[...]

The former senator from Tennessee, Fred Thompson, who championed McCain-Feingold, promised that it would "help challengers reach a threshold of credibility when they want to challenge us in these races." Putting aside the ludicrous notion that 535 incumbent politicians sat down and tried to write a piece of legislation that would make it harder to get reelected, five years later there's no evidence electoral competition has increased. Sure, control of Congress turned over. But anyone who attributes the 2006 election to McCain-Feingold, as opposed to Bush-Cheney-Hastert-Frist, is delusional.

Some McCain-Feingold supporters promised that the bill would reduce the amount of money being raised and spent in elections. "This bill forces all of us," Senator Cantwell of Washington said during the debate, "to play by the same rules and raise and spend money in lower amounts." As the Sun's Josh Gerstein reports today, that certainly hasn't been the result. Candidates for both parties' nominations will surely be shattering first-quarter fundraising records next month.
[...]

While the Supreme Court has so far upheld the patently anti-Constitutional ban on advertising by citizens' groups 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election, the rise of Internet politics may eventually supercede this atrocity. Witness the anti-Hillary Clinton "1984" ad that caused such a stir on YouTube just last week. Such ads, cheaper than dirt (it costs money to distribute dirt, YouTube's free), will only be more important with every election cycle.

For this reason, look for Congress to start taking an interest in "unregulated" Internet speech any day now. Money has never been the issue. Cleansing our speech of impure thoughts about politicians is the real agenda.