Let a thousand voices boom across the airwaves, the Internet and in newspaper columns condemning the assault that Congress and the Supreme Court have inflicted on the First Amendment--on our most essential, fundamental speech: the ability to criticize our elected officials. I join the chorus. However, it is the cynical nature of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that permits us to speak in these ways. We are merely prohibited from communications that could--even ever so indirectly--endanger the reelection of incumbents in Congress. That is the speech that has been criminalized: speech that could threaten the very powerful congressmen, who wrote...
