Supreme Court
Wall Street Journal: Bork to the Future
James Taranto
So: Senate Democrats tried to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee in 1967, applied ideological tests against plainly qualified nominees starting in 1971, both used and abolished the filibuster against lower-court nominees when it suited their purposes, and argued nine years ago for reversing “the presumption of confirmation.” Somehow they never prepared for the possibility of a Supreme Court vacancy under a Democratic president and a Republican Senate. But then, this is the first time that’s happened since 1895.
As is their wont, progressives are trying to drum up a sense of crisis to get their way. “Scalia’s Death Plunges Court, National Politics Into Turmoil,” a Washington Post headline claims. Slate warns of a “constitutional crisis” if the Senate fails to defer to the president. Brent Staples, a New York Times editorialist, even tries to reopen the Civil War: “In a nation built on slavery, white men propose denying the first black president his Constitutional right to name Supreme Court nominee,” he asserted in a Saturday tweet, deleted in the face of widespread mockery.
Washington Post: The battle over replacing Justice Scalia is just the start of a war over the Supreme Court
Richard Hasen
Think of the Scalia battle not as a hurricane, but as the first in a series of storms that will come through our increasingly polarized Congress. And with all the liberals on the Court now appointed by Democratic presidents, and all the conservatives on the Court now appointed by Republican presidents, we can expect the nominations process to be much more partisan and polarized than it has been in the past. The series of storms will put great stress on our system of separation of powers when we are so divided.
It is true that key questions that are among the most important to our nation are in the hands of 9 unelected justices, and that Scalia’s replacement will be significant. But no matter who gets to replace Scalia, there will be more opportunities to fight for control of the Court in the years to come.
Politico: Scalia’s death could doom McDonnell and hurt Menendez
Josh Gerstein
Just one month ago, the high court formally agreed to hear McDonnell’s appeal, which argues that his convictions relied — at least in part — on “routine political courtesies” too commonplace to be considered the kinds of official acts that could support a charge of receiving bribes.
Scalia was considered among the most receptive justices to McDonnell’s argument that his conviction on corruption charges improperly relied on the kind of favors that are commonplace on the American political scene…
If the court can’t muster five votes in Scalia’s absence to overturn McDonnell’s conviction, the appeals court ruling upholding his sentence is likely to kick in, and he could be sent to prison.
Independent Groups
American Prospect: ‘Not My Money’: Hillary and Bernie Distance Themselves from Supportive Super PACs
Justin Miller
In Thursday night’s Democratic debate in Milwaukee, a PBS moderator asked Clinton about the flood of money flowing into Priorities USA Action, a Clinton-allied super PAC that has raised $40 million, much of it from the financial industry.
Clinton took offense to the notion that it’s her super PAC, saying “You’re referring to a super PAC that we don’t coordinate, that was set up to support President Obama, that has now decided they want to support me.” Later in the debate, she said bluntly, “It’s not my PAC.”
…Hillary Clinton’s efforts to wall off her campaign from a super PAC that’s expected to be a major player if she gets the Democratic nomination is a clear reaction to Sanders’s repeated attacks on her political integrity. The Vermont senator has criticized her for taking millions in Wall Street donations and accepting lavish speaking fees from big banks.
Akron Beacon Journal: Shine the light on dark money
Editorial Board
After more than five years of scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service, Republican strategist Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS finally has gained tax-exempt status as a social welfare organization. Considering the group’s origins, there should be little doubt that its main purpose is to elect or defeat candidates for office. Unfortunately, the IRS decision means Crossroads GPS will continue to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into attack ads while hiding the sources of unlimited donations…
By airing such “issue ads” and other communications, Crossroads GPS can operate in the dark. In reality, its ads are hard to distinguish from those aired by other groups. Under IRS rules designed to protect the confidentiality of tax matters, no one outside Crossroads GPS can know the sources of the $300 million it has raised. IRS rules on 501(c)4 social welfare organizations also say that political activity is not supposed to be their primary activity, but loose definitions make enforcement extremely difficult.
Campaign Finance Enforcement
Baltimore Sun: Conservative group to challenge Chris Van Hollen on campaign finance
John Fritze
A conservative legal group plans to file a Federal Election Commission complaint against Rep. Chris Van Hollen, alleging the Montgomery County Democrat failed to disclose in-kind legal assistance he received when he sued the government in 2011 in an effort to strengthen campaign finance regulations.
Cause of Action Institute, a Washington-based group that opposed Van Hollen’s lawsuit, will argue that the congressman’s campaign should have disclosed the pro bono legal work on its FEC reports because the lawsuit benefited his campaign…
Van Hollen, one of his party’s most outspoken voices in favor of tougher campaign finance rules and now candidate for Senate, sued the FEC in 2011, claiming the agency did not go far enough to require companies, unions and other groups that pay for political advertising to disclose their donors. The FEC’s regulation was upheld in January by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The Media
New Yorker: The Party Crashers
Jill Lepore
The American party system is not only a creation of the press; it is dependent on it. It is currently fashionable, indispensable, even, to malign the press, whether liberal or conservative. “That’s the media game,” Sanders said, dismissing a question that Cooper had asked him during CNN’s town hall. “That’s what the media talks about. Who cares?” But when the press is in the throes of change, so is the party system. And the national weal had better watch out. It’s unlikely, but not impossible, that the accelerating and atomizing forces of this latest communications revolution will bring about the end of the party system and the beginning of a new and wobblier political institution. With our phones in our hands and our eyes on our phones, each of us is a reporter, each a photographer, unedited and ill judged, chatting, snapping, tweeting, and posting, yikking and yakking. At some point, does each of us become a party of one?
Free Speech
Wall Street Journal: Free Speech in China Gets an Unlikely State-Media Backer
Felicia Sonmez
China’s ruling Communist Party is cracking down on internal criticism, and the editor of one of the country’s most nationalist tabloids isn’t going to take it anymore.
In a post on his Weibo microblog over the weekend, Hu Xijin, editor in chief of the Global Times, called on Chinese authorities to show greater tolerance for dissenting opinions.
“China should open up more channels for criticism and suggestions and encourage constructive criticism,” Mr. Hu wrote on Sunday. “There also should be a certain amount of tolerance for unconstructive criticism.”.
Candidates and Campaigns
The Hill: Cruz demands TV stations cut PAC’s attack ad
Rebecca Savransky
Ted Cruz is pushing to have ads running across South Carolina and in parts of Georgia pulled from the air that say he “proposed mass legalization of illegal immigrants.”
The ad was produced by the anti-Cruz Super PAC American Future Fund, according to a news release from Cruz’s campaign…
In the email, Brown said the network is liable for spreading the false claims and argued that they stop airing the ad.
“Because this advertisement makes a flatly false factual claim for which your station is ultimately liable, we strongly urge you to exercise your discretion as a licensee to refuse to continue to broadcast this advertisement, and, because it is already airing, immediately pull the advertisement from your rotation,” the email said.
New York Times: Hillary Clinton, Shifting Line of Attack, Paints Bernie Sanders as a One-Issue Candidate
Nicholas Confessore
Hillary Clinton set out on Saturday to blunt one of Bernie Sanders’s most potent arguments against her, attacking the Vermont senator as a one-note rival whose relentless focus on Wall Street excess and exorbitant political spending would do little to improve the lives of Americans.
The line of attack, laid out at a rally here with labor union members and amplified more pointedly by a video Mrs. Clinton’s campaign released on Saturday morning, comes as she is seeking to sow doubts about Mr. Sanders’s readiness for office and defend herself as a more reliable and proven fighter for Democratic interests.
NPR: Presidential Candidates Pledge To Undo ‘Citizens United.’ But Can They?
Peter Overby
But they never got to the hard part, said Nick Penniman, director of Issue One, a group building coalitions for new campaign finance laws.
“You’ve got Bernie, making this one of the two major themes of his campaign,” Penniman said. “But when he talks about solutions, he just talks about ending Citizens United.”
…Penniman said of Clinton, “In a kind of ‘me too’ way, Hillary will mention that she also thinks money in politics is a problem. But she hasn’t spoken much about her solutions.”
The States
Santa Fe New Mexican: Senate passes independent-expenditure disclosure bill … again
Steve Terrell
Wirth, during debate on Senate Bill 11 on the Senate floor this afternoon, said he’s been trying to get such a bill passed since 2010. The normal course through the years has been for the Senate to pass the bill with few if any votes against it only to have the bill die in the House. This year the bill passed the Senate with less than 48 hours to make it through the House.
The bill got off to a late start this year. Though Wirth pre-filed the bill well before the session started, Gov. Susana Martinez didn’t give it an executive message until last week.”
