What is free speech?
I expect that our children may one day ask us this question. Thanks to the lapses of judgement in Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court of the United States of America, we have a law that has as its primary purpose the stifling of free speech.
In 2002, Congress passed the Bi-partisan Campaigin Reform Act (BCRA). President George W. Bush happily signed this act in to law. The Supreme Court upheld it in its entirety as compatible with the Constitution.
This article in CNET (hat tip: Instapundit) shows just how steep the slippery slope is this time. Congress sued the Federal Election Commission over internet regulation, and they won. The FEC has been tasked with determining when a posting to a web site, blog, journal, news site, whatever, is an illegal contribution to a campaign.
Their task is complicated by the fact that the law makes exemption for periodicals and news broadcasts — of which the Internet is neither, and both — but not for personal communications. The FEC has also been told that they must regulate electronic mail!
I would argue that a blog, in the simplest sense, is nothing more than a lone nut standing on a street-corner with a sign. Maybe people read it, maybe they don’t. But it’s there. Electronic mail has no marginal cost (like postage or paper), so how does one value it as a contribution?
To say that this unconstitutional law frightens me is understatement. My biggest fear is that it will ultimately lead to the suppression of actual speech, preventing that lone nut from standing on a streetcorner with a sign.
If the public cannot speak out against its leaders, then we are no longer a nation of the people, but an oligarchy; ruled by an elite that can no longer be held to account for their actions.