Defending speech

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear arguments from the creator of a documentary movie critical of Hillary Clinton.

The justices said they will review a lower court ruling that said airing the film "Hillary: The Movie" on television would be akin to airing an election advertisement, making it subject to federal campaign finance regulations.

The de facto result of the lower court ruling was that the movie couldn't be broadcast on television during much of the presidential campaign season and that -- even had some station been willing to air it and report the time as a political contribution -- the identity of everyone involved in financing the film would have been subject to disclosure requirements under "campaign finance reporting" requirements.

The rules are part of the Federal Election Commission's regulation of so-called electioneering communications by outside groups. The Supreme Court last year loosened those rules somewhat, giving companies, labor unions and interest groups more leeway to run broadcast ads in the weeks before elections.

If the lower court was correct in its interpretation of this law, then the high court should be even bolder in its constitutional defense of free speech -- political speech being arguably the most important kind of free speech -- and throw out this whole scheme for regulating free speech about and during campaigns.

Yes, it's useful for voters to know who's donating to finance political campaigns. Financial reporting requirements make sense. But to extend this doctrine to the point where it can block the political speech of third parties -- lest they be charged with making "unreported" in-kind political contributions -- is dangerous and excessive.

What about newspaper editorial endorsements? Must they be reported as "donations" to the endorsed candidate, billed at the same rate as the same number of inches of advertising space? What about a newspaper story judged "60 percent negative" toward a candidate? How should that be reported, dollar-wise?

When the writers and performers of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" made fun of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin during the late campaign -- as they had every right to do, under our cherished traditions of free speech -- were they required to report that number of minutes of air time as a "political contribution" to the Obama-Biden campaign? What if the value of that time had put them over some legislated limit?

The whole scheme is absurd even on the practical level -- before we even get to the way this eviscerates constitutional protections of free political speech precisely when we need free speech the most, during our quadrennial national elections.

Throw it out.