The Washington Examiner raises red flags about the latest pleas to enact more government regulation of the Internet.

[S]ome in Washington’s bureaucratic class seem to think the Internet is too dangerous and full of foreign influences for adults to judge for themselves. And that attitude is a greater threat than the Internet itself.

At a forum in New York City last week, Democratic FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel raised the specter of foreign influences entering American politics via the Internet. “I’m not trying to regulate the Internet,” she opened. She went on: “I have said we need to talk to people, to technologists, to people who are thinking about this subject, and who understand that issues of voting and issues of campaign finance are going to the Internet.”

Ravel was echoing the concerns of her colleague, Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, who warned last week that the Islamic State could set up a political action committee unless something is done. And of course, all protestations aside, doing something about foreign propaganda on the Internet implies new rules for the Internet.

Is such a thing necessary? No, it really isn’t. When it comes to true enemies, the Justice Department has robust powers to freeze or seize assets connected to proscribed persons and regimes. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies have worked with social media companies to reduce the online footprint of terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State, which at any rate clearly prefers a strategy involving bullets, not ballots. …

… It is fundamentally wrong that bureaucrats’ first reaction to anything they cannot control, such as the Internet, is to offer the helping fist of government to bring it into line. The freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights are too valuable for government to chip away. Indeed that is the point of the first 12 amendments to the Constitution; they are protections against encroachment by government on every citizen’s liberties. The government cannot and should not seek to prevent every possible evil, and certainly not one as overblown as problems with campaign finance. If the Internet is making the FEC or even all campaign finance restrictions on outside voices unenforceable, perhaps that’s the way it has to be.