If you want to touch the sky

Just put a blogwatch in your eye…

Hit & Run slams the campaign finance reform decision: “That there’s a ‘media exemption’ only makes it more grotesque–one powerful faction in society (elected officials) throwing a bone to another (the press).”

And Volokh hits the other side of the “newspapers are corporations too” coin: “I’ve mentioned before that I think corporate speech should be just a protected as noncorporate speech. One piece of evidence for this position is that newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, and other media outlets tend to be corporations, too. So far, the restrictions on corporate speech related to campaigns have excluded the media, at least as to some of its functions (‘news stor[ies], commentar[ies], or editorial[s],’ in the BCRA statute that was just upheld). But (1) it’s not clear why some corporations should have more statutory speech rights than others, and (2) these exemptions from the media are, under the Court’s logic, matters of legislative charity; legislatures could, if they wanted to, restrict newspapers, TV stations, and cable programs owned by corporations just as they restrict speech by other corporations.”

I don’t think we know whether the long-range effects of the CFR bill will be good for media corporations (they become proportionately much bigger fish in a proportionately smaller pond), bad for media corporations (if future legislation does try to treat e.g. FoxNews as a corporation just like any other), or neutral (because there are so many loopholes–apparently the NRA is considering forming a media corporation to run its near-election issue ads–that CFR just won’t do much). But looking at the newspapers vs. other corporation issue, in general, is a great way to see the problems with CFR. Bleah.

Oxblog: Hee!

There’s a whole blog devoted to the theory of punishment (and related legal and philosophical questions). Who knew? It looks super-intriguing; via L. Solum.

Henry Rollins tours with the USO.