The war between Republicans and Democrats on the politically splintered Federal Election Commission flared late Monday when a Republican commissioner and former chairman charged that the panel's Democrats want to regulate the press and end free election media.

The moves by Democrats "signal an active regulatory effort within the agency, caution press organizations to look over their shoulders, and chill the free exercise of press activity," said Republican Lee E. Goodman in a statement on a recent FEC split vote.

On that vote, the Democrats voted as a block to punish the maker of an anti-Obama movie distributed free before the 2012 election. The Republicans argued that he should receive the standard media exemption, as Democrats on the FEC have granted liberal moviemakers in the past. The split voted blocked any action against Joel Gilbert and Highway 61 films for his Dreams of My Real Father: A Story of Reds and Deception.

Goodman, who has been warning of efforts by Democrats on the FEC to regulate and even block conservative news sites like the Drudge Report, said that a split vote on the anti-Obama movie proves the motives of the Democrats, Ann M. Ravel, Steven T. Walther, and Ellen L. Weintraub.



In rejecting the movie maker's bid for the media exemption, Weintraub said, "Press entities do not act as press entities when they distribute millions of free DVDs immediately before an election solely in electoral swing states."

Goodman wrote in a statement that her words could target any media that distributes news free at the end of the election in key states, from Drudge to the New York Times.

"There is no ambiguity in the point of this curt statement: all otherwise bona fide press entities are subject to investigation by the federal government through either the Commission (or the Department of Justice) based on nothing more than the means they pursue to market and exhibit their otherwise fully protected content," he wrote.

Goodman explained: "There is nothing unusual about a press entity's publication of election-related commentary in the months, weeks, and even days before an election when the public's interest is piqued. Newspaper editorials are commonplace in the weeks and days leading up to an election. It also is common for press entities to distribute their fully-protected electoral commentary and advocacy free of charge."

He added, "In short, the premise of the legal violation articulated by Commissioner Weintraub is that free dissemination of otherwise protected press speech by a bona fide press entity immediately before an election in a particular geographical location is unlawful."

Read his full statement here.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com