Wisconsin John Doe
National Review: Wisconsin’s Shame: the Left Attempts to Discredit a John Doe Victim, but New Audiotape Tells Different Story
David French
Crucially, the tape omits the beginning of the raid, in which Archer reports that the police pounded on the door, held a battering ram, confronted her while she was completely undressed, and left her terrified that they would shoot her dogs. Instead, the tape begins at an unknown time after those events occurred, when an investigator apparently approaches the house with the scene secure, Archer’s dogs under control, and Archer and her partner (who’d been interrupted in the shower) fully dressed. However, at the 18:50 mark Archer does describe what had just happened, In other words, the tape doesn’t contradict Archer’s story of the initial entry, and, in fact, her contemporaneous statements corroborate the story she told NR.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: John Doe prosecutor asks state Supreme Court to reconsider ruling
Patrick Marley
A special prosecutor has asked Wisconsin’s high court to reconsider its decision to end an investigation into Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign, in a sign he is considering taking the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Special prosecutor Francis Schmitz also asked the state Supreme Court on Tuesday to stay its ruling last month ending the probe and requiring him to destroy evidence he collected in the investigation, according to online court records.
Such requests are typical for those contemplating appeals because litigants usually want to show higher courts they have tried to get any remedies they can from lower courts. The U.S. Supreme Court is the only place Schmitz can go for an appeal, and the nation’s high court takes only a tiny fraction of the cases presented to it.
Legal Newsline: Lutz was honest and noble whistleblower
Stuart Taylor, Jr.
Michael Lutz, a lawyer and highly decorated retired Milwaukee police officer who shot himself July 26 after a quarrel with his ex-wife, deserves to be remembered as a good, honest, even noble man who was traumatized after being wounded in the line of duty. His untimely death is a tragic loss for his two teenage daughters and for the pubic that he served. He was 44. I had the privilege of briefly knowing Lutz as the most honest, most and honorable whistleblower who has confided in me during my 38 years as a journalist. It began when he told me last September of a stunning conversation in March 2011 with his one-time friend John Chisholm, then and now the District Attorney of Milwaukee County.
Campaign Spending
Huffington Post: Half a Century of Campaign Spending, Dissected
Max Galka
The trend is increasing, but since these numbers do not account for inflation, or anything else, that doesn’t tell us very much.
Adjusting for inflation is not enough: It would be easy to stop here and conclude that campaign spending is higher than ever before. This conclusion would be incorrect. Here’s why.
Population growth and income growth matter too: Not only has the value of a dollar changed over time, the size of the population has also changed.
IRS
Wall Street Journal: Emails Show IRS’s Lois Lerner Had Choice Words for Conservatives
John D. McKinnon
Now a Senate report, released Wednesday, shows that the retired head of the IRS tax-exempt division had some other choice words for conservatives, according to emails cited by the investigators.
The emails show Ms. Lerner denouncing the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision — widely hailed by conservatives — as a death-knell of democracy; and bemoaning President Lincoln’s success in keeping the South in the Union.
Ms. Lerner also eyed a possible audit of a teen pregnancy charity that paid Bristol Palin, daughter of 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Washington Post: Two years after scandal, the IRS still struggling
Kelsey Snell
“If you went back to when Lois Lerner stood up and admitted [that political groups were being targeted], no one would say the IRS is better now than it was right before that moment,” said Jeremy Scott, a tax expert and editor of commentary at Tax Analysts. “Things have gotten worse, and it’s hard to see a way out of it.”
Republicans argued in their portion of the report that the investigation of the IRS’s actions tainted the agency’s credibility and that political bias there is pervasive. They called for legislative action to prevent the Treasury Department from finalizing regulations and guidance that would restrict the actions of political nonprofits. But not much is expected to change for the massive agency tasked with overseeing the entire federal revenue system.
The Federalist: Lois Lerner: Abraham Lincoln Should’ve Let The South Keep Slavery
Federalist Staff
In one e-mail she sent to a friend who was bashing Texas, Lerner responded that in her opinion, Abraham Lincoln was the worst of all American presidents.
“As you can see, the Lone Star State is just pathetic as far as political attitudes are concerned,” Lerner’s friend Mark Tornwall wrote in 2014.
“Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best,” Lerner responded, according to USA Today. “He should’ve let the south go. We really do seem to have 2 totally different mindsets.”
Free Speech
WHDH.com: Court strikes down law barring false campaign statements
Associated Press
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled Thursday in a case involving a state lawmaker from Cape Cod who sought a criminal complaint last year against the treasurer of a political action committee. At issue were flyers that Democratic Rep. Brian Mannal said accused him of putting the interests of sex offenders ahead of families.
The justices said the 1946 law was “inconsistent with the fundamental right of free speech” in the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights.
The court dismissed a criminal complaint against Melissa Lucas, the treasurer of the Jobs First PAC that was responsible for the flyers.
Boston Herald: Saving political speech
Editorial Staff
Writing for the court, Justice Robert J. Cordy noted, “As the facts of this case demonstrate, the danger of such breadth is that the statute may be manipulated easily into a tool for subverting its own justification, i.e., the fairness and freedom of the electoral process, through the chilling of core political speech.”
It further “chills the very exchange of ideas that gives meaning to our electoral system,” he wrote.
Sometimes that “exchange of ideas” isn’t pretty. Sometimes it’s more entertaining than it is enlightening. But the back and forth of political speech is fundamental to our way of life, and here in Massachusetts it is now on firmer footing.
Independent Groups
Washington Post: A wealthy oligarchy of donors is dominating the 2016 election
Editorial Board
The post-Watergate reforms sought to limit the corrosive power of money in politics, enhance transparency and encourage candidates to raise funds from a broad base of supporters. But new vehicles have become available that do the opposite, encouraging wealthy donors to make unlimited contributions, concentrating the power of the plutocracy and overwhelming the impact of small donors.
One of the most important of these channels is the super PAC, an organization that can accept unlimited contributions. Super PACs, which must disclose donors, are supposed to be independent of the candidates, but in fact most are not.
Shareholder Activism
Fortune: Do you know which candidates your company is funding?
Paul Hodgson
At the federal level, companies still can’t give to candidates directly from the corporate coffers but they can through a company PAC (political action committee). Those donations must be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission. However, contributions to social welfare organizations (known as C4s to the IRS) don’t have to be revealed.
Candidates and Campaigns
Bloomberg: Which Debate Foes Got Donald Trump’s Money?
Ben Brody
Trump… tried to turn the tables on his rivals, saying that his political donations enabled him to buy favors from politicians. “I give to everybody,” he said. “When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me and that’s a broken system.”
Asked what he got from Hillary Clinton, Trump — who has also given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation — said he asked the former first couple to come to his wedding, his third, to his current wife Melania Trump. The Clintons did in fact attend the lavish event at Trump’s Mar a Lago resort in 2005. Hillary Clinton was a senator from New York at the time.
CPI: In Republican debate, little talk about big money
Dave Levinthal
Seventeen Republican presidential candidates — 10 in a main event, seven in an undercard — gathered Thursday in Cleveland and largely avoided debating several weighty campaign finance issues that have already dominated Election 2016.
But there were a few exceptions amid their sparring over foreign policy, social issues, immigration and education.
The States
Helena Independent Record: Campaign finance rules released, upcoming public hearings
Alex Reedy
Major changes include a rule that requires all campaign donation reporting to be done electronically, so that it is instantly available to the public and other candidates.
The new rules also require candidates and committees to disclose campaign contributions 35 days before election day and again 12 days before election day. Previous rules only required reporting 12 days before election day.
Groups or parties that place the image or name of a candidate in front of the public within 90 days of election day are going to have to publicly report those expenses.
