Permission To Speak Freely

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 9/11/2006

Campaign Finance: September marks the start of the 60-day period before an election when private citizens cannot criticize on TV or radio their representatives' votes. Or even praise McCain-Feingold, for that matter.

A couple of weeks ago, the Federal Election Commission declined to loosen a muzzle that had been imposed on the First Amendment by the Orwellian-named Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 and that exempted "grass-roots lobbying" — or what used to be called in the Constitution "petitioning the government for a redress of grievances."

Supporters of the act say their intent is to ban what they call "sham issue ads" in which groups advocate a position on an issue that subliminally attacks a candidate by saying something like "Call Candidate X and tell them how you feel." The claim is that, in a democracy, they are actually trying to influence the way people vote. Shameful.

Wisconsin Right to Life, for example, wants to run a radio ad encouraging listeners to contact that state's two senators, Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold, and urge them to support passage of a bill making it a federal offense to transport a minor across state lines to get an abortion in defiance of home state parental-notification laws.

Problem is, Kohl is up for re-election. Therefore, says the FCC, his name can't be mentioned in the ad because such ads are really campaign ads, not issue ads. And campaign ads, it says, are limited to political action committees subject to campaign limits. Ironically, Kohl previously voted for the bill and Feingold, who is not up for reelection, voted against it. So how is it a campaign ad?

Newspapers, radio and TV stations, on the other hand, are free to influence the election, spending their corporate dollars on editorials or news coverage that is often slanted one way or the other. But a group of private citizens banding together in common cause cannot, for it would be committing the crime of attempting to participate in the political process.

As Justice William Douglas once said: "It usually costs money to communicate an idea to a large audience. But no one would seriously contend that a limitation on the expenditure of money to print a newspaper would not deprive the publisher of freedom of the press. Nor can the fact that it costs money to make a speech — whether it be hiring a hall or purchasing time on the air — make the speech any the less an exercise of First Amendment Rights."

As we try to promote democracy in Iraq in the Middle East, we suppress it here at home. And while some oppose tinkering with the Constitution with amendments defining marriage or banning burning of the American flag, they stand silently by as it is amended by stealth, with McCain-Feingold in effect having repealed the First Amendment.

Silencing political opposition is not reform; it's incumbent protection. In any other context, it would be called censorship. In any other country, it would be called repression. And when criticizing leaders is suppressed and campaign speech is regulated, supervised, watched, controlled, authorized or prohibited by an agency of the national government, it's called dictatorship.

Billionaires like George Soros and even entire political parties can influence elections all they want.

But a bunch of Wisconsin pro-lifers are a corrupting influence? We don't think so.

In both 2004 and 2006, grass-roots groups have gone without the basic constitutional right to criticize and influence their government. We would support a constitutional amendment to protect their free speech, but we thought we already had one.