If Worse Comes to Worst

. . . will you defy the FEC and continue your political blogging as you normally would?

Patterico asks the question. My answer: hell, yeah.

I'll be surprised if it comes to that, but you never know. The government has done some mighty strange things.

If they don't figure this one out, it's civil disobedience time.

UPDATE: Xrlq has some further thoughts, and they are good ones. He begins by pointing out that the FEC might value our "political contributions" so low that there's little or no point in our civil disobedience. But if the FEC does lose its head, then we need to be organized:

I don’t want any innocent non-participants pulled into the dragnet against their will. Instead, I’d suggest we form some kind of club, whose members not only allow each other to rat them out, but actively encourage it, from members and non-members alike. Maybe someone more artistic than I could devise a cute logo with a caption along the lines of “Political Blogmartyr,� “Report a Crime in Progress,� “Make My Day, Call the FEC,� or some other as-yet undetermined phrase. Whatever the symbol or caption may be, it should be available to everyone who wants to display it on his blog, and it must be universally understood as an open invitation to anyone and everyone to report this person’s political acitivities to the FEC. Those filing such reports on any given blog would be encouraged, but not required, to pick out the most ludicrous and the most technical violations they can find - provided that they must in fact be violations of whatever rule the FEC ends up handing down. So here’s my second pledge:

If I choose to disobey any FEC rule that I believe unreasonably limits my First Amendment right to express my opinoin on core political issues, I will not discourage, and will in fact actively encourage, other bloggers to report these violations to the FEC.

My first pledge alone reads like Patterico-Lite, but I like to think the two together are more like Patterico-Plus. Anyone with me on this? I’m more than happy to be one of many fall guys in some stupid FEC action, but I can’t represent the entire blogosphere alone.