Blogging threatened

The Federal Election Committee has made noises as if it's going to apply the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act to blogging, such that there would be penalties when bloggers tried to link to candidate's websites, or at least it will be seen as a contribution to the candidate under the act.
They picked the one issue that brings all bloggers, liberal and conservative, left and right, together. Everyone is attacking this, from Atrios and Kos (left) all the way to Powerline and Charles Johnson (right).

In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. "The commission's exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines" the campaign finance law's purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

The commission is split 3-3 on whether the decision should be appealed. Predictably, it's on partisan lines.
Says Bradley Smith of the commission:

How can the government place a value on a blog that praises some politician?
How do we measure that? Design fees, that sort of thing? The FEC did an advisory opinion in the late 1990s (in the Leo Smith case) that I don't think we'd hold to today, saying that if you owned a computer, you'd have to calculate what percentage of the computer cost and electricity went to political advocacy.

It seems absurd, but that's what the commission did. And that's the direction Judge Kollar-Kotelly would have us move in. Line drawing is going to be an inherently very difficult task. And then we'll be pushed to go further. Why can this person do it, but not that person?

Update: Totten has feelings on this as well.

Another Update: It seems that, related to the Jeff Gannon incident, a blogger sought and got White House press credentials. Which further blurs the line between Blog and Main stream journalism, which should give the FEC pause. (hat tip Instapundit)