mccain-feingold
Posted at 12:05pm on Jun. 26, 2008 Supreme Court Quotes of the Day, Non-Heller Edition (Or: A Good Day For The First Amendment, Too)
By Dan McLaughlin
Justice Alito's opinion this morning in Davis v. FEC won't get as much attention as Heller, and breaks a lot less new ground, simply holding that Congress can't set up one set of contribution-and-expenditure campaign finance rules for everyone and then a second set of rules giving an unequal advantage intended to 'level the playing field' for candidates whose opponents are able to self-finance all or part of their campaigns (the so-called "Millionaires' Amendment," one of the more egregiously incumbent-protective features of McCain-Feingold). The Court's 5-4 majority (you can guess the lineup) didn't tinker with any of the existing and misguided structure of campaign finance regulation that's existed since the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo opinion, as Justice Alito was careful to note that the parties had not asked the Court to reconsider Buckley. Instead, the Court rather pointedly told Congress that if it had made a mess of campaign finance regulation, that's Congress' problem, not the Court's.
Read on . . .
Posted in bcra | campaign finance reform | Justice Alito | Law | mccain-feingold — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 7:39pm on Apr. 21, 2008 Kinda Like That "Parallel Public Financing System"
By Dan McLaughlin
The NY Times on the "Millionaires' Amendment" case:
On Tuesday the Supreme Court will hear a legal challenge to the so-called millionaires’ amendment. It should uphold Congress’s modest effort to help candidates who rely on outside contributions to get their messages out to the voters.
Posted in bcra | mccain-feingold | Sigh. I Guess I'm For McCain. | The Courts | The New York Times — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 2:38pm on Feb. 27, 2008 Campaign Finance Follies
By Dan McLaughlin
I just have to say, in light of the latest campaign finance flap between McCain and Obama that Brad has written about so eloquently, it just underlines a point I made previously:
Back in the 90s, both Newt Gingrich and Al Gore (and they weren't the only ones, witness Tom DeLay's legal difficulties) got in trouble for rather technical campaign finance violations. In both cases their supporters argued that (1) such technical violations couldn't possibly be grounds for prosecuting such important elected officials, (2) they could not have known they were breaking the rule, there was no controlling legal authority, and (3) those laws hadn't been enforced in that way in the past (in Gore's case an 1886 statute nobody'd ever been prosecuted under). Regardless of the merits of the two cases, it seemed to me then and still does that if the laws are vague or technical enough, or the penalties disproportionate enough, that you would blanch at throwing an important person you support in the slammer for breaking them, then they have no business on the books.
One hopes, perhaps in vain, that both Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama will absorb this lesson for lawmaking in the future, on this and other issues.
Posted at 10:04am on Feb. 25, 2008 Senator McCain, the DNC Complaint, and the Matching Funds Flap - All You Need to Know
By Brad Smith
Today the DNC announced it will file a complaint against Senator McCain for violating federal campaign finance law. Everything you need to know is in this post at the Center for Competitive Politics website, recently updated to account for developments.
Bottom line lessons: 1) Legal or not, Senator McCain will not abide by spending limits; and more importantly, 2) tax financing of campaigns is one bad idea.
Posted at 2:41pm on Feb. 15, 2008 Don't like Campaign Finance "Reform?" - Gotta Read This
"No Constitutionally Adequate Justification"
By Brad Smith
Yesterday a group called SpeechNow.org, represented by attorneys from the Center for Competitive Politics and the Institute for Justice, sued the Federal Election Commission in what one prominent campaign finance lawyer calls, "one of the more important and consequential [suits against campaign finance laws] in a long time," and which one supporter of broad campaign speech restrictions admitted is, "pretty brilliant."
There is much more to this suit than I have time to delve into here, but the basic claim is simple - if George Soros and other wealthy millionaires can Constitutionally spend whatever they want on politics, than under the Constitution groups of citizens banding together should also be able to spend whatever they want.
This page has a cornucopia of links to the pleadings in the case, a case "backgrounder," and tons of media links. If you care about free speech in America, check it out.
Note that I am one of the counsel for SpeechNow.org and am Chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics.
Posted in FEC | FEC | First Amendment | mccain-feingold — Comments (7)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:43am on Jan. 17, 2008 Trip Down Memory Lane: John McCain & the Bush Tax Cuts
By Martin A. Knight
Over the past few days, many McCain supporters have regaled us with their own unique remembrances of John McCain's opposition to President Bush's tax cuts from the campaign in 2000 and afterwards, after Bush was inaugurated. According to them, McCain never used the Democrats' Tax Cuts for the Rich™ class warfare rhetoric to justify his opposition and instead opposed them because there were no attendant spending cuts to go with it.
Posted in Archived | bipartisanship | bush tax cuts | gang of 14 | McCain | mccain-edwards | mccain-feingold | mccain-kennedy — Comments (72) / Email this page » / Read More »
