Hmmm… According to the NYT, the FCC has decided to exempt “most of internet” from campaign spending laws. Here’s the gist:

WASHINGTON, March 27 — The Federal Election Commission ruled unanimously Monday that political communication on the Internet, including Web logs, setting up Web sites and e-mail, was not regulated by campaign finance laws.

The commission, in a 6-to-0 decision, also ruled that paid political advertisements placed on Web sites were covered by the 2002 campaign finance law, which includes restrictions on spending and contributions and bars corporations and unions from using their treasuries to purchase Web advertisements.

The decision marked a significant step in the rapid evolution of the Internet — and, in particular, Web logs — as a force in American politics. It is the latest chapter in the conflict between First Amendment guarantees of freedom of expression and efforts by Congress to regulate campaign spending.

The commission ruling came two years after it had decided that all Internet activity was exempt from the campaign finance laws. That ruling was challenged by Congressional sponsors of the law, and a federal judge upheld that suit, ordering the commission to write rules to apply the 2002 law to the Internet.

The commission ruled that the law applied to paid political advertisements, but offered a broad exemption for all other Internet political activity, conducted by individuals or groups, even in direct coordination with a candidate.

“The commission established a categorical exemption for individuals who engage in online politics,” Michael E. Toner, the chairman of the commission, said in an interview. “The agency has taken an important step in protecting grass roots and online politics.”

At first sight, this looks like good news — it means that Bloggers’ exhortations to their readers to contribute to, support or work for candidates would be counted as contributions to candidatges and therefore fall under the contribution limit of $2,000.

My gloomy fear is that this will actually lead to massive pollution of the blogosphere, as political parties figure out ways of assembling masses of ‘individual’ pseudo-bloggers to support candidates.

And while we’re on the subject of Attorney-General Gonzales, here’s a sobering piece by Joyce Appelby and Gary Hart…

Relying on legal opinions from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Professor John Yoo, then working at the Justice Department, Bush has insisted that there can be no limits to the power of the commander-in-chief in time of war. More recently the president has claimed that laws relating to domestic spying and the torture of detainees do not apply to him. His interpretation has produced a devilish conundrum.

President Bush has given Commander-in-Chief Bush unlimited wartime authority. But the “war on terror” is more a metaphor than a fact. Terrorism is a method, not an ideology; terrorists are criminals, not warriors. No peace treaty can possibly bring an end to the fight against far-flung terrorists. The emergency powers of the president during this “war” can now extend indefinitely, at the pleasure of the president and at great threat to the liberties and rights guaranteed us under the Constitution…

Puzzle: this essay was published on George Mason University’s History News Network. A few minutes ago I looked to see what were the current most popular queries on search engines and was puzzled to discover that “George Mason University” was second only to ‘Tiger Woods”. Could it be that people had heard about the Appleby/Hart piece and were hunting for it? Curious…

Lovely post on OpenDemocracy.net by Fred Halliday on Alberto Gonzales’s performance at the IISS on March 7. Sample:

Gonzales was evasive on matters of substance, jocular in response to questions touching on matters of human suffering. Asked if he thought that setting dogs on naked prisoners was a form of torture, he said he did not give opinions on individual detention practices. He shifted responsibility – and hence blame – from the department of justice to the department of defence when it suited him. Above all, he was apparently oblivious and indifferent to the consternation, rage and concern which recent US policies – enacted following the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington – have occasioned.

There is nearly always something slightly chilling when groups of mid-Atlantic government officials, arrayed in phalanxes of grey suits, get together to discuss their security concerns. But never, in more than thirty years of observing such occasions, have I seen such an appalling, collusive, complacent and – in its own understated way – evil, performance as this.

That the US – its officials and citizens – has been, and will continue to be for a long time, the object of violent attacks, at home and abroad, is not in question. Nor is the right, and responsibility, of any state to protect itself as it can, including by taking anticipatory measures abroad. The issue, and what has become a matter of worldwide alarm and criticism, is the flouting of international law, the laws and norms of combat and international opinion, as well as the disdain in which the Bush administration, from the president downwards, continues to hold international law and the institutions in which it is embodied. In this regard, the performance by Gonzales, on a sunny March morning in London, was true to form…

A transcript of Gonzales’s address (in Microsoft Word format — yuck) is available from a link on this page.

That’s how Jackie Ashley interprets his admission that last Autumn’s announcement of his intention to retire may have been a mistake. She writes:

His real intent, confirmed in off-the-record briefings, was to win a further delay, to signal that he would not be bumped into retirement by newspapers, cartoonists, backbenchers or indeed the chancellor. He has a date in his head but, the nods and winks suggest, this is likelier to be in 2008 than any time soon. He wants to wait until the health service is fixed – and you can’t kick a ball into the long grass further than that.

So this is a fightback, a gauntlet thrown down, an apparently modest admission of mistaken candour that is really a declaration of war. Interestingly, like the original announcement, this was made when prime minister and chancellor were thousands of miles apart and arrived like a bolt from the blue. The chancellor had no advance warning.

It changes everything. It means that Brown’s appeasement of No 10 has yet again won him nothing at all. It gives a signal to those, such as Charles Clarke, who feel that by 2008 they might have a good chance of taking on the chancellor. So it removes both imminence and certainty. The whole future leadership question is thrown wide open. Judging by past performance, Blair may now add to the confusion by saying something placatory about Brown inheriting in due course. If so, it will be meant only to avoid an immediate eruption from the Treasury, to buy a little more time. It won’t mean anything really. The prime minister is going to stay as long as he possibly can; and if he can hand over to someone who isn’t his old friend and old enemy Gordon Brown, then he would be delighted.

Er, one doesn’t want to boast, but this is what I wrote on the matter last December:

If — as is widely believed — there is some kind of deal between him and Gordon Brown that the latter is the anointed successor, then Blair’s declared intention of serving “a full term” as Prime Minister seems bizarre. If he really wanted Brown to succeed and have a fighting chance of winning the next election, then there must be an orderly transition fairly soon (and certainly no more than 18 months from now). But this is not how Blair — steaming fanatically ahead with his reform-or-bust agenda — is behaving. Why?

Watching Brown in action this week as Adair Turner’s sensible report on the pensions crisis was published, an obvious thought occurred to me (I’m slow on the uptake, alas). It’s this: Blair doesn’t want Brown to succeed him, and he’s going to do everything in his power to stop him becoming leader!