The ACLU has put out an important Press Release: 03-01-01 — Limits, Limits and More Limits: Why McCain-Feingold is Wrong for America. Whether McCain-Feingold represents a double-barreled attack on political freedom in America or not is open to question, but the ACLU certainly articulates some really important concerns about the restrictions on publishing information about candidates. As I said earlier, I really wouldn’t mind seeing the fund-raising activities and 30-second ads of citizens’ groups — or corporate interest groups — die in favor of their get-out-the-vote organization and personal contact with legislators. However, if the act comes through in such a way as to prevent all distribution of issue-based advocacy near elections, then it will be a stranglehold on outsider activism and become what Rush Limbaugh has dubbed it, the Incumbent Protection Act. (It’s a strange, sad day when I find myself quoting Rush Limbaugh).

The Money Jungle by William Saletan is an interesting analysis of some of the pitfalls for the coalition over McCain-Feingold. This was particularly perceptive:

McCain imposes disclosure requirements on interest groups that run ads against candidates close to an election. He portrays these groups as constitutionally protected but insidious. In his worldview, citizens are on one side, and special interests are on the other. McCain’s chief antagonist, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sees it differently. My favorite definition of special interest is a group [that’s] against what I am trying to do, McConnell quipped during Monday’s debate. McConnell offers a kinder term for organizations whose missions he favors: citizens’ groups.

It’s worth pointing out in this context that currently the biggest PAC in American politics is not the National Rifle Association or incumbents’ re-election PACs. It’s EMILY’s List, a PAC focused on electing more women to office. Not exactly my idea of a malignant special interest.

But, on the other hand, this presumes that the only thing that citizens’ groups have to offer is money for campaign contributions or interest ads. This is most of what they do today, but that’s only because money is so powerful in modern campaigning. An organized group of citizens has something besides money behind them: they have votes. And, geeze, isn’t that what democracy is supposed to be about? Part of the point of changing the campaign finance system is to make it so that citizens’ groups no longer compete for the amount of money they can organize, but rather the number of, well, citizens.

By the way, the most outrageous thing about the original self-indulgent marketing crusade is the way they are cynically exploiting the name of Take Back the Night, the world’s oldest and most powerful women’s demonstration against sexual violence. Not to mention the kitschy, self-conscious appropriation of jargon and logos from women’s liberation and other liberation movements to hawk their marketing wares, which sometimes gets so absurd as to defy parody:

As Netizens, we hold certain truths to be self-evident: that the Internet was created and endowed by its Creator with certain unalienable Rights, chief among these: free Access to uncensored Content, the ability to Shop wherever and whenever one chooses and the general pursuit of e-Happiness.

First Revolution became an e-business trade magazine; now we are taking back the Net. And who is we?

Q: Who is ICONOCAST?

A: An Internet media publisher based in San Francisco best known for its weekly ICONOCAST e-marketing newsletter read by 50,000 senior-level marketing executives.

Q: Who is Michael Tchong?

A: Editor and founder of ICONOCAST, Michael is a well-known commentator on Internet marketing and advertising, with more than 20 years of advertising, publishing and software development experience. He is also the founder of MacWEEK magazine.

Oh yeah. All power to the people.

Reading Salon.com News: Who’s afraid of the big bad Horowitz? brings back memories of, well, just a few weeks ago, actually. Since I have myself protested an advertisement in our campus newspaper, it strikes me that many of the people writing on this topic seem to have no idea of what the real issue is here (although those who note that David Horowitz is a self-aggrandizing pig making publicity for himself on the backs of young journalists, are not far off).

This is simply not a free press issue. Horowitz was not being censored by some evil cabal of thuggish p.c. mavens, and if the so-called Human Life Alliance’s pamphlet had not been distributed in The Plainsman, they would not have been censored either. Student newspapers are incapable of denying them a forum for their views, since David Horowitz and the HLA are rather rich national figures, and Horowitz is himself a columnist in Salon. The point of a campus newspaper, however, is not to give a voice to well-positioned outsiders who have enough money to buy their way in. The whole point is to give students an open forum.

This doesn’t mean that all political advertisements from outside sources should be banned, since I recognize that student newspapers do need to make money somehow. However, it is extremely hypocritical for Horowitz to pose as some kind of martyr to censorship. Particularly when he and his colleagues are doing it in the pages of a webzine which reaches literally millions more readers than campus newspapers could ever hope to reach.

If Horowitz and the HLA really want to make their voices heard, they ought to write a damn Letter to the Editor like everyone else, or else take their commercial advertisement where it belongs: a commercial newspaper.

I’m not one to continue picking on Bill Clinton, but this one was too good to pass up: our OWN Bobby Lowder has been unearthed in an old SALON Daily Clicks | Newsreal report of Clinton fund-raising scandals! Read on…

… If the most recent list of party contributors — issued in the last week of the campaign only after intense pressure — is any measure, the Feds, and the rest of us, have a lot to think about.

Most immediately noticeable is that about half of the more than 1,000 individual contributors are not properly identified. Under the law, big-money donors are supposed to list their names, addresses, and, more importantly, their occupation and employer. Disclosing such affiliations is supposed to allow the public to see what interests are backing the candidates and make it harder for businesses, trade associations and unions to use individuals as a curtain to hide behind.

So, who are Bobby and Charlotte Lowder from Montgomery, Alabama? They each gave $50,000 to the DNC. No information other than their address is provided. When I called the phone number listed for them, no one picked up, and there was no answering machine. …