Debunking Declan McCullagh's "The Coming Crackdown On Blogging"

Debunking proceeds apace, for whatever effect it may have:

Lincoln Plawg: McCain-Feingold the blog-killer? ("Conclusion of my first cut at this: the threat to the blogosphere is greatly exaggerated.") [via Crooked Timber]

Lots of links at:

Electrolite: More on the FEC, particularly:

Waldo Jaquith - The FEC is not going to regulate blogs ("Suffice it to say, Bradley Smith has every reason to rally the troops in strong opposition to the recently-enacted Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (aka McCain-Feingold) and campaign finance laws on the whole. And it seems that he's found a crew of suckers: bloggers.")

Iron Mouth: There Will Be No Crackdown ... ("Thus, Bradley Smith is pushing the truth a long way when he says that the judge is pushing the FEC to start going after every single link in every blog directing to a candidate's website.")

My contribution, of uncommon links:

Declan McCullagh has a history of hype-filled, yellow, "journalism", Have another, old, example:

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,32121,00.html

WASHINGTON -- US currency should include tracking devices that let the government tax private possession of dollar bills, a Federal Reserve official says.

When reading one of these articles, a grain of salt isn't enough, you need a whole salt-mine. And it's a stark warning as to what lies on the other end of the idea of "objectivity". This isn't a situation where one has to fiddle around with talk about cultural prejudice or unconscious bias. Declan McCullagh is a dogmatic Libertarian proselytizer.

And how much skepticism was applied, by far too few people, who reflexively echoed his Cato-mouthpiece agenda-driven scare-mongering?

Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)