Keep an eye on Dem Senate

A section of the Legislative Transparency bill in the Senate was narrowly defeated. It would have required bloggers, among others, to register as lobbyists if they engaged in efforts to reach more than 500 people to encourage them to contact their elected officials. So say you put your blog article in a newsletter and paid to send it out, like many grassroots groups do. Former journalist and now blogger, Sara Pentz. Read the whole post, but this excerpt is key:

In effect, the red tape bureaucracy of 220 would have ‘blocked’ my freedom of speech.

A separate report would have been required for each policy issue that I wrote about or advocated. If I failed to complete each of the required actions of 220, I would have suffered severe civil and potentially criminal penalties. That is, if I failed to register, report or omitted some required information in my reports, I might be jailed.

The Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007, S. 1, 220, section (17) would have been a silent threat that would hang over my head like the sword of Damocles.

The purpose of 220 (17) was not to make sure that I did not pay any government official some amount of money to sway his thinking or vote. It was, instead, clearly written to stop anyone––from any end of the political spectrum––from swaying (meaning disagreeing) a government official or anyone who had the power to write or shape the laws of the land.

[snip]
In fact, 220 was finally ‘defeated’ at the last minute when an amendment to S. 1 removed the controversial section from the bill.

As the friend who sent this to me remarked, I thought only Bush/Ashcroft censored Americans? From this blog, Lighthouse Patriot, comes word that Republican Senators Bennett and McConnell acted to amend the bill to strike this out.