In Washington, DC, talking about the Bill of Rights can land you in jail for 90 days.

Our nation’s capital has a licensing scheme in place that makes it illegal for anyone to “guide or escort” anyone else for hire without first getting the government’s permission. To get the license, which the Washington Post editorial board labeled a Tour de farce, eager entrepreneurs must first pay hundreds of dollars in fees, fill out a bunch of forms and pass an arbitrary test.

That is, they need to jump through all sorts of needless hoops before they’re allowed to speak.

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The bottom line is that the Constitution protects your right to communicate for a living, whether you are a journalist, a stand-up comedian, a musician, or a tour guide.  The government cannot be in the business of deciding who may speak and who may not.

That is why two Washington, DC, tour guides—Tonia Edwards and Bill Main, who run a company called Segs in the City—joined forces with the Institute for Justice to file a major federal lawsuit challenging DC’s tour-guide licensing scheme as a violation of their fundamental constitutional rights. Video and photos of the press conference are online.

Nearly every day, Tonia and Bill teach a group of people how to ride Segways and then take them around Washington, DC, on a tour of the city.  Their business is located near the National Archives, so one of the things they tell their customers is where the Bill of Rights is located.  For this, the city government could throw them in prison for three months.

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Well, folks, this is bound to happen more and more as time rolls onward in this New Media world of ours. A blogger is in trouble with local Ohio officials who are trying to Shut him down using a badly applied campaign finance law all because he has been critical of county officials on his blog. That’s right, a county board is trying to silence the free political speech of a local Ohio blogger because he is critical of them.

The Geauga County Board of Elections has filed charges against the owner of the Geauga Constitutional Council blog, independent blogger Ed Corsi. The Board claims that Corsi’s pseudonymously published blog violates O.R.C. 3517.20(A)(2), a code meant to assure that political campaign publications, signs, and handouts have their source transparently identified.

The reason the Board is going after Corsi is because he publishes on his blog critical assessments and lists of local officials that he calls “R.I.N.O.S.” Board officials feel that because he does not affix his name to his blog posts he is violating the transparency rules.

However, Corsi is just an independent blogger and is not a paid operative of any party or campaign and all his blogging expenses are paid for with his own funds. The 1851 Center for Constitutional Law and the Rutherford Institute, non-profit legal advocacy firms, filed arguments with the OEC on behalf of Corsi saying that the Board of Elections overreached the application of the law in this case.

“This case has the potential to severally limit free speech in Ohio,” said 1851 Center Executive Director Maurice Thompson. “Should independent bloggers in Ohio be subject to registration, political disclosure laws, and fines simply because they discuss Ohio politics, and are critical of certain politicians? The Constitution says otherwise.”

“When applied to Corsi’s activities, the law violates the First Amendment right to anonymous political speech,” said Thompson. “It places an impermissible prior restraint on core political speech. And, it applies an overbroad regulation and/or prohibition on political speech that is not express advocacy.”

Clearly the Board is reaching in this case. This code is meant to make sure that politicians don’t get the unrevealed assistance of secret financial backers in elections and is not meant to quash the free speech of lone citizens like Corsi that have a blog and want to spout off about local politics.

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