Posted on 03/21/2002 8:01:13 PM PST by StopDemocratsDotCom
"This is a mission to preserve the fundamental constitutional freedom of all Americans to fully participate in our democracy," said McConnell, R-Ky.
The Senate on Wednesday passed and sent to President Bush the most far-reaching campaign finance legislation in the past quarter-century. It bans the hundreds of millions of dollars in unregulated "soft money" that corporations, unions and individuals give the national political parties and restricts in the final days before an election the use of soft money for "issue ads" that name a candidate, often with the purpose of attacking him.
Bush said the bill is "flawed," but promised to sign it because he said it improves the system overall.
McConnell said opponents plan to file their lawsuit before a three-judge panel in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., with the expectation that it would move quickly to the Supreme Court.
"These are perilous waters into which the Republic has now sailed," Starr said at a news conference with McConnell. "The questions are grave, the questions are serious. It is now time for the courts to speak authoritatively to what the Congress has chosen to do."
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who sponsored the campaign finance bill in the Senate with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he believes the measure protects First Amendment rights. He said they will assemble their own legal team, and he has Attorney General John Ashcroft's assurance that the Justice Department would defend the statute's constitutionality.
The legality of campaign finance legislation has been an issue since the last effort to limit campaign spending in 1974. In 1976, in Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could set limits on contributions, but that limits on spending violated free speech rights.
McConnell and his team said they would focus on a provision that bars the use of soft money 30 days before a primary or 60 days before a general election for "issue ads" that refer directly to a candidate.
Supporters of the bill say anyone can run issue ads as long as they use highly regulated and limited contributions "hard money." Under the legislation, the most that an individual can contribute in hard money to a candidate per election would be $2,000, double the current ceiling.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said he voted for the issue ad provision because "we think it's a very important contribution to the overall new framework we're trying to create with this bill."
But he added there is a clause in the legislation to ensure that the rest of the bill is unaffected if one part of it is struck down in the courts.
The bill would take effect Nov. 6, the day after this year's congressional elections. McConnell said they would like to see action on their challenge before then.
Other members of McConnell's legal team are: James Bopp, general counsel for the James Madison Center for Free Speech; Bobby Burchfield, an election lawyer who was involved in the Buckley v. Valeo case; Washington election lawyer Jan Baran; and Kathleen Sullivan, dean of the Stanford University Law School.
He said other corporations, unions and interest groups that oppose the bill are also expected to join him as plaintiffs.
___
The bill is H.R. 3256.
I'm not sure what disappoints me more .. the fact that Bush appears ready to sign this steaming pile of garbage or that Ashcroft will run intereference for him, if the media can be believed.
The problem is that Bush will sign it. Once the law has been signed, the executive branch, i.e., the DOJ, is bound to make any non-frivolous argument to stop the Court from overturning it. Ashcroft is doing his job. Bush, on the other hand, should veto the bill and is not obeying his oath of office.
This case calls for a tiger to defend our freedoms, especially our First Amendment rights. We get namby pamby Ken Starr. When DC sees how easily this goes down in flames, the Second Amendment is next.
I think he doesn't have a choice
Functions of the Office of the Solicitor General
The major function of the Solicitor General's Office is to supervise and conduct government litigation in the United States Supreme Court. Virtually all such litigation is channeled through the Office of the Solicitor General and is actively conducted by the Office. The United States is involved in about two-thirds of all the cases the U.S. Supreme Court decides on the merits each year.
The Solicitor General determines the cases in which Supreme Court review will be sought by the government and the positions the government will take before the Court. The Office's staff attorneys participate in preparing the petitions, briefs, and other papers filed by the government in its Supreme Court litigation. The Solicitor General personally assigns the oral argument of government cases in the Supreme Court. Those cases not argued by the Solicitor General personally are assigned either to an attorney in the Office or to another government attorney. The vast majority of government cases are argued by the Solicitor General or by one of the Office's other attorneys.
Another function of the Office is to review all cases decided adversely to the government in the lower courts to determine whether they should be appealed and, if so, what position should be taken. The Solicitor General also determines whether the government will participate as an amicus curiae, or intervene, in cases in any appellate court.
Kenneth Starr to lead legal team challenging campaign finance legislation
Associated Press | 3-21-02 | JIM ABRAMS
Posted on 3/21/02 4:29 PM Central by Oldeconomybuyer
Yep, you can count on that. But the real trick will be how do you disarm all gun owners at once? Once the word is out, hopefully the non-sheeple will revolt.
Could they have chosen a more incompetent person to 'lead' this? We all saw his track record with the Klinton's. I'm not impressed, and a little concerned.
The fix is in folks. Why else would they hire a loser?
Of course Ashcroft has a choice. He could resign.
CLUE: It's the law.
ASHINGTON, March 21 — Kenneth W. Starr, the former independent counsel whose investigation led to President Bill Clinton's impeachment, and Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment lawyer who took on the Nixon administration, will lead the legal challenge to the campaign finance law just passed by Congress.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who plans to be the lead plaintiff in the case, announced at a news conference today that the two men would head a group of lawyers representing him in the challenge. The group also includes experts in election and campaign law as well as Kathleen M. Sullivan, the dean of Stanford Law School.
"This is a mission to preserve the fundamental constitutional freedom of all Americans to fully participate in our democracy," said Mr. McConnell, a longtime opponent of the effort to limit money in politics.
The lawyers arrayed at Mr. McConnell's side seemed slightly amused at what they acknowledged to be an odd ideological alliance.
Mr. Abrams, who was co-counsel for The New York Times when the Nixon administration tried to stop the newspaper from publishing excerpts of the Pentagon papers, said, "I'm delighted to be here in rather unaccustomed company."
Citing the adage that politics makes strange bedfellows, he added, "There are no strange bedfellows in defense of the First Amendment."
Mr. Starr called the challenge to the finance measure "a great constitutional issue, one of the most important of the past generation."
Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who is a chief sponsor of the measure, said, "They are going to need all the help they can get." He added, "We will be legally equipped to respond."
Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the majority leader and a strong supporter of the measure, acknowledged that he could not predict what the courts would do.
"We're making our best effort to pass a law that is constitutionally viable," Mr. Daschle said.
The campaign finance overhaul approved by the Senate on Wednesday after a seven-year struggle is the most comprehensive change in the campaign finance law since the Watergate era. President Bush said that the measure presented some "legitimate constitutional questions" but that he would still sign it into law.
The heart of the bill is a ban on the large unlimited contributions to the national political parties known as soft money. It would also prevent outside groups from using soft money to pay for broadcast commercials that are thinly disguised campaign commercials 60 days before an election and 30 days before a primary.
The measure, for the first time since 1974, loosens the caps on more strictly regulated campaign contributions known as hard money. For example, individuals would be allowed to contribute $2,000 per election to a federal candidate instead of the current $1,000 limit. The 1974 campaign law came under scrutiny by the Supreme Court in a case brought by a diverse group of challengers. The court left standing the limits on contributions to individual candidates but held mandatory spending limits unconstitutional.
Anticipating a new court battle, Congress authorized an expedited court review with any challenge heard first by a three-judge federal panel in the District of Columbia Circuit, with appeals directly to the Supreme Court. Although the law will not take effect until the day after the November elections, the lawyers said they believed they would have standing to begin the challenge as soon as President Bush signed the bill.
The lawyers today turned much of their fire on the effort to restrict broadcast commercials by outside groups in the periods before elections if they mention federal candidates. Mr. Abrams called this a "threat to core First Amendment values" and asked if it served the public to "limit speech at the time it matters most" before elections.
Mr. Starr also said principles of federalism were raised because the bill would regulate political behavior on both the state and local level as well as the national level.
Mr. McConnell said the one part of the bill he would not challenge was the increase in limits on hard money donations. The other lawyers who will be working for Mr. McConnell are James Bopp Jr., who has argued that limiting campaign donations violates the First Amendment; Jan Baran, a Washington election lawyer; and Bobby R. Burchfield, who heads the litigation group at Covington & Burling, a firm that represented the challengers to the 1974 campaign regulations.
Supporters of the measure are putting together their legal team, too, and say it will include among others Seth Waxman, a solicitor general in the Clinton administration, and Bert Neuborne, former legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union.
More than a dozen conservatives in the House said in a statement today that they were "deeply disappointed" that Mr. Bush had decided to sign the bill.
Here's an interesting factoid: I heard on Fox that Floyd Abrams will be working with Starr.
President Bush told the GOP he wasn't going to do THEIR work for them. Why are THEY disappointed?
He has lots of discretion. In fact I believe Bush can direct him not to prosecute anyone.
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