Free Speech
Federalist: The Coming Free Speech Apocalypse
Daniel Payne
In America, you can say just about any offensive thing imaginable, directed at just about any group or person imaginable, and you’ll be okay. Add to that the strong protections for political speech that statute and Supreme Court precedent have established, and America is almost unique among the nations of the world in terms of freedom of expression. We have it good.
But that might not always be the case. In fact, in the very near future American free speech may be sharply curtailed. It is not a sure thing—Supreme Court precedent regarding the First Amendment is robust enough to present would-be censors with something of a challenge—but nevertheless there is a good chance that American enemies of American free speech will shortly mount a sustained and eventually successful effort to drastically reduce American speech freedoms.
Who are these enemies? There are three of them: Hillary Clinton (backed by a Democratic Party that is rabidly anti-free speech), Donald Trump (unchallenged by a weak and useless Republican Party), and, most tragically, the American people themselves.
Huffington Post: The Tyranny of the Loud
Howard Schweber
The Supreme Court has repeatedly adopted the idiotic assumption that the way to ensure all voices are heard is to have no limits on speaking. Anyone who has worked in politics, or communications, or advertising, or—well, The World—knows this is nonsense. That was the fundamental mistake of the famous case Buckley v. Valeo forty years ago, and repeated again in Citizens United. Aside from giving corporations more rights than actual citizens, the Court keeps saying that the act of spending money equates to speech. That’s absurd. Spending money is not speaking, spending money is a way to make speech louder. That was the point of rules about campaign finance: to limit the use of money to turn the volume knob up to 11. But under the leadership of the late lamented Justice Antonin Scalia our highest court has declared a constitutional principle that louder is better.
Independent Groups
Politico: Bernie Sanders’ new group is already in turmoil
Edward-Isaac Dovere and Gabriel Debenedetti
People familiar with what occurred say that the board, which is chaired by the Vermont senator’s wife Jane, was growing increasingly concerned about campaign finance questions being raised over the last week. Their concern reached a breaking point, one person deeply involved with the Sanders world said, with a story last Friday from ABC News about how the group would handle the particular tax questions raised by having a senator so closely associated with a 501(c)4 nonprofit organization that has strict restrictions on its political work.
Washington Post: Pro-Clinton super PAC ad manhandles Trump quote
Dave Weigel
Trump, who has done for the presidential campaign gaffe record what Michael Phelps has done to swimming records, has said plenty of inconvenient things about his wealth. This was not one of them. During a May 26 campaign stop in North Dakota, a pre-teleprompter Trump was making a standard point about how he’d lead America to prosperity when he started in on “wealth.”
“There’s one more thing we have to do to make America wealthy again,” he said. “And you have to be wealthy in order to be great, I’m sorry to say it.”…
But many pundits — and even reporters — saw the quote through mangled retweets or news releases, and treated it like a near-sociopathic “admission” that Trump hated the poor. With the first part of the quote clipped out, Priorities USA has done the seemingly impossible — quoted Donald Trump unfairly.
IRS
Overlawyered: Tweet of the day: Laurence Tribe on IRS ideological targeting
Walter Olson
Yesterday Harvard law professor Larry Tribe sent out a tweet brusquely dismissing the IRS targeting episode as a debunked non-scandal. I and others promptly took issue with him, and pointed him toward the August 5 D.C. Circuit opinion laying out the scandal’s genuineness…
Within an hour or two Prof. Tribe sent this tweet very graciously conceding error, along with several similar.
Laurence Tribe: @walterolson I confess error wrt IRS ideological targeting. The IG report and the CADC panel decision seem right to me. Inexcusable abuse.
Roll Call: Freedom Caucus’ Jordan Eyes Another Push to Oust IRS Chief
Alan K. Ota
Rep. Jim Jordan and other conservatives are reviving efforts to press the House to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen as the embattled agency head tries to woo Democrats and undecided Republicans.
The Ohio Republican, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said in an interview that he and other allies were weighing the use of procedural tactics similar to the July bid by Louisiana GOP Rep. John Fleming to bring up an impeachment resolution as a privileged measure bypassing committee consideration. The measure calls for formal impeachment of Koskinen for misstatements and a failure to cooperate with a House investigation of the IRS’ handling of tax-exempt status requests from conservative groups.
Influence
Wall Street Journal: New Emails Show Clinton Foundation Sought Access to State Department on Donors’ Behalf
Rebecca Ballhaus
Emails released Monday provide new examples of a Clinton Foundation official seeking access to the State Department on behalf of donors at a time when Hillary Clinton led the department.
The emails—obtained through a lawsuit by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch—could fuel criticism that the Clinton family’s charitable foundation, in fundraising with wealthy donors, corporations and foreign nations, created a conflict of interest for Mrs. Clinton during her work as the nation’s top diplomat.
In an exchange from June 2009, a Clinton Foundation official and longtime aide to former President Bill Clinton wrote to Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Mrs. Clinton at the State Department, seeking a meeting between the crown prince of Bahrain and Mrs. Clinton.
Politico: New emails show Clinton aide setting up meeting with major foundation donor
Nick Gass
“Cp of Bahrain in tomorrow to Friday[.] Asking to see her[.] Good friend of ours,” Band wrote Abedin on her State Department email address on June 23, 2009.
Abedin responded the same day, a Tuesday, that the crown prince had asked to see Clinton through “normal channels” on Thursday and Friday.
“I asked and she said she doesn’t want to commit to anything for thurs or fri until she knows how she will feel. Also, she says that she may want to go to ny and doesn’t want to be committed to stuff in ny [sic],” Abedin wrote via her State account, following up that she meant “stuff in dc.”
Two days later, on June 25, 2009, Abedin wrote Band: “Offering bahrain cp 10 tomorrow for mtg [with ] hrc[.] If u see him, let him know.”
Daily Caller: Follow The Money Trail: The DNC May Have Sold Access To Elected Officials
Shaun McCutcheon
Whenever politicians attempt to thwart the raising of money or restrict its spending, we must question the motivations as to why they want to limit the power of themselves and others to effectively communicate with the public. We should not re-elect incumbents who work to squash first amendment rights because they have no legitimate reason to limit political speech and assembly. Incumbents have access to money and expertise and need not limit outsiders who may have none. This is precisely why more money in politics is actually a good thing – and why the Supreme Court agreed with me that trying to stop Americans from supporting candidates of their choosing is a violation of our First Amendment right to Free Speech.
However, some of the leaked DNC emails suggest that federal officials on this Administrations’ payroll were using their office to sell access to elected officials and policymakers – something much worse than trying to sway primary voters to a favored candidate. What has been missing from the media coverage of these leaked emails is serious scrutiny of the far-too-cozy relationships they show between the DNC fundraisers and the president’s staff (paid for by taxpayer dollars), with links the Obama Foundation.
Candidates and Campaigns
Campaigns and Elections: New Site Offers Chance to Create Down-Ballot Bundlers
Sean J. Miller
Down-ballot campaigns could only dream of incentivizing massive contributions in exchange for time with their candidates. But there’s still the prospect for them to create bundlers through a new fundraising website that received the greenlight from the FEC last week.
The rewards here can be decidedly more low-key — a campaign T-shirt, say, for arranging ten $30 donations. But the principle remains the same: harness a campaign’s most ardent supporters to multiply the donor base.
“This thing is really built for insurgent-style campaigns or PACs, or issues that people are really passionate about,” said David Bell, a former Republican campaign operative who founded a fundraising business split between the websites eBundler.com and Donorship.org.
The States
Albany Times Union: Civil Liberties Union says Cuomo reform bill is unconstitutional
Chris Bragg
In a lengthy letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, The New York City Liberties Union (NYCLU) slammed an ethics reform bill Cuomo is expected to sign soon, arguing that it is unconstitutional, and would chill free speech of politically active nonprofits. It call on Cuomo to reject his own bill (veto it) in its current form.
“While the intention of the bill is to bring transparency to ‘dark money’ in politics, it is overbroad — it would inhibit public interest activity that has nothing to do with electoral campaigns,” said NYCLU Legislative Director Robert Perry said in a statement. “The clear if unintended consequences of this bill will be to unconstitutionally burden nonprofits as well as intimidate New Yorkers from supporting controversial causes like LGBT rights, abortion and climate change.”
New York Times: Can the States Save American Democracy?
Hedrick Smith
South Dakota and Washington State are holding referendums on proposals for more transparent elections; similar petition drives fell just short of success in Arizona and Idaho. This year, reformers in California, New York and Washington State have been mustering votes to press Congress to control campaign funding and ban corporate campaign contributions.
In the pushback against Citizens United, 17 states and more than 680 local governments have appealed to Congress for a constitutional amendment, either through a letter to Congress, referendums, legislative resolutions, city council votes or collective letters from state lawmakers.
Missoulian: How dark money groups who shut down Colstrip are now funding Bullock’s campaign
Doug Kary
Recently, the group called Montana Conservation Voters announced they were ponying up $500,000 to Bullock’s re-election campaign. Most Montanans don’t know much about MCV, but they really should.
MCV is funded almost entirely from large, progressive, “social justice” foundations from outside Montana in places like California and Washington, D.C.
Those groups funnel large amounts of cash to MCV in order to influence our politics and state policy. This year, a primary policy motive behind a lot of that money is to eliminate Montana’s coal industry.
San Jose Mercury News: Sacramento’s new ‘slush funds’: ballot measure committees
Jessica Calefati and Kaitlyn Landgraf
Hamstrung by strict limits on political contributions, California lawmakers have found a way to continue to extract large sums from some of Sacramento’s most powerful special interests.
A Bay Area News Group analysis shows that the number of candidate-controlled ballot measure committees has skyrocketed from six to at least three dozen over the past decade. Of the nearly $3 million spent by these committees since 2013, only $1 out of every $4 was used to help pass or kill measures that actually made it to the ballot.
