In the News
NY Times: Supreme Injustice
By Thomas Edsall
Brad Smith, a former Republican appointee to (and chairman of) the Federal Election Commission who is currently a professor at Capitol University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, was downright hostile in his emailed response: “Voting Rights and Free Speech are different areas of law, connected only by their association with elections,” he wrote. “The more relevant comparison because we’re comparing speech to speech: the Court’s liberal minority (and people like Norden and the Brennan Center) treat political speech less favorably than pornography, simulated child pornography, and nude dancing.”
Regarding campaign finance, Smith contended that the court majority “plainly seeks to put some teeth back into ‘exacting scrutiny,’ and it is no longer willing to give the reformers a blank check to regulate, as was the trend in the last decade or more of the Rehnquist Court. It’s a pretty straightforward logic: the First Amendment, if it means anything, must mean that there is at least a ‘presumption’ against government regulation of political speech, and that presumption must be strong, given the plain language of the Amendment.”
Must Reads
Wall Street Journal: Rewriting the First Amendment
Editorial
Once you’ve opened the First Amendment for revision by politicians, and reinterpretation by judges, anything can happen. We know liberal editors tend to lose their bearings when they write about money in politics, but is the problem so great that it’s worth letting, say, Senator Ted Cruz determine whether the New York Times Co. qualifies for protection under the First Amendment?
This prospect doesn’t seem to bother even the great totems of the legal left, who also see an amendment as the only way to end-run the Supreme Court. Amending the First Amendment is a “particularly worthy enterprise,” Harvard’s Laurence Tribe wrote on Slate.com in 2012 “given that the composition of the court prefigures little chance of a swift change in direction.” Who would have thought that the legal left considered rights of speech and association to be so easily tradeable for partisan gain?…
…The larger story here is how far the American left is willing to go to cripple their political opponents. They’re even willing to write a giant loophole into America’s founding charter so Congress can limit political speech. The Tea Party’s concerns about eroding liberty turn out to be more accurate than even its most devoted partisans imagined.
Independent Groups
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Federal judge halts John Doe probe into Walker recall
By Daniel Bice and Patrick Marley
“The (Wisconsin Club for Growth and its treasurer) have found a way to circumvent campaign finance laws, and that circumvention should not and cannot be condemned or restricted. Instead, it should be recognized as promoting political speech, an activity that is ‘ingrained in our culture,'” Randa wrote, quoting from a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.
He ordered an immediate halt to the investigation, the return of all property seized during it, and the destruction of any information and materials gained in the investigation. He told the Wisconsin Club for Growth it did not need to cooperate with prosecutors in any way.
Roll Call: Did Soft Money Ban Kill Political Parties?
By Eliza Newlin Carney
That law “has succeeded in profoundly altering the state of American politics by severely weakening American political parties to the benefit of outside spending groups who may raise and spend unlimited funds in connection with federal elections,” testified election lawyers Neil Reiff, a Democrat, and Donald McGahn, a Republican, before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee last week.
Reiff, the former deputy general counsel at the Democratic National Committee, and McGahn, a former FEC chairman, aren’t the only McCain-Feingold critics to vent their frustration with the soft money ban in recent weeks. If only Congress hadn’t outlawed soft money, the ban’s detractors imply, a host of political ills would never have come to pass.
Free Beacon: Read the Confidential Document Left Behind at the Democracy Alliance Meeting
By Lachlan Markay
The Democracy Alliance does not actually accept donations. Instead, it solicits contributions from left-wing millionaires and billionaires, and serves as a “pass through” between those donors and top liberal advocacy groups, including the Center for American Progress, Media Matters for America, and Democratic Super PAC Priorities USA.
The group emphasizes secrecy in all of its operations, even as its members and the DA “favored organizations” to which they donate decry the role of “dark money” in American politics. DA does not disclose details of any of the transactions it facilitates, and its members and donation recipients are prohibited from speaking publicly about the organization and its operations.
SCOTUS/Judiciary
ELB: New Poll Says SCOTUS Got Citizens United Wrong, But Poll Itself is Wrong on CU
By Rick Hasen
Look, I hate Citizens United (start here). But that is not at all a fair characterization of what the opinion did. Start with the fact that it endorsed disclosure and did not cause secret money. And the claim of “buying elections” is quite simplistic and misleading.
Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
NY Times: A Mysterious Republican Committee in the Virgin Islands
By Derek Willis
The Virgin Islands committee spends the overwhelming bulk of its money not for basic political activities like voter registration or party messages, but to raise more money. A few other conservative political committees employ this technique, and the biggest beneficiaries are a number of fund-raising companies in Northern Virginia.
Philanthropic experts often gauge charities by their efficiency in spending money for the main purpose of the organization. These political committees are spending tiny fractions of their overall revenue — mostly raised in small amounts from retirees — on political activity.
IRS
Democracy 21: Watchdog Groups Again Call on IRS to Deny Crossroads GPS Tax-Exempt Status as 501(c)(4) Group: Groups Send FEC General Counsel’s Report to IRS Finding Major Purpose of Crossroads was Federal Campaign Activity
Crossroads GPS has been masquerading as a “social welfare” organization for more than three and a half years to hide the donors financing their extensive federal campaign activities. The IRS has a responsibility to end the Crossroads GPS charade and should act promptly to deny 501(c)(4) tax status to Crossroads GPS. The IRS must not allow Crossroads GPS for a third straight national election to improperly hide from the American people the donors financing its federal campaign activities.
State and Local
New York –– NY Times: U.S. Said to Seek Records From Anticorruption Panel’s Members
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and SUSANNE CRAIG
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have issued a grand jury subpoena seeking emails, text messages and other records from all the members of the anticorruption commission that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo abruptly shut down in March, three people briefed on the matter said on Monday.
The action by prosecutors from the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, comes just weeks after he took the unusual step of publicly criticizing the governor’s shutdown of the panel and took possession of its investigative files.
The subpoena, which was served on the commission’s former counsel, Kelly Donovan, seeks documents pertaining to the formation of the panel, known as a Moreland Commission, based on the 1907 Moreland Act. It also sought documents about how the panel was run, overseen and closed, according to the people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.
