Breathe easy, the FEC isn’t coming to get us

There was widespread consternation last week — OK, in some circles, downright panic — that the Federal Election Commission was prepared to start regulating the blogosphere under federal campaign laws. The alarm was raised when FEC Commissioner Brad Smith, a Republican, did an interview with CNET, noting that “it’s very likely that the Internet is going to be regulated.” Many feared that the agency would police blogs’ political activities, including monitoring who linked to whom.

Well, we can relax. John McCain and Russ Feingold issued a joint statement yesterday in which they said that the anxiety is unfounded and the suggestion that blogs would be regulated was “misinformation” and “baseless fears” generated by those who disagree with campaign finance reform.

And if that isn’t enough to set minds at ease, some FEC officials are even talking openly about creating an exemption for bloggers to keep the medium free from the agency’s regulations.

[Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat who sits on the commission] said she is “completely open” to the option of “carving out an exemption” for bloggers and said there have already been internal discussions to that effect at the agency — though she doesn’t think the agency had any intentions of regulating blogs anyway.

At least one House Dem is on the case.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the ranking Member on the House Judiciary Committee, was so concerned about the possibility that he’s been circulating a letter among his colleagues calling on the FEC to carve out an explicit exemption for Web reporters.

“Given the emergence of this new method of reporting and Americans’ increasing reliance on it for their political information, it is critical that BCRA’s press exemption should be clarified to apply to those who are reporting on the Internet,” Conyers wrote in the proposed letter.

I’m not entirely sure an exemption is necessary, but it’s good to know that the threats raised in Smith’s CNET interview aren’t going anywhere.