E.g., the McCain-Feingold regime shunts what would previously have been soft money donations directly to campaigns into so-called independent “527″ efforts and created a legal veneer of plausible deniability by which a candidate can separate herself from independent expenditures on her behalf, while creating new avenues by which people can be prosecuted for running afoul of pointless regulation, and continuing to confiscate the property of citizens to spend on political causes they may or may not support. All in all, a pretty abysmal result from a libertarian, liberal, or conservative perspective.

And so now do we go after the 527s? Blogger-fundraising for issues advocacy? I have sympathy for those who want to take vast corporate $$ out of elections, but cannot see any cure that isn’t as bad as, if not worse than, the disease.