Today the McCain-Feingold ban on certain broadcast ads run within 60 days of an election kicks in. From now through election day, it will be illegal for non-profit citizens' groups - from the ACLU to the Chamber of Commerce; from the Sierra Club to the AFL-CIO; from the NRA to Handgun Control, Inc.; from Planned Parenthood to Right to Life - to run most ads that even mention a federal officeholder.

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This outrageous provision of McCain-Feingold is sometimes called a "blackout," but "brownout" is more appropriate. You can still speak, you just can't do it at anything close to full volume. An organization can do newspaper ads, for example, but broadcast ads, the most effective form of communication today, are limited. An organization can run broadcast ads if it has a PAC to pay for them, but few organizations have PACs that large, and most don't have PACs at all. Of course, if you're rich enough to buy TV ads without belonging to a group, then the law allows you to do so. This in the name of equality.

This means for most citizens' organizations, it is tough to mount an effective grassroots campaign to get Congress to vote one way or another. Meanwhile, it is not as if Congress goes out of session. In the next few weeks they will be debating such trivial issues as making certain tax reductions permanent; increasing the minimum wage; and setting up military commissions to try terrorist war suspects, just to name three. Not to mention the federal budget.

Although many believe, as I do, that this limit is blatantly unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has upheld it, and there is a certain logic to the Supreme Court's opinion. Having already ruled that the government can limit your ability to spend your own money to urge people to vote for or against a political candidate, why shouldn't it be allowed to limit your ability to talk about an officeholder's position on issues. After all, if being able to say, "Vote against this jerk" is the core of what democracy and free elections and free speech are about, and if that can be limited, then why not also limit less important speech, such as the right to say, "Urge Congressman Jones to vote for tax cuts."

It is also worth noting here that the so-called "reformers" who push these limits do have at least some vague understanding of economics. They recognize that if the system of private, voluntary political participation can be made difficult enough, and its transaction costs high enough, so-called "publicly financed" (by which they really mean "tax financed" campaigns will begin to look like a more attractive alternative. McCain-Feingold is a step on the way.