<Rejected, 237-188, a proposal by Armey that stated that nothing in the bill could violate the First Amendment.

I suppose the usual crew will look at me and say, "so what?" Why was this obvious amendment rejected unless somehow it was a deal breaker?

This bill is an abomination. I have only started looking at it, and already I can see the fix is in. Democratic legislators are cheering because they have cut the throats of opposition voices, leaving two whole months before elections when only the 96-percent-Democratic mainstream media will be able to talk about the issues. Some Republican legislators are cheering because like most campaign reforms, this is intended to make incumbents even more reelectable than they already are.

There is a lot of other stuff too in this middle-of-the-night law, which was shoved through on the back of the Enron farce. I'm not even sure where to start on this. Suffice it to say, it's another tightening of the noose.

The whole concept of "soft money" wouldn't even be an issue if they hadn't put artificial restrictions on "hard money" that took donors and politicians about twelve minutes to find a loophole in--the idea of "soft money." It will take about twelve more minutes for them to get around these, too.

I wish I had a nickel for every EXISTING campaign law that politicians routinely crap all over--like Clinton and Gore and the law against foreign contributors which I hear has been repeated in the new bill, in hopes I guess that no one will remember that it was already illegal.