Spam is back in politics.

But this time, the industry insists, it's different. This time it's e-mail marketing.

Leading the charge is an outfit called Advocacy Inc., headed by Roger Alan Stone (he uses Alan so you won't confuse him with the OTHER Roger Stone). Their client list includes a large number of names and organizations from the left side of the aisle, including Tim Kaine, who won Virginia's governor's race last year.

What makes it different? Stone insists his company is using all the disciplines of the old paper direct mail business to trim lists down to names of real prospects. That means he prospects from existing lists, like those of Moveon.org, which he knows are opt-in. And he limits his mailings further through targeting, so liberals don't get e-mail about Oregon candidates if they're living in Georgia.

Had the e-mail marketing business been doing this 10 years ago today's spam problem would not have happened. But it did, and it did. As a result, any list to which people are sent e-mail without notice is considered spam by most users.

But not the government. In writing the CAN-SPAM Act the government was very careful to make itself (and the politicians who work for it) immune from the legal charge. What Stone is sending is spam-that-is-not-spam. It is legal.

But is it ethical?

The National Journal Hotline has a feature up on Stone today, which conflates Stone's story with those of other folks, notably Tim Yale of VButtons Inc., who are actually in different businesses. (In VButtons' case, it's embedding webcast ads in Web pages.)

What they wind up doing is merely confusing the issue.

The issue is this. Any e-mail sent as a prospecting exercise carries grave risks. It can get the sender blacklisted, it can anger the recipient. These risks are just what the average politician does not want to run.

The best way to build a list is opt-in, through a Web site. There are many ways in which this can be done legitimately.

Everything Advocacy Inc. is doing is aimed at minimizing those risks. As I said, they're using the tools of the old paper mail list business -- filtering opt-in names for other purposes. Yet the risks remain. Liberal politicians must be warned about those risks.

There is also a risk for the party, the risk of opening a political issue. As sure as God made little green politicians Republicans this year are going to accuse Democrats of spamming.