Cal State ethics czar to scale back proposed disclosure rules on blogs

A proposal to require campaigns in California to report when they pay bloggers for favorable mention will be scaled back to exclude instances when campaign workers informally blog or tweet their own views on the side, the head of the state ethics agency says. Ann Ravel, chairwoman of the state Fair Political Practices Commission, said she was responding to criticism at a public hearing as well as in the blogosphere that her original proposal was too broad. The proposal has united bloggers of different ideological bents who see the regulation as unenforceable and a violation of the right to free speech.