Letter to the Editor: Continuing the debate on the First Amendment and campaign financing

(Karl Knudson of Decorah has submitted the following Letter to the Editor):

Jonathon Struve's recent letter accuses me of hyperbole and of falsely accusing Jim Dale and Bruce Braley of endorsing a limitation of First Amendment freedoms in order to solve the problem of money in politics:  "Jim never said precisely that free speech should be regulated, merely that campaign literature and ads have become embarrassingly juvenile."

Well, not quite.  If Jonathon would have read Jim Dale's letter a bit more closely, he might have noticed that it specifically endorsed Braley's call for a "constitutional amendment" as a "solution" to the problems flowing from Supreme Court precedent upholding the rights of groups such as Crossroads GPS to flood his mailbox with unwanted political brochures. So, Jim Dale and Bruce Braley do in fact call for further regulation of free speech, and both have stated that they want a constitutional amendment if necessary to empower the executive branch to fill that role.  Although such a constitutional amendment is unlikely, if elected to the Senate, Braley would no doubt vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee who would join the four Justices who currently believe that the First Amendment goes too far in protecting political speech from government regulation.
 
If all Jim Dale had done was to exercise his First Amendment rights by writing a letter to the editor decrying the influence of money in politics and decrying juvenile political advertising, I would be all for it.  But, in calling for a constitutional amendment to allow greater regulation of electioneering speech, Jim Dale and would-be Senator Bruce Braley have proposed to solve one problem by creating a worse one:  giving government the power to referee these political dogfights.  If you believe the DOJ would enforce such regulatory laws in a fair and even-handed manner, and would not overlook abuses by its own partisans, you have not been paying attention to the current administration's selective and politicized law enforcement, and you have forgotten the excesses of past administrations as well.   

Jonathon suggests that we can somehow simply "tread carefully when it comes to regulating expression and speech."  As an attorney, I know that the devil is in the details.  I would challenge anyone to propose a specific change to the First Amendment which would be effective without placing us on the slippery slope of which I have warned.  Suppose a constitutional amendment, or a new Supreme Court majority, allows further regulation of electioneering.  Suppose further that the government uses its new power to prevent a rich corporation or rich individuals from buying television airtime or newspaper ad space to influence an up-coming election one way or another.  What is to prevent the same corporation or individuals from buying the television network or newspaper, and inserting such news and editorial content into its broadcast news, its newspaper, or its website on a daily basis?  If government was not empowered to prevent that result, money would still rule in elections. If government was empowered to prevent that result, government would rule the news media, and would find ways to abuse that power.