Free Republic

Another reason for this is to intimidate. Most people don't like the thought of a federal investigation. And the FEC is all but required by law to investigate. Then some guy refuses to speak to the FEC, and so they issue a subpoena. People really don't like being subpoena'd by their government. In short, it's to scare people away, or make them decide it's not worth the trouble.

Yes, clearly the correct response would have been to adopt much more stringent restrictions, and make them effective immediately. Why do we have to put up with this "free speech" stuff? Exactly where in the Constitution is anyone given the right to say what they want about politicians?

Silence those people - I don't like what they're saying!

Right on. Bush would sew it up by dumping Cheney, and replacing him with McCain or Giuliani. Condoleeza Rice or Bill Owens would give the Dems fits, too. Or former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar, who would bring that state into play. Rick Santorum or Bill Frist, Tommy Thompson (picking up Wisconsin) - the list is endless. Cheney could and should remain a close advisor, but he doesn't need to be veep. But these guys would rather lose than be flexible, or admit that their team is anything less than perfect.

Right on. Bush would sew it up by dumping Cheney, and replacing him with McCain or Giuliani. Condoleeza Rice or Bill Owens would give the Dems fits, too. Or former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar, who would bring that state into play. Rick Santorum or Bill Frist, Tommy Thompson (picking up Wisconsin) - the list is endless. Cheney could and should remain a close advisor, but he doesn't need to be veep. But these guys would rather lose than be flexible, or admit that their team is anything less than perfect.

Foreign contributions are against the law, and this ruling does not change that.

So CFR is only a limitation on the political parties, unions, and the NRA, but the 527's get a pass?

The NRA has a big 527. This is good news all around. It doesn't change the 60 day pre election ad ban, but it frees all these groups - including the NRA - up to do lots of stuff.

They can be spent any time.

They won't restrict financing to Republican and Democratic parties. Rather, they will simply provide government money only to parties receiving in excess of X percent of the vote in the last election - some number around 20%. That will exclude all the minor parties. If necessary, they can include a clause allowing a minor party to collect money after the election if they win the required percent in the election. That should meet the constitutional requirements.

Right now, there are several states, and the federal government, that at provide for at least some government money to pay for party or candidate campaigns. Not one of these systems isn't heavily biased in favor of the two major parties.

Regulatory agencies are required to get public comment before putting a rule into effect, and allowing anything less than 30 days for comment creates an opening for legal challenge to the rule, unless it's an emergency type situation, i.e. national security, national disaster or the like. Then you've got to have time to address all the various comments - even if the agency ignores them (which most do), before enacting the rule they must explain why they are ignoring them.

Even if adopted in May, the rules won't take effect right away, because again, unless it is a national emergency of some kind, the rules can't take effect until at least 30 days after they are finally approved - the idea being that this gives Congress some time to repeal them if it really wants to.

So this is unlikely to have any effect before mid to late summer at the earliest.

I'll hold off on the celebration until these liars actually get it all the way through the Congress and signed by Bush. I don't trust any of them to actually stand up and support the full restoration of our 1st Amendment rights.

Well, these guys, i.e. the co-sponsors of this bill, aren't liars, and they're deadly serious about standing up for our rights. They fought McCain-Feingold all the way, most of them very vocally. I think that there is a reasonable chance they can get it muscled through the House. The problem is that the dynamic in the Senate is now reversed from what it was before - just 40 pro-"reform" Senators can block any repeal. And while this is the part of the bill most offensive to the First Amendment (not that the whole thing isn't), it's probably the most palatable part of the bill for your typical, non-ideological senator who doesn't like "these outside groups and their 30 second attack ads." That is to say, in some ways this is one of the tougher parts of the bill to repeal, because it helps incumbents.

Those ads were paid for by Moore's PAC, the Club for Growth. A PAC can still run ads within 60 days of an election. So can a wealthy individual. It's just incorporated groups like the NRA, Right to Life (and yes, Handgun Control Inc. and Planned Parenthood) that are silenced.

Smith is now a member of the Federal Election Commission.

Smith is now a member of the Federal Election Commission.

Does the Constitution authorize funding of presidential campaigns? I thought that laws about elections were up to the state legislatures, along with other reserved powers.

No, of course not. Nor does the Constitution authorize restrictions on campaign contributions and expenditures - even leaving aside the First Amendment problems with such restrictions. But Congress and the Supreme Court have long ignored restrictions on Congress's power except (and only in some cases) when something in the Bill of Rights or the 14th Amendment specifically limits them. The only power Congress has over elections is the power to determine the "time, place and manner" of holding elections - where, when, and how (i.e. single-member districts, maybe manner of voting, etc.)

But don't expect that to stop 'em.

Yeah, this is a pretty stupid article. So Karl Rove - a friend as well as employee - comes into the oval office and he and the Prez kibbutz for a few minutes on the day's news. A shocking abdication of responsibility - clearly the President should only be reading government memos and talking about how to raise taxes to take care of the deficit! Who knows - maybe they even talk about the Rangers off-season roster moves!

And, of course, if Bush went into a state without knowing much about the state's politics, they'd complain about how stupid and out of touch he is.

This is the type of reporting that takes the Monday and tries to make it sound conspiratorial or evil. It's silly, but evidence of the type of bias we have to put up with from the "paper of record" (LOL).

"Shays and Meehan are trying to overturn several commission rules telling political players how it will enforce the new law. Those include FEC rules on the law's ban on the use of corporate, union and unlimited contributions — known as soft money — in federal elections. Shays and Meehan are also challenging the commission's reading of restrictions on the use of corporate and union money for political ads and on coordination among campaigns, interest groups and political parties on election spending."

I'm confused. Aside from eroding our Constitutional rights, weren't these SUPPOSED to be among the issues that CFR was supposed to address?? And, if the FEC is upholding them, isn't that what they are supposed to do?

Shays and Meehan are complaining that the rules adopted by the FEC to implement the law are not restrictive enough. For example, the FEC passed a rule that the ban on ads "broadcast" within 60 days of an election didn't include the internet in the meaning of "broadcast." Shays and Meehan think it should. Or the law prohibits members of congress from soliciting soft money contributions. The FEC passed a rule saying it's OK for a congressman to be the featured guest at a soft money fundraiser so long as he doesn't ask for money - Shays and Meehan wanted to prohibit a lawmaker from even appearing at such an event.

I don't think most people realize just how far the 30/60 day ad ban goes, especially in presidential races. First, it applies only if the ad can be seen by a certain number of viewers - 50,000, I think - where the election is being held. But in many areas, an election in one state will trigger the ad ban in others. For example, you can't advertise on a St. Louis TV station and mention the president not only in the 30 days before the Missouri primary, but also in the 30 days before the Illinois primary, since your ad will reach Illinois. You can't advertise in Chicago markets 30 days before each of the Illinois, Wisconsin, or Indiana primaries (and for larger stations, maybe even Michigan and other states). You can't advertise in New York city 30 days before each of the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut primaries. Plus, the ban applies to the national conventions as well. So in some areas, you may not be allowed to criticize the president for 5 to 6 months of an election year - 2 months before the general election, 1 month before the convention, one month before your state's primary, and 1 or 2 months before neighboring states' primaries.

There will also be some of this spillover effect in congressional and senatorial races. For example, you can't criticize the "McCain-Feingold" bill on a Milwaukee 30 days before the Wisconsin primary or 60 days before the general election. But you also can't run ads on a Chicago station urging congressmen to repeal it, because those ads will also reach Wisconsin, where Feingold is up for reelection. I would guess that large Chicago radio or tv station reaches reaches 20 or more congressional districts, easy, not counting the ones in Wisconsin. So right there you've got probably 30 or more congressional districts blocked out.

Great article, well worth posting. It's interesting how many people want to refute it by saying something along the lines of, "yeah, well I know a guy who lost his job." Sort of like saying "guns don't make us safer, because I know a person who was shot;" or "socialized medicine isn't bad - I know a guy who got his broken arm treated in England with no problems at all;" or in 1996, "Bill Clinton can never be re-elected - none of my friends would ever vote for him."

The short version is this: place the ad as a candidate (legal) but pay for it through a corporation set up for that purpose (illegal)

Candidate campaign committees are not subject to the 30/60 day ban, because by definition they only raise and spend "hard" money, and anyone can run such an ad if it's paid for entirely with "hard" money. As I understand it, though, since the ban also applies to any corporation regardless of its source of funds, your plan is to make your campaign committee subject to the ban by incorporating your campaign committee. That's the only way to be a candidate and still trigger the 30/60 day ban. The problem is that if you incorporate your campaign committee, everything you spend would be illegal, whether it's on ads that mention another candidate within 30/60 days of an election or not, since by definition everything a candidate committee does is to influence a federal election, and under other provisions of the law corporations may not spend money for that purpose. So I still don't see how you get a challenge to the 30/60 day ban out of it. I doubt that the government would charge you with that at all, and certainly not only with that. They would charge you with violating the ban on corporate expenditures. What you get is a challenge to the statute limiting direct corporate campaigning, a law which has been on the books for nearly 100 years. Now, I don't necessarily agree with that law either. But challenging it will not, I think, draw the public support you want through such civil disobedience, in part because it will be obvious to everyone that if you simply did what every other candidate does - i.e. not incorporate your committee - you would be free from the restrictions you are complaining about.

And even if you got your challenge and won, what would you get? An as applied exemption through the courts that a candidate's own committee can be incorporated, and still be free from the 30/60 day ban, based solely on the grounds that it is all hard money paying for it anyway. Or maybe a legislative change to that effect. Neither such change would do a thing for the broader citizens groups affected by the ban.

I've pointed this out repeatedly on many threads. There is a provision in the pre-existing election law that a broadcaster MUST carry any ad presented and paid for by a federal candidate (President, Senate, House). That provision also says that the broadcaster CANNOT CENSOR the ad.

I think that you are talking about 47 USC Section 315, which provides that, "if a broadcaster accepts political ads from a candidate, he shall afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office in the use of such broadcast station; provided that such licensee shall have no power of censorship over the material broadcast under the provisions of this section...."

But here's your problem: you want to challenge the 30/60 day ban on citizens running ads that mention candidates. The 30/60 day ban doesn't apply to candidate-paid ads. It only applies to the rest of us. So if you are a candidate, you can't challenge the 30/60 day ban, because it doesn't apply to you. If you aren't a candidate, you can't take advantage of 47 USC 315 to force the station to air your ad, because that only applies to candidates.

I'm not trying to be a killjoy here. I like your spirit. But this needs to be done carefully.