It was awesome. It was awesome! I mighta made a good lawyer. In cross-examination the prosecution was over-ruled ten times (or more, I stopped counting at some point). And rangers equivocated. I don't blame those guys. We're all in this together, right?

If you don't know the story, the two links below, the first tells the story, the second has pictures.

Story: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Pictures: http://www.dailykos.com/...

They did tear it down.

Tommorrow I begin trial in federal court. If you haven't seen previous diaries in this series here are the two with all the information:

Santa Cruz Island (part 4): http://www.dailykos.com/...
Santa Cruz Island (part 6): http://www.dailykos.com/...

Below is the opening statement I've been tinkering with. Any lawyers have any comments?

As you may or may not know, earlier this year I committed an act of civil disobedience. I happened upon the wreck of a military aircraft in a national park, and created a sculpture out of it; in order to be summoned to court.

Today is a conference call between the judge, the prosecution, and myself, to see if we'll require any TVs, video players, or wipeboards.

I was listening to am radio 950 here in Detroit this morning and the big to do is about Obama coming here tomorrow. Then they bring up the fact that "Reagan democrats" is who he appeals to. Later in the message these people were called conservative demecrats. So now we are calling moderates and centrists "conservative" and "Reagan" democrats? Get the f**k outta here. What took so long? He should've been called that all along.

Much ado has been made about Hillary Clinton's vote for Kyl-Lieberman and her fairly hawkish Foreign Affairs article.

If you read that Foreign Affairs article closely (and one must always read her statements very carefully, since she says nothing by accident), a very alarming passage jumps out.

That passage and its implications below the fold.

Three months after its second such study (and here's my diary on the first), the Campaign Finance Institute has again crunched the 2008 presidential fundraising numbers, and as much as we love small-dollar democracy, large dollars are still bigger:

As the 2008 presidential candidates are setting records for primary fundraising, they are drawing two-thirds of their total individual contributions from large $1,000 and up donations – mostly maximum $2,300 contributions. Just 21% of the money is coming from $200 and under contributions, slightly more than the 18% of 2003 and 20% of 1999. So, despite the rise of small giving on the Internet, and the emphasis by some campaigns on their small donor fundraising, little has changed overall in the balance between large and small contributions in presidential primaries.

In re the public financing issues, this is what CFI predicts:

CFI estimates that were they to enter the public matching system, based on contributions to date, Edwards would be entitled to about $13.6 million and McCain about $10.9 million. If you add that to the cash-on-hand, Edwards and McCain each would have substantially closed the cash gap between themselves and their parties' financial front-runners. Edwards in fact can plan as if he has the equivalent of $20 million available to his campaign, which is roughly two-thirds of the Clinton or Obama totals. If McCain takes public financing, he would move from running almost on empty to having the equivalent of over $12 million (not counting McCain’s $1.7 million debt). This is almost the same as the GOP cash leader Giuliani has now. Obviously, there is still a full quarter of fundraising to go before the primaries, and candidates in the public system must observe state by state spending limits though they can exploit some important exceptions. But these numbers show that it is too early to count out the candidates who might still reap a benefit from matching funds.

As I've noted before, the question isn't whether Edwards or McCain would have the money to make it through January's contests; it's more about the February 5 avalanche and the subsequent six months.  Here's their overall chart of the Dem field as of Monday's FEC filings. I've included the totals/percentages from the first six months in parentheses so you can see the shifts:

Candidate	Total Primary Receipts (millions)	Indiv. Contribs (millions)	% From Large Contribs ($1,000 or more)	% From Max+ Donors ($2,300 or more)	% From Small Contribs ($200 or less)	Cash on Hand (millions)
Obama	76.1 (57.2)	74.7 (56.8)	54% (60%)	38% (39%)	28% (29%)	31.9* (34.5)
Clinton	74.7 (50.5)	61.6 (39.4)	78% (82%)	52% (58%)	13% (10%)	34.6** (32.6)
Edwards	27.9 (21.9)	27.5 (21.8)	56% (64%)	27% (33%)	31% (24%)	10.0 (12.1)
Richardson	18.0 (13.2)	17.6 (12.9)	66% (71%)	43% (47%)	20% (15%)	5.1 (7.0)
Dodd	12.1 (10.7)	6.7 (5.4)	87% (89%)	55% (56%)	4% (3%)	2.4 (6.4)
Biden	7.1 (5.6)	5.0 (3.5)	78% (84%)	42% (46%)	11% (6%)	0.8 (1.9)
Kucinich	2.1 (1.1)	2.1 (1.1)	18% (16%)	8% (6%)	70% (73%)	0.3 (0.2)
Gravel	0.4 (0.2)	0.3 (0.2)	21% (23%)	3% (1%)	60% (58%)	0.0 (0.0)
Dem Subtotal	218.8 (161.7)	195.9(142.5)	64% (68%)	42% (44%)	22% (21%)	125.6 (94.8)

* Minus 1.4 in debts owed.  ** Minus 2.3 in debts owed.  (Moreover, if you go through the expenditure reports, I've seen at least one campaign that didn't pay any of its non-Iowa workers throughout September that bumped its 9/30 paychecks into October, which improves the appearance of the COH figures.)

And here's the leaders for total raised from small-dollar contributors, across both parties:

Candidate	Total Amount From Small Contribs ($200 or less)
Obama	$20,758,423 ($16,389,708)
Edwards	$8,476,962 ($5,325,028)
Clinton	$7,727,161 ($3,970,975)
McCain	$6,041,805 ($4,032,102)
Romney	$4,848,329 ($3,095,089)
Thompson	$4,118,684 ($0)
Paul	$4,068,482 ($1,415,258)
Richardson	$3,470,685 ($1,979,413)
Giuliani	$3,139,457 ($1,977,749)

By way of comparison, this chart shows where the candidates were as of September 30 of 1995, 1999 and 2003.  I'm happy to try to answer any questions in the comments, but this is a wealth of data to look through, so thank the Campaign Finance Institute for crunching it so well.

Hillary Clinton has penned an article on her foreign policy for the Foreign Affairs magazine.  The article is, of course, meant to polish her war-medals, er, credentials and re-assure everyone.  It does no such thing.

On Iran, she vows that "all options must remain on the table."

Below the fold.

Well, this caught me off-guard today:

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, have sent their colleagues a letter asking for co-sponsors of a bill that would in effect overturn the 1976 Supreme Court decision Buckley v. Valeo, which ruled that campaign spending was a protected form of free speech. It has bedeviled all subsequent attempts to limit the influence of political money.

A similar proposal received only 40 "yes" votes in the Senate six years ago and it is almost certain to fail again.  

The current presidential public campaign finance system was designed to get around the Supreme Court’s decision in Buckley v. Valeo. Instead of imposing mandatory limits, the system seeks to induce candidates to accept voluntary spending caps by offering them taxpayer-funded grants if they do. This year, however, the leading candidates in both parties are planning to reject the public grants because they can raise and spend more by relying on private donations.

The Democratic front-runners all support updating the presidential public financing system to keep up with the pace of private fund-raising. But in an interview, Senator Schumer said the widespread rejection of the system this year "vindicates" the view that truly effective campaign finance restrictions will be impossible while Buckley v. Valeo stands.

For what it's worth, here's Sen. Hollings' language from 2001 for a Constitutional amendment (I don't have the Schumer/Specter draft):

SECTION 1. Congress shall have power to set reasonable limits on the amount of contributions that may be accepted by, and the amount of expenditures that may be made by, in support of, or in opposition to, a candidate for nomination for election to, or for election to, Federal office.

SECTION 2. A State shall have power to set reasonable limits on the amount of contributions that may be accepted by, and the amount of expenditures that may be made by, in support of, or in opposition to, a candidate for nomination for election to, or for election to, State or local office.

SECTION 3. Congress shall have power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation.'.

It seems to me there are three ways campaign finance reform generally could go:

• Supplement the status quo with a system of voluntary public financing, so that many candidates can and will choose to opt out of the fundraising game.
• Amend the Constitution like this to allow for real limits on the amounts campaign can spend.
• Just give up on the notion that any set of restrictions will keep "bad money" out of the system, and instead focus on transparency and disclosure, because money (like water) always finds a crack to seep through.

For those just focused on fixing this at the Presidential level, Sen. Feingold's Presidential Public Funding Act of 2007 remains the sane, common-sense, and therefore unlikely-to-be-passed legislative means to bring that system up to the speed and numbers of 21st Century campaigning.

edited to clarify: The Schumer/Specter proposal, like Sen. Hollings' before it, would take the form of a constitutional amendment, not an ordinary bill.  Under Article V of the Constitution, you'd need two-thirds of both chambers to get this process moving.

Edwards is right when he says that the war on terror has become a cliché used by Bush to justify otherwise unjustifiable actions taken by this administration.  However, Edwards is naive when he states, in front of the Council on Foreign Relations

He has used this doctrine like a sledgehammer to justify the worst abuses and biggest mistakes of his administration, from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, to the war in Iraq. The worst thing about the Global War on Terror approach is that it has backfired -- our military has been strained to the breaking point and the threat from terrorism has grown

Those events were on purpose, they were systemic and not due to bad apples and they need to be addressed in a context larger than just as a Bush administration mistake. Framing it that way won’t help and it isn’t a sign of leadership based in realism.
There's several more problems with Edwards comprehension of the real war against "terrorists" below..

We finally know who put that ‘secret’ hold on Russ Feingold’s Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, and I couldn’t be more appalled to say that it was my Senator, Judd Gregg.

The Secret is out, Judd Gregg!  You see, it was a simple matter of hundreds of concerned citizens, led by the Sunlight Foundation calling every Senator and asking them if they put a hold on the bill.  Callers to every other office eventually heard ‘NO’.  Callers to your office, like myself, heard "I’m not sure where the Senator stands on that, I’ll get back to you".

Five items, each of which may be of interest to someone here.

• An anonymous Republican Senator has put a secret hold on the Senate electronic disclosure bill, just like Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Stuck Tubes) did to try to thwart passage of the Coburn-Obama earmark reform.  Sen. Feingold and Sen. Feinstein are pissed.  If you can, call a Republican Senator, ask his/her office if they're responsible for the hold, and demand that the bill be released and voted on.  Let us know if you hear anything.

• The Senate Rules Committee held a hearing this morning on one of Markos' favorite causes -- removing the ban on party coordinated expenditures on general election candidates.  As you may recall, federal candidates right now have no legal way to force party organizations like the DCCC or RSCC to pull objectionable ads ostensibly run on their behalves, even when the candidate believes the ad goes way off-message.  Allowing explicit coordination may force such ads to be more responsible, and eliminate a barrier than has little reason for being, but there's also some potential costs. Bob Bauer explains what's at stake.  

  Among those with some concern are the CFI's Michael Malbin, who notes such a move "would give party leaders the power to bankroll a favored candidate not only in an open seat primary but also in a primary against a sitting member who was becoming too 'independent'.... The leaders have already become more powerful. Do you really want to take it this far?"

• A clean elections bill is moving forward in Iowa, and New Jersey has selected three legislative districts for a public financing pilot program.  Speaking of which, did you check the box to make a three-dollar contribution to the presidential public financing system when filing your tax returns?  According to USA Today, probably not.
• Remember when I asked you to help me think through some issues dealing with the future of campaign communications?  Well, folks interested in my take on the upcoming FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life argument before the Supreme Court, dealing with electioneering communications by corporations and labor groups, can watch this ACS panel discussion from last week or read these prepared remarks.
• Most obscure of all, but worth noting: the FEC will be ruling tomorrow on an advisory opinion request regarding online fundraising -- if a site like ActBlue were to charge contributors a "convenience fee" for the credit card processing costs, does that fee function as an in-kind contribution to the candidate who benefits from the payment?  Paul Ryan explains from the reform community's perspective.  Isn't being a lawyer groovy?

Sure, all the news reports are coming out today on the various presidential candidates and their quarterly FEC filings, but one of the nice things is that you don't have to depend on all that to find the information of interest to you.  The law required Presidential and House candidates to file these reports electronically by April 15, and they are all available to you, right now, to do your own sleuthing and reporting.

Here is the link to the FEC's website.  If you want to find all the Presidentials, just select "presidential" for committee type, and "APR Quarterly" for the report.  Or just type in a name of a Presidential or House candidate.

Click on "view" next to the report filed on 4/15/2007, and you'll see something like this, with a summary chart and a list of links.  (We'll stick with Sen. Biden as an example.)  There, you'll easily see lines like "10. Cash on Hand at CLOSE of the Reporting Period" and line 17(a), "Contributions (other than loans) From: Individuals/Persons Other than Political Committees".  That's all the individual contributions.

The main links to explore for each candidate are Schedule A -- Itemized Receipts and Schedule B -- Itemized Disbursements.  These contain the itemized lists of all individual contributions greater that $250, and all campaign expenditures of any amount.   In particular, 17A lists the individual contributors,  and 17C lists contributions from PACs and transfers from other candidate committees.  For expenditures, Line 23 is what you want (operating expenditures).  Everything from staff salaries to travel and meal expenses to consultant fees is there.  Want to find out how much each candidate is paying his or her internet staff?  It's there.  (Want to see if anyone's being paid without disclosing it?  It would be there, too.)

You can go through this analysis for any Presidential or House candidate.  Find out how our freshmen are doing on fundraising for their reelections.  Or see which Republicans seem very vulnerable based on lackluster fundraising, which I just noticed.  (Hey, if you work for Mean Jean, you do get one dinner at the Cheesecake Factory every three months, and a lot of leftover chili.)  See which wealthy donors are giving to multiple presidential candidates.  Etc.

There is a wealth of information about the Presidential and House fields now available.  You just have to sift through it and tell us what you find.  For example, anyone want to start putting together all the CoH numbers for all the targeted House races?  The truth, as the kids like to say, is out there.

e.t.a.:Swing State Project has done much of that House legwork already.

For those who've been following the push to make Senate candidates file their FEC reports electronically just like everyone else, you'll recall that the March 14 hearing on the Feingold-Cochran bill went really well, with the speakers unanimously in support of this simple reform.  Even the Hon. Robert Byrd, the defender of Senate tradition, is set to become the 32nd co-sponsor of this simple, bipartisan, noncontroversial legislation.  As the National Journal notes:

It's not every day that senators get to vote on a bill that's as simple, sensible and non-controversial as the one now pending before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

Here's what the so-called Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act would do:

• It would save the federal government hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
• It would polish up the Senate's public image, which remains badly tarnished by recent lobbying scandals.
• It would vastly improve public disclosure, and help voters make better-informed choices on Election Day.

Indeed, the bill makes so much sense that it's hard to fathom why it's gone nowhere since its introduction more than three years ago. Not a single senator has publicly opposed the legislation, and numerous newspapers have endorsed it. As Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., put it during a recent hearing on the legislation: "This bill is as close to a no-brainer as you can get in this area."

Which, of course, means it's time for the Republicans to try to mess it up at tomorrow's scheduled mark-up hearing.

The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting today that Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) wants to amend the bill by adding a provision to allow candidates and parties to coordinate advertisements.   In other words, take a clean, uncontroversial bill and complicate it with an unrelated matter.

We need to make sure that all Democrats on the Rules Committee show up at tomorrow's hearing to defeat the bill, and to persuade as many Republicans as we can to oppose Sen. Bennett's efforts to gum up the works with a more controversial provision that can be handled separately.  So, if one of these Senators belongs to you:

Dems: Feinstein (CA), Byrd (WV), Inouye (HI), Dodd (CT), Schumer (NY), Durbin (IL), B. Nelson (NE), Reid (NV), Murray (WA), Pryor (AR)
Reps:  Bennett (UT), Stevens (AK), McConnell (KY), Cochran (MS), Lott (MS), Hutchison (TX), Chambliss (GA), Hagel (NE), Lamar! (TN)

Then call the Capitol Switchboard toll-free at 1-800-459-1887, ask to be connected to his or her office, and just say something like:

Hi, I was hoping I could speak with someone about Sen. [Feingold if (D), Cochran if (R)]'s electronic disclosure bill?  [wait]  My name is [X], and I live in [Town], [Your State].  I regularly follow politics online, so I was hoping that the Senator would make sure to support S. 223 at tomorrow's hearing, and to make sure it will be voted out as a clean bill.  Does s/he have a position on it?  Is the Senator a co-sponsor?

Two minutes; in, out, done.  Our sources are telling me that some Democrats may skip tomorrow's hearing because they don't believe this issue is important to constituents.  Just a few calls can change their minds.  Make yours today, and let us know what they say.

More: Sunlight Foundation, Campaign Finance Institute.

Yesterday morning, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) introduced the Fair Elections Now Act, a bipartisan bill to bring voluntary public financing to U.S. Senate elections.  (A companion bill will also be introduced on the House side by Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) soon.)

We all know the problem: even with the rise of small-dollar donations pioneered by the Dean campaign, a hundred $20 donors can be dwarfed by a single $2300 maximum contribution, and very few Americans (one in 400) gives even $200+ as a campaign contribution.  So candidates spend all their time chasing down that money -- Tuesday's Philadelphia Inquirer highlighted how freshman Reps. Patrick Murphy and Joe Sestak are on a perpetual fundraising mission to retain the seats they just won months ago.

The Fair Elections Now Act, modeled after the successful systems in place in Maine and Arizona, has three parts:

• Seed Money:  Candidates can raise up to $100 per individual/PAC to get a campaign off the ground (up to a set limit), in an effort to finance their bid to ...
• Gather Qualifying Contributions:  To qualify for public financing, Senate candidate needs to demonstrate her seriousness and base of support by obtaining a set number of $5 contributions (and no more than $5) from citizens across the state. Obtain enough (based on the size of your state), and you receive ...
• The Benefits:  For agreeing not to accept private funding, a candidate instead receives a large sum of money to run her primary campaign, and if she is successful, a larger sum for the general as well.  That sum is based on the size of the state and its media costs, and if the candidate is facing an opponent receing private money or support via independent expenditures, it can be as much as tripled (the "fair fight fund") to ensure a level playing field.  

Let's put some numbers on it to make this tangible.  A Senate candidate in Delaware could raise up to $75,000 in seed money in order to gather the two thousand $5 contributions necessary to qualify for primary funding; upon obtaining that sum, $500,000 would be immediately available for the primary (and up to $1.5M if needed for a fair fight), and $750,000 for the general (and up to $2.25M if needed).  In California, a Senate candidate could raise up to $465,000 in seed money in order to gather the 28,000 $5 contributions necessary to qualify for primary funding; upon obtaining that sum, $5.7M would be immediately available for the primary (and up to $17.1M if needed for a fair fight), and $8.5M for the general (and up to $25.6M if needed against a privately-financed opponent).  

[Moreover, there will be a media market adjustment to address variations among states, and participants would receive vouchers for purchasing broadcast airtime and would receive a 20% discount beneath the lowest unit cost on all advertising purchased near the end of the primary and general campaigns.]

Here, of course, is the beauty of the system: the system first forces grassroots organizing at the early stages, and then with the burdens of fundraising removed, frees up the candidates to spend much more time with citizens than they can right now.  And once elected, they're no longer dependent upon the continued support large donors to get re-elected, but on citizens alone, which could change the dynamics on a wide range of policy issues.

Moreover, it's voluntary: a candidate can choose to stick with private contributions, but he'll have to be able to raise a huge amount, because all that effort will otherwise just be matched by automatic "fair fight" grants to his opponent.  The voluntary nature of this also avoids any constitutional questions about restricting candidates' or contributors' rights.

Who's supporting it?  Labor groups like the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, SEIU, and CWA have lined up behind it to give working people a chance to be heard in the political process. MoveOn is supporting it -- even though they're now among the big spenders/influencers in elections, they don't like the status quo.  The Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters are on board, as are civil rights organizations like NAACP and MALDEF.  Also, perhaps surprisingly, some very wealthy and influential donors like Alan Hassenfeld (Hasbro) and Edgar Bronfman Sr. fmr. Seagrams), who are tired of how the game has been played.

Public Campaign has even more details, and Nick Nyhart and Nancy Watzman have more on why this matters.

What can you do:  Sign up as a citizen co-sponsor.  Tell your friends about it.  And call up your Senators and get them on board.  I tend to be a cynic about Big Change Legislation, but I think voluntary public financing is a much-needed idea whose time has come.

While pretty much everyone else in the world sees the Hillary Clinton/"1984" ad as an exuberant expression of free speech and creativity, regardless of your stance in the primaries, DailyKos bête noire Carol Darr of GWU's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, on the other hand, sees it as a profound threat to the American way of life:

"Free speech. That simple," said Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum of New York, which tracks the confluence of politics and the Internet. "Posting a video is no different than sitting in a coffee shop and voicing your opinion."

Others see dangers.

"When it is not regulated, you can take any amount of money from any source, including foreign entities, and you are not required to disclose it," said Carol Darr of the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet at George Washington University.

"There are a lot of people around the world who care about who the next president is," she said. "If they can have an effect without leaving fingerprints, it is naive to think they won't."

The horror!  What would we ever do if dirty foreigners tried to take over American media outlets and influence our elections?

In an editorial today tied to the story, the Los Angeles Times gets it so right:

The beauty of the Internet is that speech is free. It costs virtually nothing to create an ad for or against a candidate and post it on YouTube for the world to see, so the exchange of ideas (and insults) is refreshingly brisk. Not long after the Clinton slam caught fire, someone did an anti-Obama version of the same piece. Meanwhile, other clips praising or slamming the candidates proliferate on the website.

The potential for anonymous potshots and dirty tricks online is real and always will be. But the answer isn't more regulation.

The Federal Election Commission already requires those who pay for ads online to disclose their spending, and its rules against contributions by corporations and unions apply equally to the Web as to the airwaves. Those strictures will be buttressed by the blogosphere's penchant for rooting out fakes online. Besides, candidates can always console themselves with the fact that attention spans online are short, and the best way to counteract a message you don't like is to respond with one of your own

(For what it's worth, twenty years ago the FEC confirmed that there's nothing wrong with foreigners providing voluntary assistance to federal campaigns.)

edited to add:  You know who's the real problem?  The Economist.  Not only is it owned by dirty foreigners seeking to write about our elections, but it's anonymous.  The horror, the horror.

When we last visited the Campaign Disclosure Parity Act (S. 223) in early January, the Senate had decided not to include within the opening ethics package this simple bill to bring the Senate into the 21st century by requiring that Senate candidates file their FEC reports electronically, making them easily and quickly searchable.  You remember -- don't you? -- how hard it was to sift through hundreds of pages of handwritten filings to find those troubling "petty cash" entries in that Senate primary.

At the time, Sen. Reid promised that this Feingold-Cochran bill would come up again soon, and as I'm typing this, you can watch a live webcast Sen. Feinstein's Rules Committee hold its hearing on S. 223.  All six witnesses support the bill -- indeed, no one openly opposes it anymore -- and here's some of what Sen. Feingold will be saying:

The FEC is required to make available on the Internet within 24 hours any filing it receives electronically.  So if this bill is enacted, electronic versions of Senate reports should be available to the public within 48 hours of their filing.  That will be a vast improvement over the current situation, which requires journalists and interested members of the public to review computer images of paper-filed copies of reports, and involves a completely wasteful expenditure by the FEC of hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to re-enter information into databases, even though every Senate campaign has the information available in electronic format.

This step is long overdue.  There is no excuse for keeping our own campaign finance information inaccessible to the public when the information filed by House and Presidential candidates, PACs, parties, and even 527 organizations is readily available almost immediately.  The Washington Post has called the outmoded Senate campaign reporting system ``obviously unjustified," and Roll Call has called it "indefensible." I couldn't agree more.  Why has the Senate required electronic filing of everyone else, but refused to get rid of its own exemption?    

The current system means that the FEC’s detailed coding, which allows the press and the public to do more sophisticated searches and analysis, is completed over a week later for Senate reports than for House reports.  It means that the final disclosure reports covering the first two weeks of October are often not available for detailed scrutiny until after the election.  Indeed, according to the Campaign Finance Institute, prior to the 2006 election, "[i]n all ten of the most closely followed Senate races, voters were unable to search through any candidate reports for information on [donations made after September]."  And a September 2006 column by Jeffery Birnbaum in the Washington Post noted that "When the polls opened in November 2004, voters were in the dark about $53 million in individual Senate contributions of $200 or more dating all the way back to July."  That’s scandalous Madam Chairman, and there is no good reason for it.

Madam Chairman, let me just say that I know that the election laws have a big impact on campaigns and all Senators want to scrutinize them very carefully for partisan or personal implications.  I am very familiar with controversial and contested campaign finance legislation.  This isn’t that kind of bill.  This bill is as close to a no-brainer as you can get in this area.

The bill currently has 29 co-sponsors, 18 D and 11 R.  And that's where you come in.

If either of your Senators isn't listed (i.e., unless you live in CA, CO, CT, IL or TX), call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to speak with his or her office.  And all you have to say is some version of this:

Hi, I was hoping I could speak with someone about Sen. [Feingold if (D), Cochran if (R)]'s electronic disclosure bill?  [wait]  My name is [X], and I live in [Town], [Your State].  I regularly follow politics online, so I was hoping that the Senator would support S. 223, the electronic disclosure bill for campaign finance reports which is in front of the Rules Committee today.  Does s/he have a position on it?  Will the Senator co-sponsor the bill?

Be polite (even to the Republican staffers) and be firm.  You'll be done in two minutes.  Then, come back here and tell us how it went.  Every phone call really does make a difference -- it forces their attention, and moves issues up the internal chain-of-command.

Pressure and attention from online activists has eliminated many of the roadblocks from this bill's passage over the past year.  Now, let's finish the job.

edited to add:  MyDD has more.  Our background is here.

edited one more time:  Video of Sen. Feingold's testimony is now online, as his his full written testimony.  

Two items:

1.  New proposed Texas journalist shield legislation will not protect most bloggers -- instead, it defines "journalist" as:

"Journalist" means a person who, for financial gain or livelihood, is engaged in gathering, compiling, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, investigating, processing or publishing news or information in a tangible form that is distributed or intended to be distributed to a group of people by any news medium or through any communication service provider. This includes anyone who supervises or assists the journalist in gathering, preparing, or dissemination of news or information.

2.  Sshh! for now, but they're trying to regulate the political interwebs again.  Reps. Price (D-NC) and Castle (R-DE) have introduced the "Responsible Campaign Communications Act of 2007" that would apply the "stand by your ad" requirements of McCain Feingold to the start of automated phone calls, but also, okay....:

SEC. 2. APPLICATION OF DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENTS FOR AUDIO AND VIDEO COMMUNICATIONS TO AUDIO AND VIDEO PORTIONS OF COMMUNICATIONS TRANSMITTED THROUGH INTERNET OR ELECTRONIC MAIL.

(a) Communications by Candidates or Authorized Persons- Section 318(d)(1) of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (2 U.S.C. 441d(d)(1)) is amended by adding at the end the following new subparagraph:

`(C) AUDIO AND VIDEO PORTIONS OF COMMUNICATIONS TRANSMITTED THROUGH INTERNET OR ELECTRONIC MAIL- In the case of a communication described in paragraph (1) or (2) of subsection (a) which is transmitted through the Internet or through any form of electronic mail--

`(i) any audio portion of the communication shall meet the requirements applicable under subparagraph (A) to communications transmitted through radio; and

`(ii) any video portion of the communication shall meet the requirements applicable under subparagraph (B) to communications transmitted through television.'.

(b) Communications by Others- Section 318(d)(2) of such Act (2 U.S.C. 441d(d)(2)) is amended by adding at the end the following: `In the case of a communication described in paragraph (3) of subsection (a) which is transmitted through the Internet or through any form of electronic mail, any audio portion of the communication shall meet the requirements applicable under this paragraph to communications transmitted through radio and any video portion of the communication shall meet the requirements applicable under this paragraph to communications transmitted through television.'....

SEC. 4. NO EXPANSION OF PERSONS SUBJECT TO DISCLAIMER REQUIREMENTS ON INTERNET COMMUNICATIONS.

Nothing in this Act or the amendments made by this Act may be construed to require any person who is not required under section 318 of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (as provided under section 110.11 of title 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations) to include a disclaimer on communications made by the person through the Internet to include any disclaimer on any such communications.

I know what you're thinking: Adam, that's completely self-explanatory!  Go home!

Okay, here's what I think it means: currently, campaign finance law on the Internets generally only applies to communications placed for a fee on someone else's site -- i.e., ads.  If a campaign spends money on a blogad, you now see a disclaimer with it.  So, the question is what happens with something like YouTube, where a campaign can distribute a communication online for free.  This bill would force the same "I'm Ned Lamont, and I approve this ad (and so do we!)" disclaimer into all online audio or video ads, regardless of whether a fee is paid to place them.

The question is what else the bill does, between Sections 2(b) and 4, in terms of voluntary activity by bloggers to create videos -- because Section 441d(a)(3) referred to in section 2 states that an advertisement "not authorized by a candidate, an authorized political committee of a candidate, or its agents, shall clearly state the name and permanent street address, telephone number, or World Wide Web address of the person who paid for the communication and state that the communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee."

It may well be that between that and the clear exemption under Section 4, pro-candidate videos you voluntarily place on YouTube are exempt.  The question is whether this is necessary in the first place.  Stay tuned.

Why is the American health care industry geared more toward the interests of insurance companies than the citizenry?  Why was bankruptcy reform such a "necessity", given the significant profit margins of all the major lenders?  Why was Iraqi "reconstruction" entrusted to private contractors on a no-bid basis?  Why do energy companies have a larger voice in the crafting of American energy policy than any other U.S. entities?  Why do so many of our politicians accept the absurd canard that voluntary corporate self-regulation is the anwer to most of our environmental problems?  Why did our politicians feel comfortable raising the rates on student loans when doing so directly contravened the interests of so many of their constituents?