Russell Simmons for the Defense

There could be no clearer example of how “good-government” regulations chill free speech than the ruckus that has pitted Hip-Hop impresario Russell Simmons and the New York Civil Liberties Union against the Temporary State Commission on Lobbying. Mr. Simmons, the founder of Def Jam Records, entered the political fray earlier this year by undertaking a campaign to pressure the state’s politicians to reform the Rockefeller-era drug laws. It might have looked to the average New Yorker like a private, if prominent, citizen exercising his right to petition the government under the First Amendment. But to the lobbying commission’s chairman, David Grandeau, it apparently looked like lobbying and a chance to make Mr. Simmons register and file forms.