Supreme Court
By Jacob Sullum
The idea that there is something sinister about trying to influence the law through strategic litigation, aided by financial support from people who support the cause, is hard to take seriously. Would these senators condemn the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, or their supporters on the same grounds? Would they say the money received by progressive organizations makes their legal arguments invalid? …
In the senators’ view, the differences between the majority and the minority in these cases cannot be explained by honest disagreement. The justices who reached conclusions the senators favored were conscientiously applying the law, while the justices who reached conclusions that the senators opposed were simply following the marching orders of the Republican Party.
Regarding this particular case, the senators say, the NRA worked hard to win the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, who had taken a strong position in favor of the Second Amendment as an appeals court judge. The NRA “promoted the confirmation (and perhaps selection) of nominees to this Court who, it believed, would ‘break the tie’ in Second Amendment cases,” Whitehouse et al. say. “During last year’s confirmation proceedings, the NRA spent $1.2 million on television advertisements declaring exactly that.”
Furthermore, they say, the Federalist Society (which also has a budget!) published an article suggesting that the replacement of retired Justice Anthony Kennedy with Kavanaugh could have a crucial impact on the Court’s willingness to hear Second Amendment cases.
First Amendment
Washington Post: Oregon officials request criminal investigation into newspaper reporters over after-hours phone calls, emails
By Meagan Flynn
The Malheur Enterprise, a small newspaper in eastern Oregon, spent months investigating a state lawmaker’s business deals and contract work in Malheur County. But on Monday, the newspaper reported an unusual development: Now the county wants to investigate the Malheur Enterprise – for harassment…
But Les Zaitz, the editor and publisher of the Enterprise, said in a statement that reporters were only trying to do their jobs.
“Suggesting that professional journalists are behaving as criminals in gathering vital information for the community appears to be an effort to silence and intimidate the Enterprise,” said Zaitz, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist while a reporter at the Oregonian. He added: “We are a small, independently owned news source trying to hold public officials accountable. Rather than provide information and truth, local officials appear more interested in criminalizing a profession protected by the First Amendment.”
Malheur County Sheriff Brian E. Wolfe told the Enterprise that his office had not yet decided whether to begin an investigation as of Monday morning, but he pointed the paper to Oregon’s “telephonic harassment” criminal statute for its review…
If pursued, the investigation would fit into a larger pattern of intimidation of journalists by government officials, notably the president, over the past several years, argued Kyu Ho Youm, a communications law professor focused on the First Amendment at the University of Oregon…
“They’re undoubtedly overreaching their boundaries as government officials and criminalizing ordinary phone calls and emails that are apart of news reporting,” he said. “It is fundamentally antithetical to freedom of the press in the United States, and this is more intimidation than anything that responsible government authorities [would do].”
Congress
McClatchy DC: Republicans use McConnell allies to try and force his hand on election security
By Lesley Clark
Republicans for the Rule of Law is unveiling new spots that urge Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, and James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, to push McConnell for a vote, urging them “don’t let Mitch McConnell stand in your way.” The group is also re-airing a 60-second ad that calls on McConnell to act…
Rubio, Graham and Lankford all support various election security bills to counter election tampering by foreign governments in the wake of the 2016 election and Blunt chairs the Senate Rules Committee that has jurisdiction over the legislation…
Blunt has blamed House Democrats for McConnell’s hardline stance, saying they overreached in January when they passed a sweeping measure focused on voting rights, campaign finance, and government ethics. Blunt accused Democrats in a July floor speech of trying to turn a serious issue into a “political football” and said that the Senate is committed to election security…
The legislation referenced in the ads include a bill sponsored by Rubio and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland which would impose stiff sanctions on Russia’s banking, energy and defense industries if there was evidence of election meddling.
The legislation, known as the DETER act, also calls on the administration to present Congress with a strategy on preventing interference in U.S. elections for China, Iran, North Korea and “any other foreign state of significant concern.”…
Another bill is co-sponsored by Graham which would boost transparency of political and campaign ads that run on the web by requiring them to publicly disclose who paid for them.
Some conservatives, however, say the legislation, dubbed the Honest Ads Act, overreaches and could stifle free speech.
Online Speech Platforms
Wall Street Journal: Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Facebook
By Jon Kyl
In response to mounting criticism, Facebook asked me to conduct a survey to hear from conservatives directly…
Facebook placed no restrictions on how I could conduct the work. My team at the law firm Covington & Burling LLP began conducting interviews in May 2018. We cast a wide net to include as many aspects of conservatism as possible-from organizations focused on Christian values or protecting free expression to those focused on tax policy and small government. We identified individuals, groups and lawmakers who either use, study or could potentially regulate Facebook, and interviewed 133 of them. To encourage them to speak freely, we told interviewees we wouldn’t publish their identities…
We found conservatives’ concerns generally fall within the following six buckets:…
– Ad policies. In the wake of strong evidence from the U.S. intelligence community that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election with fake social-media accounts and inflammatory content, Facebook required advertisers to register as “political” organizations in order to post ads with a political or policy focus. Some conservative interviewees said this new rule jeopardized their status as nonprofits under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code…
Facebook has made several changes that are responsive to our findings, and we understand more are being considered. For now, changes include:…
– Ad labeling requirements. To avoid incorrectly branding ads as “political,” Facebook renamed its ads library and now refers instead to ads “about social issues, elections or politics.”…
We believe these and other measures described in our interim report are steps in the right direction. Yet these are complicated issues, some of which involve conflicting opinions even among conservatives. For that reason, restoring trust fully may remain an elusive goal.
By Nick Bastone
On Monday morning, President Donald Trump tweeted that a “report just out” showed that Google “manipulated” millions of votes in favor of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election.
“Google should be sued,” the president declared in his tweet, which said Google manipulated 2.6 million to 16 million votes in Clinton’s favor…
One of the figures Trump cited in his tweet, the 2.6 million votes, tied his comments to the recent testimony of the San Diego psychologist Robert Epstein, who appeared before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in July titled “Google and Censorship through Search Engines.”
In his testimony, Epstein – a self-proclaimed Democrat – said that at a “rock-bottom minimum” Google swayed 2.6 million votes in favor of Clinton because of biases in its search results…
But Epstein told CNN on Monday that Trump misrepresented his findings, saying that they didn’t prove Google actively “manipulated” millions of voters but rather that the bias he found in its search results was “sufficient to have shifted between 2.6 and 10.4 million votes” to Clinton…
“I’m not sure if this really applies to US elections where we have partisan politics going on and lots of other information that people have,” [Dr. Michael McDonald, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida] said. “You don’t need to look at the top of Google search results for your information about how you’re going to cast your vote for president.”…
“We absolutely have to worry about the social-media giants manipulating election-related information, whether intentionally or not,” [Rick Pildes, a New York University law professor] said. “But it’s massively irresponsible to claim to know anything this specific and concrete about what information moved millions of voters to cast votes as they did.”
Axios: Scoop: Inside Facebook’s new plan for news
By Mike Allen
Facebook executives tell Axios they’re hiring seasoned journalists to help curate a forthcoming “News Tab” that they hope will change how millions get news…
News Tab, a personal passion of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is also an effort by Facebook to develop a healthier relationship with publishers, many of whom have had their business models destroyed by social platforms.
Facebook will pay dozens of publishers to license content for News Tab, and news from many more will be included.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the largest partners will be paid millions of dollars a year.
News Tab will try to give credit to the outlet that broke a story, rather than an aggregator.
Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of news partnerships, said: “Our goal with the News tab is to provide a personalized, highly relevant experience … The majority of stories people will see will appear in the tab via algorithmic selection.”
A small team of journalists will pick stories for a Top News section.
Last year, Facebook killed Trending Topics, populated by contractors, after being accused of bias.
“We learned a lot from Trending,” a Facebook executive told me. “This is a completely different product.”
A News Tab test for 200,000 users will begin in October, with a rollout to all U.S. users early next year.
Candidates and Campaigns
Think Progress: America’s broken campaign finance system is a 2020 issue (Video)
Presidential elections are expensive. With the help of a broken campaign finance system, candidates are often forced to pander to the wealthy to raise funds for their campaigns. But the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls are starting to push back against the broken system. They’re taking stands against using corporate PAC money, opposing Super PACs, and making other moves to reduce the influence of money in politics. So how meaningful are these pledges and proposals? And what happens when the primary ends?
The States
Wall Street Journal: States to Move Forward With Antitrust Probe of Big Tech Firms
By John D. McKinnon and Brent Kendall
A group of states is preparing to move forward with a joint antitrust investigation of big technology companies, according to people familiar with the situation, adding another layer of scrutiny to an industry already under a federal spotlight.
The effort involving state attorneys general is expected to be formally launched as soon as next month, the people said. It is likely to focus on whether a handful of dominant technology platforms use their marketplace powers to stifle competition.
As part of the probe, the states are likely to issue civil investigative demands, similar to subpoenas, to tech companies and other businesses, the people said…
The specific number of states that might join the investigation couldn’t be learned, though one person familiar with the effort said up to 20 or more may participate…
The political makeup of the multistate group isn’t set. A bipartisan probe could give the investigation broader leverage and help insulate GOP officials from questions over whether their actions are motivated by political concerns, such as how online platforms treat conservative speech.
New Mexico Political Report: State agency says political parties can’t hold raffles
By Andy Lyman
On August 6, Gaming Control Special Agent Robert Zajac told Los Alamos Republican Party Chairman Bill McKerley in an email that the party did not qualify to hold a raffle.
“Upon a review of the Los Alamos GOP, it does not fall under the definition of a ‘qualified organization,'” Zajac wrote.
In an email days later, Zajac’s boss, Commander Terry McGaha responded to concerns from the Los Alamos GOP that they did indeed fall into the “qualified organization” category.
“Based on state law as a whole, it does not appear that a political organization or a political committee meets the statutory definition for being qualified as a civic or service organization,” McGaha wrote. “Since the Bingo and Raffle act has not included political organizations as a permissible category of nonprofit organizations that are permitted to conduct games of chance under the Bingo and Raffle Act, we must insist that you immediately cease and desist from further sales or activity with respect to the raffle you are currently conducting.”…
But, searches through campaign finance reports show numerous contributions to both local Democratic and Republican Party chapters for raffle tickets. [Richard Kottenstette, a spokesman for the Gaming Board] said he knows raffles like these happen often and even though he scours the internet for illegal gambling operations, he can’t find them all and likened the issue to drivers who drive over the speed limit.
“It’s really about who gets caught,” Kottenstette said.
In this case, he added, the Gaming Board received an anonymous tip on it’s tip line.
