BCRA is supposed to limit crony money. It's not supposed to be used to attack free speech.

There's an idea called "The spirit of the law", versus the "letter of the law". It means that the law is in place in order to make people do what is right, with reference to the subject of the law. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA, McCain and Feingold sponsors) was an attempt to control the influence of private and corporate money over our election campaigns. Then-acting-president George W. Bush did not want to sign the bill, as it would make many of the contributions he received from the super-rich, and from corporations, unusable. He grudgingly, reluctantly and almost secretly signed the BCRA into law. Once it was signed, his FEC busily went about cutting the --ahem-- off the law through watered-down implementation.

Now that at least half the U.S. population is beginning to smell what is issuing from Washington, beginning to recognize it's paid-off media-whore megaphone (some of that with our own tax-dollars (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/11/1446234)), people are beginning to speak out. When they assemble peacefully in public places, to redress this acting government for their grievances, they are penned into "free-speech zones", normally far from the events they are attempting to attend, often in the presence of a daunting militarized police-force.

In such a situation, people are communicating with one another more and more from the "privacy of their own homes" *(read section 215 of the Patriot-act (http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=11054&c=130)) over the Internet. This is akin to a country that is thinking, and having second thoughts. It is the thought-process of a nation, and even a world, at work. New communications technologies enabled the Russians to learn of freedom and throw off an oppressive government. New communications technologies helped the Spanish learn that Aznar was lying to them, then vote him out of office. More and more, people are learning. They are talking. They are sending messages back and forth. They are Blogging.

Communication such as this is dangerous for a despotic class who want to keep the rabble under their thumb. Communication between citizens in an un-hampered fashion is always bad for those who would oppress them. Soldiers learn early on that one of the things you do with prisoners is "Silence", so that they won't work together and escape.

So now, after not wanting a law that would limit a puppet's access to gargantuan sums of money from super-rich individuals and oppressive corporations, and after subsequently crippling many of those limits through implementation, those same crony corruptors are going to try to use this same law in their continuing attack on free speech.

They are going to try to prevent people from expressing their views on the Internet Blogs (Here's one of many stories: http://michellemalkin.com/archives/001654.htm.

Some say that this might be a bluff-attack, in an attempt to force the repeal of a law that these crony corruptors don't really want, and I won't advocate its repeal (don't throw out the baby with the bath-water); but I will advocate that those in power be forced to obey the spirit of that law as it was originally designed, and to NOT attack our Constitutional first amendment right to free speech with it.

This deserves discussion in the bars. At the water-coolers. On the radio. Until that guy in the work-worn pickup-truck finally gets it and realizes that that "W" sticker on his vehicle is nothing more than a thinly-veiled swastika (READ: TORTURE, CONFINEMENT WITHOUT TRIAL, UNLAWFUL INVASION OF SOVERIEGN NATIONS), we cannot rest.

Come to think of it, why don't we just outlaw all private campaign financing, and force TV and Radio stations to give opposing candidates equal coverage, as a condition of continued licensure?

But don't mess with Free Speech. If you don't have that, you don't have America.