And all of them are on one side of the political dial. Radio Equalizer has the low-down on which talkers are under siege and why.

Now, the question is whether this is an organized campaign or a series of unrelated events. One case, the San Francisco assault on Michael Savage, has been going on for a couple of months now. Another involves CAIR and its long-time drive to muzzle critics of Islamic violence or of CAIR itself. And another involves illegal alien advocates. The two most famous cases so far, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, both grew out of Media Matters smears.

And let’s be clear: They are smears. In Rush’s case, the time separation between the allegedly offensive remark about “phony soldiers” and his explanation for what he meant was a mere 1:50. Less than two minutes. It’s also of interest that, given Hillary Clinton’s deep connection to Media Matters, that Rush had launched a broadside against her on his show right around the time Media Matters unleashed its dishonest attack on him. Was the Media Matters attack a payback? Or just part of an ongoing and more systematic effort to muzzle conservative talkers ahead of the ’08 elections.

Whatever is going on and whatever connections there might be between all of these cases, it’s pretty clear that freedom of speech actually is under sustained attack, and the targets aren’t just the right’s top tier talkers. If you’ve ever publicly criticized illegal aliens or Islamic violence or a Democrat, you might find yourself targeted by one or more of the groups that are now on the offensive against Rush and Bill Cunningham and Michael Savage and the others.

And if the left can’t with through intimidation, there’s always the Wesley Clark method or the Fairness Doctrine to fall back on. Since Howard Dean’s call to “do something” about Fox News back in 2004, it’s been clear that the Democrats and several of their constituency groups don’t like your freedom to criticize them.

(thanks to Chris R.)