If the FCC fines CBS for nudity during the Super Bowl or a federal prosecutor jails a reporter for contempt of court or politicians lean on the entertainment industry to implement ratings systems to help parents, we hear howls from the left about "censorship." But if the federal government seeks to silence a group of citizens who band together to express their opinion about an elected official, we hear nothing.

That is what is happening now, as the Federal Election Commission (aka America's Political Censor), is suing the Club for Growth. You might think that freedom of political speech is the most important right in a democratic society, that the ability to freely debate policies and criticize politicians would be protected more fiercely than any other right. You would be wrong.

While Americans are being stripped of the right to form groups (freedom of assembly) and publicize ads about politicians' records (freedom of speech), the ACLU is busy worrying about whether terrorists in Guantanamo Bay are happy or terrorists in America can operate without having to worry about pesky wiretaps. Just look at the ACLU's website and you'll see that among their top priorities, a laundry list of liberal grievances, there is no mention of the freedom of speech.

Furthermore, this brings up a crucial point in the judiciary debates. While liberals want to make sure that judges uphold the penumbras and emanations (i.e. "rights" that don't appear in the Constitution and that liberals couldn't persuade voters to pass and that liberal judges, therefore, had to invent) that after 180 or so years of non-existence are now considered sacrosanct after only a couple of decades, those same liberals could care less about the explicit rights in the Constitution that were actually written by the Framers. You can search all you want, but you will never find in the Constitution a "right to privacy," which the left will protect come hell or high water. But you only have to read the First Amendment to find the rights to speech and assembly, which the left seems to ignore.

Before the scandalous Kelo v. New London decision, which eviscerated our property right protections, came the insidious McConnell v. FEC decision, which eviserated our freedom of speech protections. While grandstanding liberal Senators whine and complain that the Constitutional right to deliver a human baby and then crush its head must be protected, you will never hear them say that the right to criticize a politician should be protected. This is why the judiciary is so important, and where the MSM's laziness is so dangerous. Unless the judiciary returns to an originalist (or strict constructionist or textualist or whatever you want to call it) philosophy, we will continue to see our core, explicitly enumerated rights eroded and new rights imagined by liberal theorists conjured up in their place.

UPDATE: But if Cindy Sheehan is interrupted while speaking to a rally without a permit in a public park, it is covered.

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