The FEC complainant, John Bambenek, responds, describing what could be termed the reductio ad absurdum legal and political strategy for undoing campaign-finance reform.

1) Daily Kos repeatedly identifies their primary purpose to elect Democrats again and again and again and make editorial decisions based on that purpose. There comes a point we should take them at their word that they are a political committee.
2) More importantly, this complaint has accomplished something amazing (and admittedly not unexpected)… almost everyone across the political spectrum hates it, or more accurately, hates the FEC’s regulation of political speech. We have a dramatically unpopular law on the books….Sure, it’s kind of Machivellian, but the best way to challenge a bad law is to apply it and let the fur fly. I agree that no small amount of the FECs regulations (especially the censorship requirements of McCain-Feingold) are hugely poor. But as a columnist I wanted to start the discussion on this issue (albeit in a provacitive way), and that has been accomplished.
I’m certainly not of the mindset to censor Democrats (or anyone else)…

In other words, make them hurt until they help us change the law. It’s certainly clever. But what happens if we can’t change it? And are we going to have this kind of thing going on all the time, with retaliatory complaints burdening all blogs with legal expenses?