CBS: Blogs don't have free speech rights

From our good friends at CBS News:

Internet blogs are providing a new and unregulated medium for politically motivated attacks. With the same First Amendment protections as newspapers, blogs are increasingly gaining influence.

Huh? Notice how blogs and newspapers are differentiated, implying that blogs don't or shouldn't have the same First Amendments protections. For clarification, the First Amendment goes something like this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;

Notice that by using the unnecessary modifier "unregulated", the author implicitly advocates government regulation of blogs. Why should blogs be regulated, you ask? Instead of reasoned argumentation, the author uses rhetoric and allusion to demonize blogs. According to him, blogs are responsible for "attacks" (read: violence) and are "gaining influence" (read: corruption). Elsewhere in the article, blogs are a "telling harbinger" of "dirty tricks".

Kind of ironic, given his apparent aversion to "politically motivated attacks", don't you think?