Posted on 01/24/2006 2:59:58 PM PST by neverdem
The Supreme Court yesterday overturned a lower court's ruling that had barred an anti-abortion group from running television advertisements mentioning a specific senator during his 2004 re-election campaign.
At issue is a challenge by Wisconsin Right to Life (WRTL) to ad limits set by the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform law. The law bans corporate or union money from paying for ads that identify candidates for federal office by name two months before Election Day.
In what some court observers saw as a move to sidestep a major review of the law until the pending nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the high court is resolved, the justices delivered a short, unsigned opinion, sending the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for further review.
"I think they tried to make a narrow ruling while the court's membership was intact, thereby precluding the need for rehearing when Alito joins the court," said Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution.
WRTL argues the law does not clearly define what ads are restricted during the two-month blackout period before elections. Specifically, the group sought to have the law declared unconstitutional when applied to its own 2004 ads against Sen. Russell D. Feingold, Wisconsin Democrat, who at the time was running for re-election.
WRTL argued its television ads should be immune because they did not directly call on voters not to vote for Mr. Feingold, but instead served as "grass-roots lobbying" ads urging people to phone senators and ask them to oppose the filibustering of Bush administration judicial selections.
The U.S. appeals court disagreed, citing a 2003 Supreme Court ruling, which upheld the McCain-Feingold law. In remanding the case yesterday, the justices said the...
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Does it also ban individual or group funded ads?
Gutless. Do what you're paid for, wimps. Don't put it all on Alito. Make O'Connor retire amid the hellstorm she deserves for her front-and-center role in pissing on the Constitution.
"We therefore vacate the judgment and remand the case for the District Court to consider the merits of WRTL’s as-applied challenge in the first instance."
Editors were over-eager to pull the trigger on their "court waiting on Alito" stories IMHO.
The McCain Feingold law is clearly unconstitutional. The first time it came up, SCOTUS refused to rule. Now it looks as if they are moving in a more conserservative direction.
It's absolutely unconscionable that only accredited news agencies should be allowed to talk about politics in the months before an election.
Regulating speech just like the Fairness Doctrine did.
What's an accredited news agency? I know of accredited 'spin' agencies.
Perhaps "self-annointed" would be a better term.
It's what they were trying to explain to Drudge at that famous confrontation. "We're the pros. You're a stupid amateur. So get lost." Or words to that effect.
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