FEC: An Agency Tasked with Regulating First Amendment Activity

January 1, 2018  •  By IFS Staff  •    •  

The Federal Election Commission is the independent agency charged with enforcing federal campaign finance law and enacting campaign finance regulations. The FEC was created after the Nixon Administration’s Justice Department pursued criminal campaign finance charges against the President’s critics. In light of that effort, Congress correctly rejected the idea of letting a future president effectively control a government agency tasked…

The "Reform Community" discovers it has gone bald: The FEC, disclosure timelines, and Little Jerry Seinfeld

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July 18, 2014   •  By Brad Smith   •  

Bob Biersack took to the pages of The New York Times this week to bemoan what he termed a failure of the Federal Election ...

Center for Competitive Politics v. Federal Election Commission

June 25, 2014   •  By IFS staff   •  ,

The Center for Competitive Politics (CCP) filed a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission (FEC) seeking a controversial agency document denied to CCP despite a Freedom of ...

Freedom of Information Act Appeal (FEC)

April 29, 2014   •  By Allen Dickerson   •  , ,

On April 3, 2014, the Center for Competitive Politics (“CCP”) requested an unredacted copy of the First General Counsel’s Report, dated June 22, 2011, ...

Dysfunction and Belief at the FEC

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April 22, 2014   •  By David Mason   •  

Former FEC GC Larry Noble has offered his take on the public dispute between FEC Vice Chair Ann Ravel and the FEC’s Republican commissioners.  ...

Comments on Advisory Opinion 2013-18: Revolution Messaging, LLC

January 15, 2014   •  By Joe Trotter   •  , ,

It should be noted that neither exception requires that the inclusion of a disclaimer be impossible. Draft A in particular notes that, for the ...

McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission

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October 4, 2013   •  By IFS staff   •  , ,

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the biennial contribution limits case McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission on Tuesday, October 8th. The suit challenges the ...

Media Watch: How Not to Report the News

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September 17, 2013   •  By Brad Smith   •  

Here’s a great example of reporting that is not specifically inaccurate, but is highly misleading, and it would appear intentionally so. From The Baltimore Sun ...

Do State Ethics Commissions Reduce Political Corruption? An Exploratory Investigation

August 1, 2013   •  By Matt Nese   •  ,

Political corruption is typically defined as “crimes by public officials for personal gain.”1 But there should be no doubt about the corrosive effects of malfeasance among ...

Wagner v. FEC

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July 10, 2013   •  By IFS staff   •  , , ,

The Center for Competitive Politics (CCP) and the Cato Institute filed a joint friend-of-the-court brief urging that strict scrutiny must be applied to a law that ...

Media Watch: Unethical attack by CREW’s Melanie Sloan

May 1, 2013   •  By David Keating   •  ,

Melanie Sloan today took an unethical shot at Federal Election Commissioner Donald McGahn, writing in Politico that he “has boasted, ‘I’m not enforcing the ...

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