Remember way back in November of last year when Congress declined to protect bloggers from campaign finance rules, thereby opening the door for regulation of free speech on the internet?  I was quite concerned that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) would implement rules curtailing political discourse on the web under the guise of regulating campaign dollars.  Fears included making it illegal for blogs to endorse a candidate, linking to a campaign web site, posting portions of a press release, and a great many other activities that occur in the blogosphere all the time.

Public outcry, a significant portion of which came from bloggers and blog readers, apparently was heard by the FEC.  After serious discussion and contemplation, new regulations actually protect bloggers and internet political speech in general as exercises of one of our most sacred (if not most attacked and recently curtailed) liberties: free speech.  Of equal importance is the “recognition that what [bloggers] do is a valuable part of the democratic experiment, and one which should not be thwarted by the incursion of the federal government.”

Ah.  What a pleasant surprise to see this government actually protecting free speech for once.