AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF THE STRAW. Jonah Goldberg does a nyah-nyah about censorship: you stupid liberals like your porn but what do you think about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission? I can tell him I think it stinks, and I think campaign finance reform, in general and including McCain-Feingold, stinks. I am highly suspicious of anything that trammels the speech rights even of millionaire wingnuts. And I don't see how we're much better off with the current limitations, given that every election shows the system routinely gamed by pressure and interest groups.

I'm well aware that challenges like Goldberg's are meant to confuse the issue, but I'm not confused, except by the longevity of his whole oh-yeah-what-about schtick with unnamed correspondents. I'm guessing that if he addressed it directly to, say, Lisa Derrick, he knows he'd get his ass handed to him -- I disagree with her on this but she clearly could argue for the merits of genocide or the Divine Right of Midgets and still reduce Goldberg to spasms of shirt-tucking and snot bubbles.

I have some unorthodox opinions; for example, I will oppose with my last, hacking breath anti-smoking laws. Yet I never seen to get banned or menaced by those fascist liberal hordes Goldberg often talks about. Maybe I should do it in all caps next time.