I believe the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and the press have been greatly diminished in recent years by both the Right and the Left. Blogging, in particular, is so fraught with political peril that I am literally afraid to write anything about the sentencing of Scott Roeder for the murder of Dr. George Tiller, which is currently being covered by CNN’s In Session.

Anyone who expresses support for a woman’s right to the privacy of her own body is likely to be harassed or worse by the likes of Scott Roeder. Anyone who expresses concerns about the way the termination of pregnancy seems to be used inappropriately more and more often is almost guaranteed to be relegated by Google to the lowly ranks of a conservative blogger—or outright banned from the rankings.

The CNN In Session live broadcast of Roeder’s sentencing hearing isn’t the only legal issue about which a blogger is wise to keep quiet. For example, it isn’t always politic to criticize the courts. I suspect I’ve been permanently dropped from the rolls of eligible jurors in Cook County because of what I’ve written here. (I know, that isn’t entirely a bad thing.)

Spam comments aren’t the worst comments people have tried to post on this blog when I’ve suggested, for instance, that the cops aren’t always right.

And, once, a website (about which I blogged concerning their participation in a trial) had me banned from Google. I had to submit massive documentation to prove I was innocent of any violation of my Google privileges. In fact, I’m still quaking in my boots lest I ever again even mention the name of the website.

Recently I made a comment about www.icopyright.com, which prompted a comment from said website to the effect that I had misstated what they are, namely a nonprofit copyright protection watchdog. Of course, what they really are is a nonprofit front for for-profit online newspapers that want bloggers to pay for links to their sites—or allow them to post free ads on their blogs (as if a reference isn’t free advertising already).

This latter form of censorship is particularly irritating. In this case it isn’t a political faction that is succeeding in stifling free speech, it’s businesses.

CNN is also (in my non-lawyer’s opinion) censoring the Internet when they cover past trials on In Session. When such coverage begins, all CNN archival stories on the case mysteriously disappear from their own websites, and even local newspaper and TV reports are replaced with 404 Page Not Found error messages.

So, for those of you who are concerned, as I am, that the for-profit media (including for-profit Internet sites) are behind an attack on bloggers, I’ve put together a list of online resources to help preserve your most-fundamental American right to speak your mind:

• Chilling Effects Clearinghouse: http://www.chillingeffects.org/
• Vanderbilt University’s First Amendment Center: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/ 
• Electronic Frontier Forum: http://www.eff.org/ 

Frankly, it’s chilling just to run Google searches these days on “freedom of speech” and “First Amendment on the Internet.”