By way of McQ, [1]we see John Bambernek at Blog Critics [2]… well, I’ll let him say it:
Today I filed an Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint [3] against Kos Media, LLC., better known as DailyKos.com [4]. I allege that they operate as a political committee and are therefore subject to FEC rules.
I first thought of this complaint during the Cindy Sheehan [5] debacle over at Daily Kos, where Cindy pledged to run as an independent against Nancy Pelosi, and the Daily Kos basically turned on her. While some conservatives took great delight in this, I really didn’t care because it’s politics as usual. The right has thrown their fair share of people under the bus for not drinking the Kool-aid too.
However, the statement that the DailyKos was about electing Democrats stuck with me. I always assumed it was a standard left-wing group blog spouting the latest and greatest in left-wing diatribe. However, the statement that the blog exists to get Democrats elected is repeated in various places [6] around the site, including statements by Kos himself.
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In the end, the DailyKos is bound by its own statement that it exists to elect Democrats. They’ve made themselves subject to the FEC when they decided to be an arm of the Democratic Party.
First, let me point out that this new piety, this new reluctance to engage in leftist vitriol, I mentioned day before yesterday… [7] from the very person has defined the phrase for the last couple of years, may in fact be explained by this FEC suit, and the light being shed on Kos and his drolling band of idiots.
Secondly, …..does anyone think the reverse would not have happened at some point during the campaign? That some Democrat wouldn’t have tried a suit against some center to right blogger?
And finally, let’s examine the idea that this lawsuit is based upon the assertions of Daily Kos being a Democrat blog, incidental to kicking Cindy Sheehan off the site. After all, one can be overly leftist, or rightist for that matter, without being specific to one party or another. There is a major difference between being “highly partisan” and being “dedicated to electing democrats”, particularly from a legal perspective. I suggest that line got crossed in his reaction to Sheehan.
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When Kos crossed that line, vis’a’vie’ Sheehan, is when he got himself into trouble. His mouth got too big. So, he’s busy telling everyone else to ‘cool the vitriol’ for reasons of self-preservation.
This strikes me is the reaction of someone who has just realized he has located a pile of Great Dane excrement with his shoe.