One could make the same claim about FR.
i was thinking the very same thing.
when people here start thinking about using
THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT it just makes me sick.
i do not care if it sounds far, it still is talk of treason to our constitution.
Not sure. FR does not accept advertising, nor do we host the diaries of political candidates, although freepers can put what they want on their homepage. Slippery slope, though.
I doubt it. Kos has as a posted purpose "electing democrats to office". Not liberals, not progressives, but members of the Democratic Party.
In contrast, FR is certainly very conservative but doesn't (to my knowledge) support any particular party.
> One could make the same claim about FR.
People are jumping up and down calling this a first amendment issue - I don’t see it that way. Nothing in the complaint suggests that KOS can’t post whatever it likes; it merely says that it must report its financial activities. If they are making cash or “in-kind” donations to specific candidates, that needs to be disclosed. If they are not spending funds specifically to promote the election of specific candidates, they should tell the FEC to bugger off.
As far as I know, Free Republic does not expend funds to hold campaign events for specific candidates, and does not make donations to specific candidates. If I am mistaken, then I think FR should have to report those as well. Its not the speech - its the money.
They can say anything they damn well please at KOS as far as I am concerned. But if they are acting as a conduit for campaign donations, I think the public has a right to know.
But I am fully in agreement with gutting the FEC. I think the only thing the FEC should be doing is making sure candidates report who their donors are - that is what matters to me; knowing who a candidate is beholden to.
YOu can make the same argument, but you would be wrong.
Not even close. No where does FR claim to be a shill for the Republican Party -- it only claims to support conservative causes. Here is FR's goals as stated on the site:
Free Republic is the premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web. We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America. And we always have fun doing it. Hoo-yah!And by contrast here is the KOS statement:
This is a Democratic blog, a partisan blog. One that recognizes that Democrats run from left to right on the ideological spectrum, and yet we're all still in this fight together. We happily embrace centrists like NDN's Simon Rosenberg and Howard Dean, conservatives like Martin Frost and Brad Carson, and liberals like John Kerry and Barack Obama. Liberal? Yeah, we're around here and we're proud. But it's not a liberal blog. It's a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory.See the difference?
FR does not say “pay us or we will go against you.”
Kos actually extorts money from political campaigns.