Ali Massoud makes some good points about McCain-Feingold here. It may well be that it's, in fact, not a step in the right direction...that it inadvertently, perhaps, let loose the 527 dogs. As to "who let the dogs out," ;-) and whether Feingold and McCain should be pilloried, I'll leave to greater minds than mine.

It seems that the flood waters of influence peddling in DC are SO deep, draining the swamp is a daunting task. Massoud's proposal strikes me as a pretty good one, but I suspect the Dems'd NEVER go for it, as the GOP's contributor base has far deeper pockets, on balance. Sure, Hollywood and Soros and Gates could keep things in some balance, but methinks for every one of them, there are 10 corporate chieftains who are generally, but not always, Republican.

And major bummer on being approached by the FBI simply because your name is Arab. I'm not, however, seeing a direct connection, except to the extend that these involve 1A issues.

As for Feingold generally, I dunno, seems to me that people in the mainstream should be encouraged when they take the pro-liberty position on things like the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. It'd be SO easy to toe the line, so it took some contextual courage on his part to vote as he did. And, even if McCain/Feingold (which I believe seemed properly motivated but perhaps poorly crafted) hasn't worked all that well and in unintended ways, I don't give him too many "demerit" points for that, on balance.

Whether he's presidential timber, who knows? Aside from Bill Clinton, the Dems's offerings over the past 3 decades have been VERY weak. I personally wanted to vote against Bush in the worst way in 04, but Kerry was, IMO, pathetic. I could only find ONE position -- the death penalty -- that I agreed with him on...not enough to waste an hour of my time. Even there, Kerry equivocated all over the place.

Que sera.

-Robert Capozzi