In the News
National Review: Does Religious Speech Threaten Democracy?
By Zac Morgan
Section 2 allows Congress to explicitly ban corporations or other associations from spending money to influence elections — but Lord only knows what “influencing elections” actually means. (To give you an idea, a surprising number of states, even with the protections of the current First Amendment, seem to believe it includes saying the name of a candidate a couple of months before an election, regardless of context.) Many places of worship incorporate as nonprofit entities. Worse, section 3 explicitly puts the religion clauses up for grabs.
Do you know of any churches, mosques, or synagogues that discuss current events? Maybe they sometimes discuss the morality of war? Maybe, sometimes, candidates running for office are associated with a current war? Congratulations! A message from your priest, imam, or rabbi might actually be — to use a campaign-finance term — the “functional equivalent” of virtually any presidential campaign conducted in the 21st century. And because religious organizations are often incorporated, I certainly hope that the messages being delivered advance “democratic self-governance.”
Lest you think this is crazy, the state of Montana did go after a church for allegedly violating campaign-finance laws just a few years ago. The church in question was an “incorporated religious institution” whose pastor aired a simulcast of an anti-same-sex-marriage religious broadcast during the same time he allowed a member of his church to “place[] roughly twenty copies” of an anti-same-sex-marriage petition in the church’s foyer.
The Hill: Get the IRS out of the speech-police business
By Luke Wachob
Take some debunked IRS talking points. Add misleading context. Now subtract any mention of the role played by politicians and groups advocating for greater regulation of political speech. This recipe for disaster is Lisa Gilbert’s recent Hill article on the IRS scandal, and it begs for correction.
The IRS scandal, for those needing a reminder, concerns the targeting of conservative and tea-party applications for non-profit tax status under section 501(c)(4). These groups had their applications delayed for months or longer and faced inappropriate questioning about their members and political beliefs.
Gilbert begins her depiction of the conditions leading to the scandal by claiming that the IRS faced a “vast increase in workload.” This IRS talking point has been debunked by no less an authority than the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. While applications for 501(c)(4) status have increased in recent years, that increase occurred in 2011 and 2012, after the start of targeting. Emails between IRS staff show that the targeting of conservative groups began by at least March 2010, a year in which the IRS actually received fewer applications for (c)(4) status than it had in 2009.
CCP
Amending the First Amendment: Empowering politicians to ban books and movies (Video)
Amending the First Amendment
USA Today: When politics mean more than the Constitution
By Patrick Maines
It came as no surprise when, last June, Tom Udall (D-NM) and 44 other U.S. Senators, all Democrats with two Independents, proposed a campaign finance amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ever since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, in 2010, Democrats and their surrogates in the media and allied advocacy groups, worried that the case would work to their political disadvantage, have been on a mission to find some way around it.
So what’s the amendment all about? S.J. Resolution 19, as it’s called, proposes to allow Congress to regulate contributions to candidates for federal office, and to extend similar power to the states in elections for state office.
Language in the joint resolution avers that it would amend the Constitution “relating to contributions and expenditures intended to affect elections.” But as Floyd Abrams, easily the most distinguished First Amendment expert of our time, said incongressional testimony, the amendment would have been more revealing and accurate if it said that “it relates to limiting speech intended to affect elections.”
Fox News: Senate Judiciary Committee backs constitutional amendment on campaign finance
Members of the Democratic-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday sent to their colleagues a long-shot proposed change to the Constitution that would rein in political spending.
Democrats who lead the Judiciary Committee moved forward with an effort to limit deep-pocketed political campaign donors’ influence. Republicans called the proposal a political stunt aimed at rallying Democrats during this election year and a ploy to gin up populist outrage against wealthy donors who tend to side with conservatives.
“How can I compete if someone is to put in $1 billion?” asked Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
Republicans on the panel criticized the proposal as overly broad and punitive against conservatives.
IRS
Wall Street Journal: Judging the IRS
Editorial
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on Thursday ordered the IRS to provide for him, within a month, a sworn declaration explaining how the agency came to lose two years’ worth of email belonging to former Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner. Judge Sullivan also assigned a federal magistrate, John Facciola, to conduct his own query into whether Ms. Lerner’s emails might be obtained by other means. The order suggested that Judge Sullivan was far from satisfied with the IRS’s cursory explanations of crashed hard drives and irretrievable information.
On Friday a second federal judge, Reggie B. Walton, issued another order, demanding the IRS provide under oath an affidavit outlining what happened to Ms. Lerner’s hard drive, the qualifications of anybody who attempted to retrieve her lost email, and the status of the IRS Inspector General’s investigation into these issues. Judge Walton gave the IRS one week to respond.
Now we’re getting somewhere. The IRS has slow-rolled document production for Congress and then it waited two months to tell its legislative overseers that Ms. Lerner’s emails had vanished. The Justice Department and FBI, meanwhile, have leaked to the press that their probes have found nothing wrong.
AP: Second federal judge wants info on lost IRS emails
WASHINGTON — A second federal judge has ordered the IRS to provide information about lost emails from a central figure in the agency’s tea party controversy.
U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said Friday he wants to know whatever became of Lois Lerner’s computer hard drive. IRS officials say Lerner’s computer crashed in 2011, destroying an untold number of emails.
Time: IRS to Rubber-Stamp Tax-Exempt Status for Most Charities After Scandal
By Massimo Calabresi
Amid ongoing controversy over its scrutiny of nonprofits, the Internal Revenue Service has decided it will no longer screen approximately 80% of the organizations seeking tax-exempt charitable status each year, a change that will ease the creation of small charities while doing away with a review intended to counter fraud and prevent political and other noncharitable groups from misusing the tax code.
As of July 1, any group that pays a $400 fee and declares on a three-page online form that it has annual income of less than $50,000, total assets of less than $250,000 and is in compliance with the tax-code requirements of a charity will automatically be allowed to accept donations that are tax-deductible for the donors. Previously the groups had to fill out a detailed 26-page form, submit multiple supporting documents and provide a narrative description of their intended activities.
Independent Groups
Boston Globe: Union fights to strip reporting provision from campaign finance reform bill
By Frank Phillips
The Massachusetts Teachers Association, the state’s largest union, is lobbying the state Senate’s Democratic leadership to strip a provision in a campaign finance reform bill that targets the influence of super PACs.
The union and its allies are in a behind-the-scenes struggle with the bill’s Senate supporters and campaign finance reform advocates, as labor leaders try to remove language that would require political action committees to disclose the top five donors in their television ads, say two sources with knowledge of the negotiations.
The teachers association, which has spent millions of dollars trying to influence statewide elections, almost always for Democrats, wants to replace that provision with one stipulating that the names of donors be listed only on the PAC’s website, the sources said.
Disclosure
CPI: Is this super PAC subverting disclosure rules?
By Michael Beckel
Super PACs are supposed to disclose the identities of their donors.
Except when they don’t, exactly.
Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
The State: SC politics: Federal court tosses out SC ban on robo-calls
A U.S. District Court in Greenville has ruled that an S.C. law that bans political robo-calls is unconstitutional.
The order, signed by U.S. District Court Judge Michelle Childs June 10, is part of an ongoing lawsuit that Robert Cahaly, a former campaign consultant to ex-Lt. Gov. Ken Ard, filed after he was arrested in 2010 for robo-calls, or automated phone calls, traced to him.
After the charges against Cahaly were dismissed, he filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming his First Amendment rights were violated.
Breitbart: FUNDRAISERS AT COCHRAN AIDE’S HOUSE MAY HAVE BEEN ILLEGAL, LAWYER SAYS
By Matthew Boyle
Sen. Thad Cochran’s longtime executive assistant, Kay Webber, frequently rents the first floor of the stately Capitol Hill house she owns as a venue for fundraisers, including to Cochran’s campaign.
But a high-profile conservative attorney and a leading congressional watchdog say the fact Webber works for Cochran, and that Cochran lives in the house, present a series of thorny legal questions that could land the two in hot water.
“Because she is his staffer and because he lives at the same address as she does and where the events were held, then there are laws and rules that do govern what happens and how things can and cannot be paid for – and clearly these people have made no attempt to sort that out to be sure not to violate anything,” said Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer at Foley and Lardner who is representing the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, said.
Boston Globe: Democratic super PAC focused on House reserves TV time
By Joshua Miller
A political action committee focused on boosting Democrats in the US House of Representatives has reserved more than $1.4 million in television time in the Boston media market, adding to the expected deluge of political ads focused on congressional elections in the weeks before the November election.
House Majority PAC announced today it had added money to TV reservations across the country including an additional $964,000 in the Boston media market, which covers a broad swath of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. That brings its total reservation in the Boston-area alone to more than $1.4 million.
NY Times: Dirty Tricks, Tea Party Suicide and Rising Mississippi Anger
By Campbell Robertson
JACKSON, Miss. — Mark Mayfield, one of the founders of the Mississippi Tea Party, had lost his political appetite.
He stayed away from Facebook and stopped writing letters to the editor. He went to his law office, but often had little to do, since his major clients had all but cut him off. When the runoff for the Republican primary came around, pitting longtime Senator Thad Cochran against State Senator Chris McDaniel, the Tea Party challenger whom Mr. Mayfield deeply believed in, friends said Mr. Mayfield could not even bring himself to vote.
Then on the morning of June 27, three days after the runoff that left Mr. Cochran the victor, Mr. Mayfield killed himself.
State and Local
Maine – Washington Examiner: Super PAC commits to spend $2 million against embattled Maine governor
By Betsy Woodruff
A Democrat-backed super PAC called Maine Forward has committed to spending $2 million against Republican Gov. Paul LePage and for Democratic nominee Mike Michaud in the run-up to the Pine Tree State’s elections this fall, according to the Bangor Daily News.
LePage is a top target for the Democratic Governors Association, and a report published in Talking Points Memo that he discussed executing Democrats in a meeting with a sovereign citizen group called the Aroostook Watchmen have only burnished their hopes.
