Here’s a Twitter conversation I had today with one of the Grey Lady’s preeminent political reporters:

https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/status/433699099133902848

https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/status/433702332803862528

https://twitter.com/stackiii/status/433704240939560960

https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/status/433704776745103360

https://twitter.com/stackiii/status/433705769733988352

https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/status/433707423296401412

https://twitter.com/stackiii/status/433708009219719168

https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/status/433707878307094528

https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/status/433708107592912896

https://twitter.com/stackiii/status/433708439492386816

https://twitter.com/stackiii/status/433708571352907776

https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/status/433709011935174656

https://twitter.com/stackiii/status/433709107254919170

https://twitter.com/stackiii/status/433709453742206976

https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/status/433711143212052480

https://twitter.com/stackiii/status/433712279205732352

https://twitter.com/stackiii/status/433712420713168896

https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/status/433713755651059712

https://twitter.com/stackiii/status/433714163358400512

Twitter, while an interactive, conversational medium, isn’t perfectly fluid, so a few of these may seem out of order — but you should still be able to follow the thrust of the conversation relatively easily.

The real crux of Confessore’s problem with the status quo in our campaign finance regime (or his objections to additional pro-liberty changes to the status quo) surfaces when he objects to my characterization of super PACs (or independent expenditure groups generally) as media companies, akin to his employer The New York Times, by mockingly suggesting that they’re “[j]ust a couple of online newspapers.” No, of course they aren’t newspapers, and neither are they Hollywood production companies. But that doesn’t matter: the First Amendment to the Constitution makes no such distinction between types of political speakers. On the contrary, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution constrain the federal government from infringing on the individual liberties of people, whether they’re casino magnates, reporters at a paper of record, employees of an IE group or super PAC, or some schmuck with a blog and an Internet connection.

On an unrelated note, Confessore also seems to object to the notion that independent expenditure groups simply aren’t political campaigns. Our intellectual betters insist that we conflate the two, despite the fact that laws prevent the two types of entities from coordinating on either the substance or timing of communications and related expenditures (even though the nation’s leading campaign finance reformers can’t seem to be troubled to obey those laws). If we don’t go along with those who insist they know better, one of their more prized organizing principles of the past few years become completely useless, and they would be forced to leave it on the roadside for dead. But I digress.

So why make any distinction at all, especially an artificial one, between political speakers? Because Nick Confessore is a member of a privileged class of information vendor, a type of self-appointed referee of the game of politics, whose veneer of objectivity is the sine qua non of his very livelihood. Like an elected official, Confessore has to sell us all on the idea that he’s a beacon of truth in a world full of lies and injustice, and that his speech about politics and policy is somehow different from yours, mine, or a political opponent’s, more deserving of certain legal protections. If that speech isn’t particularly special in any way, Confessore loses his political power (which he has, don’t doubt it for a minute), if not his job — and he hates competition. And who doesn’t hate competition? I just wish reporters would be honest about why they keep trotting out the same, tired campaign finance tropes they’ve been propagating for over 50 years.

Anyway, that’s why Nick Confessore treats his rights as somehow more inviolable than a Republican billionaire’s.