A Web site attacking Fred Thompson, PhoneyFred.org, was yanked down after reporters rang the Mitt Romney campaign, suspecting it was the handiwork of the former Massachusetts governor’s team. It turns out the site was tied to a Romney campaign consultant in South Carolina, where they take their dirty politics seriously. The Thompson campaign has begun demanding justice. “While Fred Thompson is working to bring our country together, an increasingly desperate Mitt Romney and his campaign are already hard at work to divide us, practicing the lowest kind of politics,” Thompson communications director Todd Harris said. “Gov. Romney should take full responsibility for this type of high-tech gutter politics and issue an immediate apology.”

Well, since when did negative politics become a crime in this country? The politicians have done what they can to criminalize political speech, trying to ban issue ads from citizens groups in 2002. Mr. Thompson, when he was in the Senate, supported McCain-Feingold. But one is still allowed to call one’s political opponents “phoney.” There was also a picture at the top of the Web site’s page of Mr. Thompson in a silly outfit. There was a section highlighting Mr. Thompson’s closeness to Senator McCain of Arizona. There were news clips about Mr. Thompson representing a pro-choice group in the 1990s. There were numerous other news clips pointing out various inconsistencies in Mr. Thompson’s positions. There was a section on his active dating life between marriages, titled, “Playboy Fred.” All unremarkable save that we live in a time of campaign speech regulation where the slogan for free speech might as well be “use it or lose it.”