Campaign finance reform and free speech.

Reacting to the controversy over ads run by "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth"--an advocacy group made up of Vietnam veterans who dispute John Kerry's account of his wartime heroism--President Bush "urged that all campaign ads by independent groups be halted," noted an August 23 Bloomberg News article. The television ads by the Pro-Republican "Swifties" prompted media scrutiny of "527" groups--independent organizations created to run attack ads against political candidates.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters on August 25 that Mr. Bush planned to file a lawsuit to squelch campaign ads by 527 groups. If court action didn't work, explained McClellan, the president "would be willing to pursue legislative action with Sen. McCain on that."

Under the campaign finance reform law signed by Mr. Bush in 2002, 527 groups who run advocacy ads must avoid "coordination" with any political campaign.

Criticism of the pro-Republican "Swifties" by liberal partisans prompted retaliatory criticism of pro-Democrat 527s such as MoveOn.org and other similar groups bankrolled by billionaire leftist investor George Soros.

The Kerry campaign extended the logic of stifling free speech further by demanding that the Swifties' book Unfit for Command be pulled from store shelves. That demand provoked this reply from Republican apologist Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large for National Review Online: "Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is surely as dishonest as anything the Swift Vets can be alleged to have made up. Why not try to ban Moore from making movies?"

In fact, as noted earlier in these pages (see "Censoring America" in our July 26 issue), the GOP front group Citizens United actually filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission calling Moore's film "a political weapon against President Bush'" and demanding action to suppress advertising for the film. The group also sent harassing letters to broadcast outlets running ads for the film, warning them of possible FEC action against them. So the Kerry campaign was merely planting in furrows that had been dug for them by Bush supporters.

As liberal Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson observed in an August 25 essay: "The presidential campaign has confirmed that, under the guise of 'campaign finance reform,' Congress and the Supreme Court have repealed large parts of the First Amendment. They have simply discarded what were once considered constitutional rights of free speech and political association. It is not that these rights have vanished. But they are no longer constitutional guarantees.... We have entered an era of constitutional censorship. Hardly anyone wants to admit this--the legalized demolition of the First Amendment would seem shocking--and so hardly anyone does."