Republican Federal Election Commissioner Bradley Smith's recent interview comments, seemingly designed to fire a shot across the bows of (generally liberal) political blogs, reverberated through the popular press this week. The New York Times canvassed comments from various legal authorities and stakeholders. Democrat fellow commissioner Ellen Weintraub downplayed the likelihood the Commission would begin to consider blog writings to constitute regulable financial contributions to campaigns.

Current election law holds that individuals contributing more than $1,000 in cash or services must be made public by the relevant campaign and makes illegal contributions exceeding $2,000 per candidate in a single campaign. A specific exemption was written into the law for newspapers, broadcast media and other traditional media. Both Smith and Weintraub admitted that the issue among the six commissioners has, like most other measures before it, split the commission evenly along party lines, a coincidence possibly indicating that the evenutal resolution may be geared more to the interests of the major parties.