The Center for Competitive Politics put together this handy packet, “The Udall Amendment: A Briefing Book,” looking at many of the problems with the current attempt to overturn First Amendment political speech and associational protections by the Senate’s speech police caucus. For more information about this futile attempt to strip away our constitutional protections for cheap political points, check out our information page here, our analysis of key flaws with the proposed amendment here, and videos highlighting the ridiculousness of the amendment here and here.
In the News
NPR: Senate Moves Forward In Bid To Limit Campaign Funds
By PETER OVERBYReally, says Keating, this is all about political hardball. “If Democrats are proposing a proposal Republicans think will hurt them they’ll oppose it,” he says, “and if Republicans support a proposal that Democrats think will hurt them, they’ll oppose it.”
CCP
New Wesleyan-CRP Report Suffers from Old Flaws
By Luke WachobOf course, if you only read the Wesleyan and CRP report, you wouldn’t know that Florida has restrictive contribution limits while Pennsylvania supports the right of its citizens to speak and associate freely with candidates. As happens all too often with the speech regulatory lobby, Wesleyan and CRP fail to recognize how the regulations they promote encourage outcomes they decry. That blindness to unintended consequences of regulation, combined with a willful ignorance about the differences between various types of organizations and forms of speech, severely limits the usefulness of reports like these for figuring out what is really happening in campaign finance.However, as simply another hyperbolic and misleading talking point for those who wish to banish all privacy from politics and further regulate political speech, I guess it works just fine.
Amending the First Amendment
NRO: We’ll Take Free Speech, Thank You
EditorialThe Supreme Court in recent years has twice struck down Democratic efforts to legally suppress inconvenient speech, citing the free-speech protections of the First Amendment in both cases. Senator Reid’s solution is to nullify the first item on the Bill of Rights.The Democrats are not calling this a repeal of the First Amendment, though that is precisely what it is. Instead, they are describing the proposed constitutional amendment as a campaign-finance measure. But it would invest Congress with blanket authority to censor newspapers and television reports, ban books and films, and imprison people for expressing their opinions. So long as two criteria are met — the spending of money and intending to influence an election — the First Amendment would no longer apply.Article continues: The amendment that Democrats are putting forward is an attack on basic human rights, the Constitution, and democracy itself. If those who would criticize the government must first secure the government’s permission to do so, they are not free people.Harry Reid and Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, the amendment’s author, should be ashamed of themselves. The First Amendment has been a bulwark of liberty for more than two centuries, since long before either of the states that these vandals represent was even in the Union. Given a choice between free speech — in all its messy, uncomfortable, and unpredictable glory — and Harry Reid as national censor, we will take free speech.
Free Beacon: The Trojan Horse of Campaign Finance Reform
By Lachlan MarkayRepublicans were critical of the campaign finance reform effort, dubbing it nakedly partisan and hypocritical.“The hypocrisy is stunning,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) told the Washington Post on Friday. “Senate Democrats have long been funded by a group of billionaires bent on maintaining their power, yet they pretend to be outraged.”Some Senate Republicans pointed to the Democracy Alliance, a shadowy network of left-wing financiers, as emblematic of Democrats’ reliance on high dollar donors and “dark money” organizations that, by nature of their tax statuses, do not have to disclose their donors.
Washington Examiner: Harry Reid is mad that Republicans didn’t obstruct his bill
By ASHE SCHOWThe Nevada Democrat has accused Senate Republicans of chicanery for voting to advance to the Senate floor a Democratic constitutional amendment allowing Congress to regulate all campaign speech andspending.After Monday’s bipartisan 79-18 vote, Reid vented to reporters that Republicans were trying to “stall” the Senate, indicating that he never intended for the campaign finance amendment by Sen.Tom Udall, D-N.M., to go to a real floor debate.
NRO: Cruz: Udall Amendment Is ‘Most Radical Proposal’ I’ve Seen
By Andrew Johnson“The idea that elected politicians would seek to arrogate power to themselves to censor the citizens is anathema to who we are as a country,” Cruz said.
IRS
Breitbart: Letter: Holder Aide Accidentally Calls Issa Staff for Help Spinning IRS Scandal
By Jonathan StrongThe aide, Brian Fallon, is a former senior aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and a well-known personality on Capitol Hill. The letter describes Fallon as “audibly shaken” when he realizes his request to leak documents to help get ahead of news stories about them was mistakenly made to the very office he was seeking to undermine. Issa believes the call was intended to be made to Democratic Rep. Elijah Cumming’s staff, the ranking member on the oversight panel, the letter said.According to the letter, Fallon – who is not named in the letter but confirmed he made the call – asked if the aides could release the IRS scandal documents to “selected reporters” to give Fallon an “opportunity to comment publicly on it.”Fallon explained to Issa aides that the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs had not permitted him to release the documents to the public and he wanted to get ahead of the story “before the Majority” – meaning Issa – could share it, according to the letter.
Washington Post: Issa accuses Holder spokesman of attempting to ‘conspire’ with Democrats on IRS documents
By Colby ItkowitzOversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) sent a letter to Holder on Monday about the incident, saying he was “extremely troubled” that the Justice Department may have been trying to coordinate with the minority staff on the release of documents to the committee regarding the Internal Revenue Service targeting certain political groups.Issa’s letter claims that Brian Fallon asked for a specific committee aide and then told that person that he wanted to get materials to “interested reporters” before sending them to the majority, so that the agency could spin the story first.
The Hill: Issa: Holder spokesman caught red-handed
By Bernie Becker“This highly partisan and combative approach to oversight by the department shows a disregard for the independent investigatory prerogatives of Congress and a deliberate attempt to influence the course of a congressional investigation,” Issa wrote to Holder, adding that it was “unseemly” for the department to favor one party over the other when it came to sharing information.
SCOTUS/Judiciary
Legal Newsline: District attorney’s wife drove case against Wis. Gov. Walker, insider says
By Stuart Taylor, JR.Chisholm said his wife had joined teachers union demonstrations against Walker, said the former prosecutor. The 2011 political storm over public unions was unlike any previously seen in Wisconsin. Protestors crowded the State Capitol grounds and roared in the Rotunda. Picketers appeared outside of Walker’s private home. There were threats of boycotts and even death to Walker’s supporters. Two members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court almost came to blows. Political ad spending set new records. Wisconsin was bitterly divided.Still, Chisholm’s private displays of partisan animus stunned the former prosecutor. “I admired him [Chisholm] greatly up until this whole thing started,” the former prosecutor said. “But once this whole matter came up, it was surprising how almost hyper-partisan he became … It was amazing … to see this complete change.”The culture in the Milwaukee district attorney’s office was stoutly Democratic, the former prosecutor said, and become more so during Gov. Walker’s battle with the unions. Chisholm “had almost like an anti-Walker cabal of people in his office who were just fanatical about union activities and unionizing. And a lot of them went up and protested. They hung those blue fists on their office walls [to show solidarity with union protestors] … At the same time, if you had some opposing viewpoints that you wished to express, it was absolutely not allowed.”
Journal Sentinel: Federal judges question why John Doe issue before them
By Patrick MarleyChicago — A panel of three federal appeals judges on Tuesday questioned why they had been brought into a stalled criminal investigation into campaign activity by Gov. Scott Walker and conservative groups allied with him, saying it appeared to be a matter for state courts.“I don’t understand why the federal courts at the micro-level would be brought in,” said Diane Wood, chief judge of the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.Later, she expressed uncertainty about taking “an invitation to butt into a state criminal proceeding.”
