There's more evidence this morning (if we really needed any) that the path to hell is paved with well-intentioned legislation like McCain-Feingold:

The Federal Election Commission said yesterday that it will appeal a federal judge's decision to strike down more than a dozen of the government's current rules on political fundraising.

In a statement, however, the commission said it had not decided whether to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals to review all or some of the rules sent back to the agency by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

....Besides requesting new rules governing coordination between candidates and outside parties, she also ordered the FEC to say how far the law goes in banning corporate, union and unlimited "soft money" donations. The judge also ordered the commission to take a step it had resisted: regulating at least some political activity conducted over the Internet. [Emph. added.]

Like many others, I've argued ad nauseum over the years that M-F-style campaign finance reform is a real threat to the Democratic party for two basic reasons: (a) it seeks to shut down our primary source of income while actually increasing the GOP's; and (b) it's always -- always -- the guys with names like Moulitsas and Black, not Scaife and Murdoch, who wind up getting burned when we start playing with matches around the First Amendment.

Besides, it's not as though there aren't smarter, better ways of addressing the nation's campaign finance problem....

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