They're not chickens but they've come home to roost.

We have been dreading this for a while in relation to blogging; the nearly unbelievable, and totally un-American possibility that advocacy of a particular candidate could be deemed an in-kind political contribution and could subject the author of the blog legal penalties including fines, imprisonment, and the shutting down of the blog. A heinous abuse of the First Amendment.

Now, this possibility has taken one step closer to becoming a reality for bloggers. In San Juan County, Washington there has been a legal attack on another branch of the new media: radio.

Ryan Sager on TCS [emphasis mine]
In April, Washington's Legislature passed a 9.5-cent-a-gallon gas-tax hike -- which would give the state the nation's highest gasoline tax. Public outcry was followed by the formation of a grass-roots group, No New Gas Tax, intent on overturning the new levy via an initiative -- Initiative 912.

Two talk-radio hosts, Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson of Seattle's KVI-AM (a Fox News affiliate), embraced the signature-gathering drive to put I-912 on the ballot. And that's when the trouble started.

The radio hosts were a bit too effective at getting the word out about the anti-gas tax initiative, so a county prosecutor with ties to the initiative's opponents decided to try to shut them up by making clever use of the state's campaign-finance-regulation machinery. San Juan County Prosecutor Randall Gaylord sued No New Gas Tax, alleging that the group had failed to list KVI-AM's commentaries as contributions to its campaign.

Advocacy on Wilbur and Carlson's shows, Gaylord argued, was really just an "in kind" contribution -- no different than a check written to a political committee. And, amazingly enough, a judge agreed with him. Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Wickham argued in his opinion that he was merely requiring "disclosure" of the contribution. But when it comes to campaign-finance regulation, disclosure is virtually always a precursor to restrictions.

Sager rails on The Seattle Post-Intelligencer for cheering the attack, and on moral grounds he is absolutely right to do so; to anyone who has followed the mainstream media, however, it will come as no suprise that moral grounds are no impediment to throwing out the right to free political speech in favor of eliminating their competition.

This is, without a doubt, the first step out onto the slippery slope.