Free Speech

Washington Post: Dubious arguments for curbing the free speech of Nazis

By Alan M. Dershowitz

When I was a student during the days of McCarthyism, a book arguing for the censorship of extremist hate speech would have been titled “Must We Defend Communists?” Many of the arguments made by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic in “Must We Defend Nazis?” are similar to those that would have been made in my hypothetical book: Free speech is not absolute; it must be balanced against other societal values; much harm can come from communism; communists don’t support our free speech, so why should we support theirs; communism is evil, and there is no good reason to defend evil speech; communist propaganda lies at the periphery of the First Amendment, not at its core; communist speech incites violence; those who defend communist speech are complicit in the evils of communism…

The case for censorship is even older and tireder than the case for free speech. Freedom of speech may be a better road to equality, as Martin Luther King Jr. and the abolitionists and suffragettes before him demonstrated. It may be a bumpy road, but it may be the worst possible approach to expression, as Winston Churchill once said of democracy, “except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Congress

Vox: Why so many members of Congress are retiring

By Lee Drutman

Every member running for reelection now lives in fear that some outside group will dump tens of millions of dollars into the election. And even if that money goes to your side, you don’t control it.

Increasingly, members’ reelection campaigns are not their own. They’re controlled by outside funding groups – sometimes run by party committees, sometimes simply run by outside groups controlled by a few billionaires. Either way, candidates can increasingly feel like bit players in their own campaigns.

So in the post-Citizens United campaign finance environment of unlimited outside spending, not only do members running for reelection have to commit seemingly endless hours in the unpleasant uphill battle of begging rich people for money, but their efforts can instantly be dwarfed by outside spending (from even richer people) that will then shape the contours of the race by running ads “independent” of the candidates.

Sacramento Bee: Billionaires are running our elections. Is there no way out of this?

By Dan Morain

Rep. John Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat, has enlisted 159 members of Congress to sign onto H.R. 20, legislation intended to encourage candidates to raise small donations. Inducements include tax credits for donors and, for candidates, a federal match and access to broadcast time.

Sure, 158 co-sponsors are Democrats. The bill is part of the Democrats’ “By The People Project,” a contract with America for the 2018 election. But one Republican openly supports H.R. 20, Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina. “It is time to return power to the people and get big money out of politics,” he says.

Sarbanes’ idea and other fixes won’t stop big donors and corporations, so long as the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United and other related decisions remain the law…

“We can’t stop the Koch brothers, but we can arm good candidates so that they can run an efficient campaign,” Sarbanes said by phone.

Internet Speech Regulation 

Santa Fe New Mexican: Secure elections protect our democracy

By Sen. Martin Heinrich and Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver

Social media networks and the post-Citizens United campaign finance landscape provide new fertile ground for hostile influence campaigns. We know that Russia used online tools and bots to target Americans’ social media newsfeeds with propaganda and fake information. Even today, it appears Kremlin-linked accounts are continuing to use these methods to interfere in our democratic process.

Sen. Heinrich has called on the Federal Election Commission to adopt new rules that would prevent foreign nationals from using online advertising platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, to influence U.S. elections. And Secretary Toulouse Oliver adopted a new campaign finance rule last fall to shine a light on some of the dark money spent on political ads in New Mexico.

Disclosure

The Guardian: BlackRock wants to contribute to society. Why not tackle secret money?

By Bruce F. Freed and Karl J. Sandstrom

To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society,” BlackRock’s chairman and CEO, Laurence D Fink, recently wrote to business leaders. What Mr Fink leaves out is that a business can’t begin to evaluate its social impact if it doesn’t carefully address its spending to influence political elections and the consequences…

In this climate, Mr Fink’s declaration is timely. Yet it’s fundamentally incomplete. His “ask” of US CEOs neglects an integral element for companies fulfilling a social purpose. It’s not an hour too late for Mr Fink to tweet out a postscript urging companies to adopt transparency and board oversight of political spending. It is also time for BlackRock itself to put Mr Fink’s rhetoric into practice on the complementary issue of political transparency and accountability by supporting shareholder resolutions urging companies to adopt those policies.

The Media

Columbia Journalism Review: What some reporters get wrong about the First Amendment

By Jonathan Peters

Journalists are not immune to misunderstandings of the First Amendment, despite their self-evident interests in the functionality and well-being of a free press (and, indeed, their long and important efforts to protect speech and press freedoms). This comes up occasionally at First Amendment conferences I attend, and it’s understandable to a large extent because this area, as a legal specialty, is home to more than a few puzzling cases.

I asked a dozen media law professors and attorneys what they consider common misunderstandings that journalists  have about the First Amendment and media law. Eleven shared their thoughts with me.

This was not a scientific survey, to be clear. I widened the inquiry to include media law writ large because the legal problems that affect journalists don’t always spring directly from the First Amendment. They might involve, say, privileges under shield statutes. Including such problems should yield a more complete appraisal of the relevant misunderstandings-which, by the way, aren’t shared by all journalists. These are general observations.

Fundraising

Time: Democrats Have So Many Candidates They Could Go Broke. A New Group Might Have the Fix

By Charlotte Alter

Most grassroots groups have been so focused on recruiting and training progressive candidates that they haven’t given much thought to how those candidates might cannibalize one another’s campaigns. But Swing Left, an upstart progressive organization that is trying to flip the House in 2018 by directing volunteers and funding from safely blue precincts to nearby swing districts, is trying something a little different.

Rather than wade into contentious primary contests, Swing Left is already focused on fundraising for the Democratic nominee in select races-whoever it might be. “If you feel strongly about a candidate, great. But if all you want to do is win back the House, why would you give money that’s going to be spent on a primary?” says Ethan Todras-Whitehill, executive director of Swing Left. “We’re trying to shift the frame of fundraising. We’re not fundraising for someone; we’re fundraising against someone.” He calls it “hacking campaign finance.”

Swing Left has set up what it calls District Funds: pots of money that get donated to the Democratic nominee in a targeted race, whoever he or she is, as soon as that candidate wins the primary.

The States

Mic: Voters will consider a record number of ballot initiatives to reform our democracy in 2018 elections

By Will Drabold

Democracy reform encompasses a large swath of proposed laws and ballot measures being pushed in cities and states nationwide. Broadly speaking, these initiatives aim to reduce the amount of money in politics and the influence of lobbyists, increase access to the ballot box and limit state legislators from opposing the will of voters…

Republicans in the North Dakota legislature have blocked the creation of an ethics panel, so a group has formed to push creation of that panel through a ballot initiative.

In Massachusetts, Ben Gubits is leading an effort to create a volunteer citizens commission to pressure state officials to support amending the U.S. Constitution. His group, American Promise, is pushing for a 28th Amendment to the Constitution, which would overturn the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision that led to a flood of outside cash into political campaigns – a battle his group fights state by state.

Inside Higher Ed: The Death of College Free-Speech Zones

By Jeremy Bauer-Wolf

In the last year, state legislatures, including those in Colorado, Tennessee and Utah, have stepped in and banned free-speech areas.

Virginia, Missouri and Arizona also previously outlawed the zones. Florida’s Legislature will consider a bill this session that wouldn’t allow them.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a crowd at Georgetown University in September that administrators “coddled” students to the point that free expression had been stifled on campuses. The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives introduced a proposal in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act that would also essentially eliminate the free-speech zones.

“Every public college in America is going to do away with the notion of free-speech zones,” said Frank LoMonte, director of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida…

“I think their days are numbered,” said Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at FIRE…

The legislatures are the best arena for solving colleges’ abuse of free-speech areas, because litigation can often be time-consuming and cases don’t differ much, Cohn said.