote in this matter suggests a desire to retreat from these important protections for online political speech — a shift in course that could threaten the continued development of the Internet's virtual free marketplace of political ideas and democratic debate, ” they concluded.