It began with the proliferation of campus "speech codes" ostensibly designed to promote civility but frequently used to enforce political conformity. The new censorship accelerated with the McCain-Feingold legislation that licenses government regulation of the quantity, timing and content of speech in political campaigns.

Now the attack on First Amendment speech protections has taken an audacious new turn, illustrated by a case being pondered by a Texas judge. He is being asked to collaborate in the suppression of a book, and even of expressions of approval of the book.

The book arises from an abuse of the power of eminent domain by the city of Freeport, Tex., but the story really begins in Connecticut. There, in 2000, New London's city government condemned the property of middle-class homeowners in an unblighted neighborhood for the purpose of getting the property into the hands of commercial interests that would pay more taxes. In 2005, in Kelo v. City of New London, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld, 5 to 4, New London's rapaciousness as a constitutional taking of property for what the Fifth Amendment calls a "public use." Rapacious people around the country salivated.

Since the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, Congress and the courts have wrestled with how to curb the influence of special-interest money in campaigns without violating the 1st Amendment. Next month the U.S. Supreme Court will return temporarily from its summer break to rehear a case that is likely to readjust the balance between free speech and regulation. In doing so, however, it needn't relax every restriction on election spending by unions and corporations.

The case involves "Hillary: The Movie," a documentary critical of then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that Citizens United, a conservative group, wanted to broadcast during Clinton's campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. The Federal Election Commission ruled that airing the film, even through a cable TV "video on demand" option, would violate the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

Although the primary purpose of that law was to ban "soft money" contributions to political parties, it also imposed restrictions on "electioneering communications" -- radio and TV advertisements funded by corporations or unions that refer to a candidate for federal office and are aired close to an election. An ad wouldn't explicitly have to advocate the election or the defeat of a candidate. Groups that broadcast such spots also had to disclose who paid for them.

I want to start out here by freely admitting that I know nothing about getting elected to office.

The only election I ever won was in junior high school (the Utah equivalent of middle school in California). I was elected editor of the school newspaper.

You may be wondering why editor of the junior high newspaper was an elected office. I can't explain it - it's still a mystery to me after all these years.

I won the election, by the way, by getting up at a school assembly and telling jokes. Apparently I was the only standup comedian candidate and that worked for me (for the first and only time).

I know I ought to be encouraged by the success of Al Franken, but I don't think joke-telling was his entire platform. So I'm not planning on running for anything in the near future.

Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia did nearly the right thing this month when he gave conditional pardons to three members of the “Norfolk Four.” Given the overwhelming evidence that these sailors were wrongly convicted of rape and murder, it is welcome news that all are now free. But because Mr. Kaine did not grant a full pardon, they will continue to be stigmatized.

Derek E. Tice, Joseph J. Dick Jr., Danial J. Williams and Eric C. Wilson were convicted in the 1997 rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko in Norfolk. It was a horrific crime, but it seems clear that it was committed by someone else. Omar Ballard, who knew the victim, has confessed. His D.N.A. matched evidence from the crime scene, and he has said that he acted alone.

The case against the four sailors, none of whom had prior criminal records, was based almost entirely on their confessions, which followed high-pressure interrogations. Legal experts say that false confessions are surprisingly common, especially when suspects are harshly questioned and, as in this case, threatened with the death penalty if they do not confess.