In the News
CFIF: Former FEC Chairman Pans So-Called DISCLOSE Act of 2014
Bradley Smith, Founder of the Center for Competitive Politics and former Federal Elections Commission Chairman, discusses his recent testimony before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration regarding the DISCLOSE Act of 2014 and why the proposed excessive disclosure requirements can damage
Amending the First Amendment
National Review: Democrats’ First Amendment Problem: The constitutional amendment proposed in the Senate is a rare act of true extremism in American politics.
By George Will
Forty-eight members of the Democratic caucus attempted to do something never previously done — amend the Bill of Rights. They tried to radically shrink First Amendment protection of political speech. They evidently think extremism in defense of the political class’s convenience is no vice.
Forbes: Terrifying Senate Democrats Vote To Give Political Speech Less Protection Than Pornography
By Trevor Burrus
Yet, even despite the resolution’s poor political prospects, there is one word to best describe it: Terrifying. Even though this resolution can be properly classified as a political stunt, and even though some Senators (including some Republicans) only voted for it just to score political points, it is terrifying that this proposed amendment can even score political points.
If passed, the amendment would repeal the most important parts of the First Amendment, those that protect our right to advocate for political change. If passed, the amendment would create a world where pornography, videos depicting small animals being crushed, profanity-laden jackets, and Phelps family funeral protests all receive more protection from government interference than even the smallest amount of political speech.
By giving Congress and state governments essentially unlimited power to prohibit or regulate anyone who is spending money trying to “influence elections,” the Senate stooped to a level of governmental malfeasance previously reserved for the former Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. In fact, if Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro passed this same law, Americans would properly see it as a thinly veiled attempt to squelch the political rights of Venezuelans and to entrench himself in power.
Bloomberg: Senate Democrats Waste Their Time and Ours
By Jonathan Bernstein
So here’s my question for Senate Democrats and Majority Leader Harry Reid: How many desperately needed executive branch nominees could you have confirmed in the time you wasted demagoguing campaign finance with an irresponsible constitutional amendment that finally went down today?
I get it: it’s campaign season, Congress isn’t going to get anything substantive done on legislation and, apparently, focus groups are telling Democrats that attacking the Koch brothers is all that and a bag of chips. And if they had trotted out a go-nowhere bill for campaign grandstanding … well, that’s fine, both chambers and both parties do it. That’s the game, even though the Senate does have real work it could be doing. Should be doing.
Running out the party agenda for showboating floor votes? That’s business as usual, unappealing as it may be. Constitutional mischief, rushed to the floor with hardly any careful examination of potential consequences (intended or not) if the legislation actually passed? A constitutional amendment that modifies First Amendment speech as the courts have understood it for more than 40 years? A constitutional amendment that would have zero chance of passing under any circumstances? That’s a fraud, just as it was a fraud when Republicans peddled anti-flag-burning
constitutional amendments (and, in the heyday of Newtism, some half a dozen others). It smacks of the same post-policy dysfunction that I’ve knocked Republicans for. After all, when you’re pushing a constitutional amendment you know will never go anywhere, there’s no need to get the policy correct.
Washington Post: Longshot campaign finance bill falls short
By Matea Gold
An improbable effort by Senate Democrats to push forward a constitutional amendment that would have granted lawmakers more power to constrain campaign spending failed to move forward Thursday after several days of heated debate.
NY Times: An Amendment to Cut Political Cash
Editorial
The Supreme Court has said that’s fine. In several misguided rulings, it has declared that spending money on politics is a form of free speech, and is thus deserving of constitutional protection. Beginning with the Buckley decision in 1976, the court ended the limitations on independent political spending in the name of speech, and with the Citizens United decision in 2010, it opened the spending floodgates to corporations and unions.
Daily Caller: Teachers Union Wants To Amend Constitution To Limit EVERYONE ELSE’S Campaign Speech
By Eric Owens
“As we approach our midterm elections, millions of dollars of secret, unaccountable corporate money is being spent to influence voters — and politicians. Educators live the impact of the Citizens’ United decision every day as they fight the pro-privatization agenda of the Koch brothers, the Walton family and ALEC-member politicians,” she added.
Washington Post: Defeat of campaign finance amendment especially bruising for Bernie Sanders
By Ed O’Keefe
Failing to pass the constitutional amendment this week “means that the average American has one vote and the Koch Brothers have one vote plus the ability to put tens and tens of thousands of ads on the air. That is not democracy,” Sanders said.
IRS
Politico: Breitbart claims IRS harassment
By Jonathan Topaz
The president and CEO of Breitbart News Network said that the company would not be intimidated by the audit. “We stand ready to cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service on its audit of our company, but this will not deter us in the least from continuing our aggressive coverage of this president or his administration,” Larry Solov said in a statement.
Later Tuesday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wrote IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, saying, “The decision to audit Breitbart News Network, LLC appears highly questionable” in light of the IRS controversy, in which the service subjected several conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status to extra scrutiny.
“For the IRS to behave like a partisan political organization, targeting media organizations whose views differ from the president’s, would represent a gross abuse of power,” the Republican senator and tea party leader wrote in the letter.
Independent Groups
More Soft Money Hard Law: The Mayday PAC and Progressive Politics, Part II
By Bob Bauer
So it is legitimate to ask Professor Lessig how much collateral harm from the particular style of politics he has adopted progressives should be expected to accept. If public financing does not possess the curative powers Prof. Lessig claims for it, then the way this reform is brought, the politics of this reform movement, would matter a great deal.
In the case of Stark360, Prof. Lessig assigns little significance to the longer-term consequences of aligning Mayday with this organization. For one thing, he has lent it credibility or at least brought to it national attention—not many outside of New Hampshire had heard of it, until Mayday joined forces with it. Stark360 can transfer this fresh political capital to other initiatives progressives energetically oppose. This is politics, after all, and Professor Lessig and Mayday have helped to promote Stark360 overall.
Moreover, it will be little solace to progressives that Stark360, like Mayday, supported Jim Rubens for the United States Senate in New Hampshire. It supported Rubens for entirely different reasons and utterly opposed electing him for the reason motivating Mayday. So if Rubens had been elected, to whom in this alliance would he have owed his allegiance—the organization in the coalition that wants public financing reform, or the one very much against it? It seems this is quite a muddled politics that can only send the candidate Mayday is supporting a mixed message about what level of obligation he actually carries into office as a campaign finance supporter.
SCOTUS/Judiciary
Cleveland Plain Dealer: Federal court overturns Ohio law barring false campaign statements
By Sabrina Eaton
WASHINGTON, D. C. – An Ohio law that criminalizes campaign lies was found unconstitutional and the state of Ohio was permanently blocked from enforcing it under a Thursday court decision that quoted scheming politician Frank Underwood in the Netflix TV Series “House of Cards:”
“There’s no better way to overpower a trickle of doubt than with a flood of naked truth.”
U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black’s decision released late Thursday vindicated a four-year challenge to the law by the Susan B. Anthony List anti-abortion group, which was accused of violating it by a congressman whom it claimed had supported taxpayer funded abortion in voting for the Affordable Care Act.
“In short, the answer to false statements in politics is not to force silence, but to encourage truthful speech in response and to let the voters, not the Government, decide what the political truth is,” Black’s decision said. “Ohio’s false statements laws do not accomplish this.”
Wall Street Journal: Judging Wisconsin Prosecutors Judging Wisconsin Prosecutors
Editorial
Such respect for state courts is admirable, and “federalism” is our middle name. But the appellate judges are underestimating the harm this probe is doing to the rights of those who’ve been targeted. Judge Peterson quashed the prosecution’s subpoenas way back in February because there was no evidence of a crime, but Milwaukee Democratic District Attorney John Chisholm has appealed and the case is sitting, and sitting, and sitting at the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the targets sit in limbo, forced to spend money on lawyers to defend themselves rather than exercising their First Amendment right to advocate for causes. The Wisconsin Club for Growth’s political fundraising has been shut down and it hasn’t run a single ad in this election cycle. This is precisely why the Club and director Eric O’Keefe sought relief in federal court.
The breadth of this investigation, covering six legal proceedings, dawn raids and no apparent guardrails, is also a particular infringement on due process. As appeals judge William Bauer asked, even if this probe is closed, what’s to stop prosecutors from opening another one? If a DA can get kitchen-sink subpoenas based on vague concerns about campaign-finance “coordination,” regulators will have carte blanche to paw through the email of their political enemies.
Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
National Review: Bad Rep: Does the Democratic power broker Chaka Fattah run a crime family?
By Jillian Kay Melchior
An early front-runner, Fattah nonetheless found himself short of cash and sought to overturn Philadelphia’s $5,000-per-individual, $20,000-per-political-
committee campaign-contribution caps, but the state appeals court ruled against him. So, the plea memorandum says, Fattah “engaged in a scheme to violate the applicable Philadelphia campaign finance laws and contribution limits by secretly arranging for and receiving a $1 million campaign contribution in the form of a personal loan from long-time friend and political supporter, Person D.”
Koch Obsession
Washington Post: Ted Cruz accuses Harry Reid of ‘slander campaign’ against Koch brothers
By Matea Gold
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) on Tuesday called the repeated Democratic attackson the Koch brothers “an embarrassment to this institution,” lashing out at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid during a heated speech on the Senate floor.
“The majority leader has launched an unprecedented slander campaign against two private citizens,” Cruz said, describing Reid’s regular broadsides of Charles and David Koch “reprehensible.”
