Shut Up, They Explained
While the McCain campaign is clashing with the media, the Obama campaign appears to be trying to intimidate its critics into silence. St. Louis's KMOV-TV has a disturbing report:

Prosecutors and sheriffs from across Missouri are joining something called the Barack Obama truth squad. . . . They will be reminding voters that Barack Obama is a Christian who wants to cut taxes for anyone making less than $250,000 a year. They also say they plan to respond immediately to any ads and statements that might violate Missouri ethics laws.

The report includes interviews with Jennifer Joyce and Bob McCullough, chief prosecutors for St. Louis city and county, respectively. Neither threatens to prosecute Obama's critics, so it's possible that the station's citing of "Missouri ethics laws" makes this look more troubling than it is. But ABC News reports that the Obama campaign is trying to silence criticism elsewhere:

In this letter sent this week to TV station managers from Obama campaign general counsel Bob Bauer, obtained by ABC News, the Obama campaign argues that a TV ad by the National Rifle Association should not air.

"Unlike federal candidates, independent political organizations do not have a 'right to command the use of broadcast facilities,' " Bauer writes. "Moreover, you have a duty 'to protect the public from false, misleading or deceptive advertising.' "

The Obama campaign takes issue with an ad called "Hunter," pointing out that claims in the ad were called "false" by Factcheck.org, and was given three Pinocchios by the Washington Post's "Factchecker."

A copy of the letter is here. David Kopel has a detailed rebuttal of the Factcheck.org critique. Whatever one may conclude about the merits of the ad's claims, the notion that an ad should be suppressed because the Washington Post or the Annenberg Center disapproves of it flies in the face of America's tradition of open debate. Never mind what Obama thinks of the Second Amendment, there's reason to worry about the First.