By the Way . . .

A number of people, like Beldar and Hewitt, are assuming that the First Amendment will protect bloggers from the FEC's regulations. Wrong. After SCOTUS's McConnell decision, I've stopped believing the First Amendment provides any protection from McCain-Feingold. SCOTUS has essentially decided that Congress, and through them the FEC, has plenary power to regulate federal election campaigns, and if they don't want to grant blogs a media exemption, nothing in the First Amendment can compel them to do so.

The only hope of changing this is to get more judges on the federal bench who are able to understand that "no law" means no law. But we're not going to get that with the Democrats' "filibuster."

Frist is providing zero leadership on this. That doesn't bother me as much as Bush showing zero leadership on this, because I actually voted for Bush. John Podhoretz talks about Bush getting "misunderestimated" by his political opponents. But I "misunderestimate" him all the time about whether the guy is going to go soft, whether that's killing our enemies or standing up to Democrat obstructions. The record is not good: Fallujah, signing McCain-Feingold, steel tariffs, appointing Donaldson Chairman of the SEC.

Coulter is right: with the conservative majority in America, the 2004 election should have been a rout. And Steyn is right: the leadership Bush has shown on the GWOT could have been used to undermine the liberal orthodoxy on domestic issues. Rove and Co. tend to outfox themselves with Clintonesque triangulation. Looks like they're going to do it on judges too.