Amending the First Amendment
Wall Street Journal: Hillary’s Supreme Court Litmus Test
EditorialMrs. Clinton is also supporting the efforts of Congressional Democrats to amend the First Amendment to restrict this kind of political speech. That isn’t likely to pass, but that’s where her new litmus test comes in. Citizens United and many of the current Supreme Court’s campaign finance rulings were decided 5-4. Replace a single conservative Justice with a litmus-test liberal and the Court can overturn those precedents and edit the First Amendment on the fly.Mrs. Clinton’s declaration is also curious in light of the controversies surrounding contributions to the Clinton Foundation. A recent revelation addresses the foundation’s relationships with labor unions. According to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, labor groups contributed some $2 million of their general treasury funds to Clinton-related foundations in recent years, including the William J. Clinton Foundation, the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and the Clinton Global Initiative.The donations are noteworthy because while the Clintons have defended the donations of foreign governments on grounds that the foundation is a charity, not a political organization, many of the unions apparently thought differently. The National Institute compared the Clinton Foundation reports to union disclosure forms filed with the Department of Labor, and it turns out the unions marked some of their Clinton Foundation contributions as supporting “political activities.” Would Hillary want a First Amendment carve-out to ban those contributions too?
McIver Institute: 2016 Senate Race a Reminder of Threats to the First Amendment
By James WigdersonSchool children learn that one of our darkest moments at the founding of our country was the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts. We all remember those, right? The sedition act was the most heinous because it banned criticism of the federal government in the name of national security.Of course, Congress eventually regained its senses and allowed the law to lapse. Free speech was restored under President Thomas Jefferson, our first Democratic president. Unfortunately, the law was used in the prosecution of critics of the Federalists before its demise.Roughly two hundred years later, the First Amendment to the Constitution is again under attack. The “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002,”attacked free speech by limiting the ability of citizens to joint together in corporations to speak on political issues. The law also prevented issue-oriented organizations from even mentioning candidates for office sixty days before an election.
FEC
NY Times: F.E.C. Member Says System Tilts Against Conservative Groups
By Eric LichtblauFor pending F.E.C. reviews, Mr. Goodman said that campaigns and groups he characterized as conservative or Republican outnumbered liberal or Democratic ones by a margin of 49 to 16. He did not disclose the names of the groups in his tally and his office said it could not release a detailed breakdown of the groups because of confidentiality laws.Mr. Goodman said the blame for what he saw as a political tilt fell not with the F.E.C. itself, but rather with liberal outside groups aggressively bringing complaints of campaign violations to the agency. Outside complaints automatically trigger an F.E.C. review into the merits, which can lead to fines and disciplinary action against anyone found to have violated election law.He offered his data in raising objections to a proposal by a Democratic commissioner, Ellen L. Weintraub, for speeding reviews and cutting into a backlog of cases by requiring the commission to act on pending cases within three months. Mr. Goodman said the proposal to impose a deadline worried him because it would limit the discretion of commissioners to give more time to cases that might be politically influenced. He offered his data as evidence of those concerns.
Fox News: FEC backs off flirtation with regulating Internet
By Judson BergerDemocratic members of the Federal Election Commission on Thursday backed off any consideration of regulating political Internet content, after a public outcry and pressure from Republican colleagues.The commissioners, in a Washington meeting, sought to calm a controversy that started last fall — when incoming Chairwoman Ann Ravel said a “re-examination” of the agency’s approach to the Internet was “long overdue.”This triggered concerns that the campaign-finance regulator could try targeting YouTube videos and other posts to make sure their creators file spending reports. But after the FEC received thousands of public comments opposing Internet intervention, Ravel stressed Thursday she was “never” proposing any such rules.
More Soft Money Hard Law: The FEC, the Big Issues, and Getting Right a Few Basics–Like Disclosure
By Bob BauerThe Public Citizen analysis is statistical and focuses on vote deadlocks. The FEC is indeed disagreeing a great deal—about that, there is no doubt. But is the agency failing or is the old regulatory model collapsing under the pressure of changing law and political practice?Public Citizen cannot answer this question because it is looking at agency performance in the aggregate. It is unable, for example, to explain what might be happening in particular cases, or why deadlocks are occurring across various agency functions. There are certainly instances where the vote for enforcement is as suspect as a vote against it. The result is still deadlock but the reasons for it are not quite what Public Citizen implies. Nonetheless, it being assumed that matters could not have gotten this bad without dereliction of duty somewhere, the FEC takes the blame. It is expected to take up the big issues, such as those involving “coordination” or “dark money”, which are precisely the issues over which disagreement is certain to arise. And so around and around it goes.One alternative available to the FEC in this period of uncertainty is to commit itself to less controversial but highly productive functions. Bipartisan suggestions have been made, for example, that it could do better in discharging its disclosure function, and in reforming, as Congress has directed, the operation of its Administrative Fines program. There is value in starting with these basic responsibilities. To the Commission’s credit, it has initiated a rulemaking to move in this direction.
Independent Groups
NY Times: Rove’s Crossroads PAC Is No Longer G.O.P.’s ‘Big Dog’
By Eric Lichtblau and Maggie HabermanWASHINGTON — For three election cycles, American Crossroads, the brainchild of Karl Rove and other leading Republican strategists, has been among the most powerful forces in national politics, a shadow party that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising, data and opposition research to help elect candidates.But in the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign, Crossroads — among the first outside groups to fully exploit the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision unleashing wealthy donors and corporations — has been buffeted by a rapidly changing political landscape that is testing its pre-eminence, and potentially its survival.
More Laws for Thee but not for Me
Washington Post: Gyrocopter pilot: I will take campaign finance reform fight to jury if needed
By Spencer S. HsuThe Florida postal worker who landed a gyrocopter on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol last month pleaded not guilty to all counts Thursday and announced he would take his fight for campaign finance reform to a jury trial if necessary.Douglas Hughes, 61, of Ruskin, Fla., made the statement blocks from the Capitol outside the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington after being indicted Wednesday on six felony and misdemeanor charges punishable by up to 91/2 years in prison.Before a bank of news cameras, he said the Constitution defined a marriage between government and “we, the people.”
Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
Washington Examiner: Hillary’s campaign-finance reform advocacy isn’t hypocrisy, it’s self protection
By Timothy P. CarneyHillary Clinton is making campaign finance reform a major plank of her presidential run.Laugh if you like at this risible pledge from a candidate who will shatter all previous fundraising records. But don’t call it hypocrisy. It’s something worse than hypocrisy.Clinton, in advocating the same restrictions on political speech Democrats have sought for years, is pushing for a legal regime that would protect her from criticism while increasing her power and her own fundraising advantages.
Breitbart: Election law experts: Jeb Bush is Violating Campaign Finance Laws
By Sarah RumpfBut Bush is not yet actually a candidate, and he has been very coy about when he might officially get into the race. His unique approach to building a presidential campaign is raising eyebrows, and several campaign finance law experts told Breitbart News that they believe Bush is violating the law.Breitbart News interviewed Cleta Mitchell, a political law attorney at Foley & Lardner’s Washington, D.C. office, and Nancy Watkins, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) with Robert Watkins & Company in Tampa, Florida.Mitchell has four decades of experience in election, campaign finance, and ethics law, has testified before Congress on multiple occasions and authored numerous publications on these topics. Mitchell also previously served as the Chairman of the American Conservative Union Foundation and as President of the Republican National Lawyers Association. Watkins has more than twenty-five years experience in campaign finance law compliance and federal tax law, and has served a long list of Senate, Congressional, and legislative candidates, as well as party committees and PACs.
Politico: Hillary’s dash for cash
By Gabriel Debenedetti and Annie KarniThe formal launch event has been delayed. The main pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC has shaken up its leadership. Clinton has done more than twice as many fundraisers as open public events since announcing her presidential bid, lining up an aggressive schedule that has or will soon take her to all of the nation’s big-city money centers.One month into her bid for the presidency — and without even the prospect of a serious primary challenge — Clinton’s schedule is already straining under the gargantuan task of raising somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 billion, the estimated amount that it will take to elect her to the White House.Donors and those inside the Clinton fundraising operation say they have been encouraged by the results of the campaign’s — if not the super PAC’s — early cash strategy, which focuses on the role of “Hillstarters” — backers who have given the maximum $2,700 and collected ten $2,700 checks from others. But the money has flowed in amid nail-biting both about Priorities USA Action, the pro-Clinton super PAC undergoing a leadership transition amid a lackluster fundraising start, and concerns about fundraising firepower on the Republican side — particularly former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
