In my view, the entire morass of campaign finance regulations violate our First Amendment rights by unduly burdening speech. For the most part, the spending restrictions and limitation on pre-election communications are surely motivated by incumbents wanting to protect themselves from criticism from those who oppose their re-election.

The House is scheduled to vote today under a suspension of the rules on H.R. 1606, the "Online Freedom of Speech Act." The bill, consisting of only sentence, would exempt communications over the Internet from the campaign finance regulations. This would mean, for example, that bloggers could keep on blogging within 30 days of an election--when people are actually paying attention--without worrying about being prosecuted for violating the campaign law.

Again, in my view, all types of media should be free from these speech restrictions. But at least H.R. 1606 would keep communications on the Internet out of the regulatory morass that is our overly burdensome and restrictive campaign finance law. Hopefully, the House will pass the bill.