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Like the cock of the walk, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell strutted across the Senate floor, preening his new First Amendment feathers and pecking to death the latest of campaign finance reforms set before that body. McConnell is no First Amendment Avenger. Except when it comes to wrapping legalized bribery in the mantle of free speech, he has eagerly seized nearly every opportunity-from regulating the Internet to banning flag-burning-to use the power of government to silence unpopular speech.

The article presents a proposal for free TV speech to political candidates. Gauging from the vigor of the broadcasters response, people think free-TV proposals would spell certain doom for the industry. To the contrary, the proposals that are gaining currency are quite modest. Perhaps the most popular would require every broadcaster to put aside only two hours of prime time a year into a time bank for political candidates. That's a razor-thin two- hundredths of 1 percent of a broadcaster's airtime. Qualified candidates and political parties would then redeem some prescribed allocation of the time, in segments of a minute or more, with vouchers furnished by the government. INSET: The exterminators, by Jerry Isenberg.

The article presents a brilliant three-step strategy for killing campaign finance reform in the U.S. Step one: avowed proponents of reform declared reform impossible without a constitutional amendment. Step two: reformers conducted a half-hearted, ill-conceived and ill-fated campaign to amend the Constitution. Step three: upon the inevitable, resounding defeat of the amendment, it went down by a lopsided 61-to-38 vote, twenty-nine votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed to clear the Senate, its backers stood idly by while its opponents declared that step one's reasoning was right: may as well pack it in, since Congress can't overcome the blight on its own.