Posted on 05/26/2014 9:00:34 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Dinesh D’Souza faces more than a year in prison for giving away his money. Guilt lies with the law and not the lawbreaker here.
The conservative author pled guilty to violating campaign finance laws, which is another way of saying he opened up a lemonade stand without a license or ripped the tag off a mattress. The case stems from D’Souza’s 2012 donations through intermediaries to a friend’s senatorial campaign. Congress, made up of incumbents, has placed restrictions of dubious constitutionality on the amount individuals can legally donate to candidates. They haven’t, tellingly, placed any such limits on what they can legally raise or spend on campaigns.
The candidate D’Souza donated to, Wendy Long, lost the fundraising race 40 to 1 and the spending race 15 to 1 to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. She lost the vote race by a mere 3 to 1 margin.
One could say D’Souza foolishly wasted his money on a lost cause. But does his unwise unselfishness really make him a criminal deserving of the penitentiary?
The guilty party, to his credit, admits the facts presented against him. The pursuing party, to their discredit, never explained why they seized on D’Souza’s two illicit donations when much grander transgressions of campaign finance laws by Harry Reid, the Obama campaign, and others have gone unnoticed by federal prosecutors.
D’Souza violated the law. The law violates his rights.
D’Souza has made a few missteps in recent years. A personal scandal, dredged up by men no longer on the payroll of the school he led, forced him from his six-figure job as president of King’s College. Hell hath no fury like an employee scorched.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Boom!
And the law reveals itself to be an ass.
I don’t even think what he did was wrong. Bloomberg spent millions of his own money on various campaigns, including his own and various gun control efforts across the land. (And, I add happily, on unsuccessful efforts to get some recall elections in Colorado to fail.) But somehow those millions are legal, but the little people’s tens of thousands aren’t. Something is obviously wrong in the law, there. Either the millions should also be illegal, or the thousands should be legal. The latter is closer to the idea of limited government.
Dinesh is a good boy but he seems to have stepped in it.
Still doesn’t make any sense, I see no connection!
As far as music i totally gave it up when I was 10 and played in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchastra and my mother let me quit music lessons.
Never picked up an instrument after that day.
Don’t listen to it and have never bought any and never will!!!
Leave legal theory to those who understand it.
You just keep the kids off your damn lawn. That's enough for your grasp of the law.
Any how the first link was a muckup.
The second one is the one I wished to post
Frankly, I'm glad your type of "Conservative" is dying out. I don't give a damn anymore when thousands of regulations are made each year and its impossible for anyone who isn't an autistic savant to know them all.
Dinesh stepped in it.
Sad tale but there it is.
You stumbled into the wrong forum, Clayton. You must have been heading down to the libunderground site.
Just go down the toilet and take a left. Just follow your nose, Clayton. You’ll be in familiar territory in no time.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, so I tend to agree with you. This is what the left does—make excuses by pointing out something the other side does or did. It gets very old.
The other upsetting thing about this is:How could D’Souza have been so stupid?
He works full time in the business of politics.
He knew exactly what the law was.
Even worse, he suborned two friends to help him break the law.
He is also a hypocrite.
If a Democrat had done this, D’Souza would have exposed that person and demanded his prosecution.
Obama is a personality cult totalitarian.
***
No, Obamugabe is merely the puppet. President Valerie pulls the strings, and whoever pulls her strings is the true totalitarian.
You are both correct about the fact that he did violate the law. The law is being selectively enforced in order to target him, but he did knowingly break it.
When an unconstitutional “law” is put on the books, selective enforcement follows as the night the day. And all “Campaign Finance Reform” legislation is patently unconstitutional.Everyone understand that the First Amendment precludes the government from requiring you to obtain a license to speak or to print. No one thinks that The New York Times can be censored by the government. But if the press is free, you have a right to spend your own legally acquired money - to buy a printing press. And, having done so, to be on an equal footing before the law with The New York Times. Now, The New York Times is a corporation. Therefore if you incorporate your printing press business that doesn’t affect your rights to be on an equal footing before the law with The New York Times.
The fact is that the First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
is not predicated on the assumption that “the press” is objective or nonpartisan or even non-sectarian. The saying is that in polite company one does not discuss politics or religion - but the First Amendment leaps directly into that thicket by saying that Congress has no business attempting to prevent the people from doing exactly that - at the top of their voices.The New York Times gets paid by readers, but that money primarily goes to the distribution of the physical paper. Any newspaper makes its money by selling advertising, which is to say, by promoting claims and saying things which it would not do for free. There is no case, therefore, that the newspaper’s money is cleaner than the money you might use to buy and operate a press. You and The New York Times are on an equal footing, morally and legally. Until “Campaign Finance Reform” legislation presumes to say that you have no right to spend all the money you want on promoting any candidates (and suggesting that it would be foolish to vote for others), while implicitly or explicitly carving out an exemption for the establishment press.
Nobody thinks that a newspaper can tell every known truth - and yet, “Half the truth may be a great lie.” Consequently there is no real difficulty for the establishment press - especially acting in concert - to denigrate and disparage candidates - or to “position” them favorably. The ineluctable conclusion is that a “free press” requires actual freedom. And that “no law” does not mean just a little law. So if The New York Times can be a corporation, and if indeed all the “presses” listed in McCain-Feingold can belong to a single organization - as I submit that all of them belong to the Associated Press - there is no constitutional case to be made against you and I acting in concert to promote candidates congenial to us both. Nor any case to be made for limiting to amount of your money, or mine, which we may spend on that project. Whether we ask, “Mother, may I” of the government first, or not.
The Federal Election Commission is unconstitutional, root and branch, and must be voided by SCOTUS. And the Federal Communication Commission is scarcely better suited to a free republic. What business does the government have deciding what is “broadcasting in the public interest” and what is not???? The Fairness Doctrine is a planted axiom of granting the government control over what it pleases the government to call the “public” airwaves. And “fairness” is in the eye of the beholder - and nowhere in the Constitution.
The law is about who is to be licensed vs. rights.
D’nesh was not into a business as much as those bureaucrats accessories to treachery are into the business of keeping their pay checks. D’nesh did not pay for his movie to be promoted by said political party he supported.
This was not a Union props to a candidate ... d’nesh movie and works stand on their own legs. No law was violated because no license were really required. This was a simple exercise of a right.
Indeed... The law is about who is to be licensed vs. rights.
D’nesh was not into a business as much as those bureaucrats accessories to treachery are into the business of keeping their pay checks. D’nesh did not pay for his movie to be promoted by said political party he supported.
This was not a Union props to a candidate ... d’nesh movie and works stand on their own legs. No law was violated because no license were really required. This was a simple exercise of a right
You’re absolutely right, as long as you’re talking about the Constitution as it relates to the rights of non-franchised men and women. But what is going on here is the application of the Constitution to corporate entities via the 14th Amendment. And that swaps the relationship of government and governed 180 degrees. Instead of a people of rights granting limited powers to the government, the government grants limited privileges to corporate entities. And the rules by which privileges are granted follow one single requirement - that they benefit the government.
And one of the benefits for the government is to not make this distinction clear, and allow the use of the term “rights” to mean privileges when used in a corporate appliation. And from that, as they say, the wool is pulled.
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