John Byrne wrote: I may be misunderstanding you, here, but I do not recall anyting in McCain/Feingold that could be thus described. Which part or parts are you referencing?

McCain/Feingold defines as "electioneering communication" as (and I paraphrase) and advertisement which refers to a "clearly identified candidate" within 60 days of a general election, 30 days of a primary.  (Section 201) The 30 to 60 day period is what I referred to as before an imminent election.

Once you fall into the definition of an "electioneering communication," it's virtually impossible to legally fund an ad except one that is paid for by hard money contributions (which favors incumbents tremendously).  Some of the "bans" which contributed to the blackout include -- (1) no "coordination" with a candidate, or else use hard money; (2) no corporation or labor union can be the funder of the ad (this includes non-profit corporations -- virtually every type of legal entity or organization cannot fund an ad that identifies the candidate.  And even if you find a way to do it (say, if you were a wealthy individual), you have to file by name with the federal government that you are doing it.  (See generally the Sections in the 200 series).  There is a link to the text of the law here.

It's a scheme that perpetuates incumbency by making it difficult to mount opposition near an election.  It works as a virtual blackout on "electioneering communications" by making true issue-oriented, organized speech impossible.  I am willing to live with a quite a few schlocky ads in order to uphold the power of the people to try and get incumbents tossed out.  (Or stupid challengers, for that matter).

Scalia's dissent when the law was held constitution is in my opinion of the free speech problems -- Cornell has handy link to Scalia's dissent here.

Ian wrote: ...I was kidding??  Please tell me Glenn got it, at least...!

Yep...took me a moment but I finally got it...we're good.

without much thought to whether a rap "song" that encourages the rape and brutalization of women...

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Informed opinion.  So when Will Smith is not raping white culture, he's singing (Ooops) rapping about raping the bitches and ho's?

Why is that, Emery?

Yep...took me a moment but I finally got it...we're good.

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Cheers Glenn(and Jay and JM)...but that has taught me something - as I posted, I was conscious of the problems of tone we sometimes have, so made sure that I was as outrageously OTT as I could be - and yet still could be taken as serious, despite the post being based on nothing that you had said, nor that we had argued about, etc etc

And I thought I was being dead funny too...

Wallace, because Will Smith is viewed as an MTV pop-music, dance club, sitcom, kid-pleasing entertainer who is imitating the "real important" rappers(whoever they may be at any given time) to sell singles and is not viewed as being representative of "real" rap.

And the people in question wouldn't actually beat you up physically but you could start a pretty heated conversation talking about Will Smith and Rap and there would be a lot of head shaking and someone would go out to the car and come back with a Tupac CD and blast it until I told them to turn it down(becuase I am the official low end corporate buzkill on the night shift).

To them calling will Smith a rapper would be like calling bubblegum and jelly beans a hearty meal.