“The well-government and regulating of Printers and Printing Presses is matter of Publique care and of great concernment especially considering that by the general licentiousnes of the late times many evil disposed persons have been encouraged to print and sell heretical schismatical blasphemous seditious and treasonable Bookes Pamphlets and Papers … For prevention whereof no surer meanes can be advised then by reducing and limiting the number of Printing Presses.”

— An Act for Preventing the Frequent Abuses in Printing Seditious Treasonable and Unlicensed Books and Pamphlets and for Regulating Printing and Printing Presses, 1662

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We’ve come a long way since that Act was passed in England. Or have we? The Federal Election Commission declared on Tuesday that two political blogs were within their rights to blog about politics. The two blogs in question were ones we’re less than fond of: a prominent liberal blog, Kos Media, L.L.C. (aka DaiyKos.com), and an obscure one, a blog by a Michael L. Grace dedicated to the defeat of Rep. Mary Bono in California’s 45th district in the 2006 election (it failed, she was reelected). But they have an absolute right, under our Constitution, to do what they want, and it is shocking that a federal commission gets even to question or even consider the legality of their activities — whether they are print, broadcast, or digital.

The reason these political blogs are being allowed to blog about politics is that the FEC has decided to consider them as falling under the “media exemption” to the 2002 McCain-Feingold law that outlawed so much political speech in America; if they’re “media,” these blogs can attack or promote candidates without inadvertently “contributing” to them, thus triggering various rules and regulations under the law. The exemption is what allows big corporations such as the Washington Post Company and the New York Times Company to plump so aggressively for restrictions on the speech of everyone else in society through laws to regulate campaign “finance.”

Why should it be even a question for the rest of America? There are individuals who want to contribute more than a few thousand dollars to a candidate and citizens groups that want to run ads attacking candidates. The blogs are a magnificent new feature on our political scene, but what is unique about them under the law? What about talk-radio hosts such as those who have had their speech labeled as “in kind” contributions to an anti-tax ballot campaign out in Washington State? It took the state’s highest court to end that travesty. Why should individual bloggers — citizens with something to say but no legal departments to fight off government repression — have ever been left vulnerable?

For now, the FEC is being lenient. But what is this if not the government issuing licenses for the operation of digital printing presses? Should this board of government bureaucrats change its thinking, bloggers will be at their mercy. In the interim, America needs a law making it explicit that campaign-finance restrictions will not apply to the Internet. Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas was onto the right idea last year with the “Internet Free Speech Protection Act of 2006.” The candidate in either party who championed such a measure would be a true friend of the First Amendment. This would be a good step until the Supreme Court takes a longer look at McCain-Feingold and lifts the threat of campaign speech restrictions from the land.