I've thought some about the "free speech" arguments re: campaign arguments and while I'm *far* from a constitutional scholar, I'd offer the following ideas:

* We regulate various types of advertising (e.g. liquor, formerly prescription drugs) why not privately funded political advertising w/in 90 days of an election?

* The freedom to speak your mind is not in my view equivalent to the freedom to buy media amplification (or even human amplification, e.g. paid canvassers) of that message. Especially when the amplification inserts that message into intentionally UNRELATED content (e.g. I'm watching Caddyshack, here comes a political ad which I have no interest in seeing)

* Drive political ads off the air entirely by providing an alternate "PolitcalTube" site, where FREE HIGH QUALITY video and audio messages of a political nature will be hosted for free for any 90 day period. Feel free to use this to get your message out.... Hardly squelching free speech, we're making it easy to get scale and control your message... Maybe we'll even provide a "Political advertising channel/time" on public access cable/PBS. You want to watch political ads, go there...

My point is we can provide venues for small/unpopular voices to be heard. That doesn't mean they must be heard everywhere, does it? I'm asking here, again I'm no constitutional scholar.