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"How can you advertise this movie without mentioning the name 'Hillary'?"

By Ann Althouse

The far reaching effect of the McCain-Feingold Act.

A three-judge panel ruled that the movie itself ["Hillary: The Movie"] is akin to a campaign ad and cannot be broadcast on television. It tells "the electorate that Sen. Clinton is unfit for office . . . and that viewers should vote against her," they said. However, they said that brief ads for the film could be broadcast because "they proposed a commercial transaction -- buy the DVD of The Movie."

If it were otherwise, you could make a movie solely for the purpose of creating a loophole to the act. My first take on this ? convince me I'm wrong! ? is that is that if you don't have a First Amendment right to run an ad against the candidate when it's not embedded an ad for a movie, it shouldn't be possible to manufacture a special right by making a movie and advertising it with essentially the same anti-candidate statements. Of course, since anybody can throw together a movie these days, if you hate the act, you should love the loophole ? which anyone with a digital camera and a computer can get into. Right?

Full post as published by Althouse on February 18, 2008 (boomark / email).