In the News
SCOTUS Blog: Commentary: The return of the Robert Bork “dueling briefs” strategy: Buckley v. Valeo, Susan B. Anthony List, and Ohio Attorney General DeWine
By Marty Lederman
But now, in the course of the merits briefing in the Supreme Court, Attorney General DeWine has filed an amicus brief, ahead of the brief he will file on behalf of the state officials, in which he argues that the Ohio statute raises serious constitutional concerns. Unlike in Buckley, the Ohio AG’s amicus brief was not written in the solicitor general’s office. Instead, Attorney General DeWine “has arranged pro bono outside counsel,” Erik Jaffe and Bradley Smith (an option not legally available to the federal government, but I assume Ohio law authorizes it), and he represents that he has “screened” those pro bono counsel from contact with the “experienced lawyers in the Constitutional Offices section of the Attorney General’s Office” who are writing the state officials’ brief, due to be filed with the Court next Wednesday, March 26.
In his amicus brief, Attorney General DeWine emphasizes that he continues to “zealously represent” the state officials, but that he also has concluded that the Court “may benefit in its deliberations” from the further discussion of the law that he offers as an amicus. Expressly invoking both the Levi/Bork precedent from Buckley, and Metro Broadcasting v. FCC, in which Acting Solicitor General Roberts “fully advocated for a law’s unconstitutionality,” DeWine writes that “[a]n attorney general has a special duty, as an officer of the Court and representative of the public, to acknowledge when the government’s side might be wrong.” (For what it is worth, Article XV, Section 7 of the Ohio Constitution requires the state attorney general to take an oath or affirmation to support the Constitution of the United States, as required by Article VI, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution.)
IRS
RNLA: The Obama Administration’s War on the 1st Amendment
“Americans on the Left hate it.
“Americans on the Right hate it.
“Unions, business groups, environmentalists, conservatives, and the ACLU, all of them have expressed concern.
“It’s pretty rare to see a coalition that broad agree on anything in Washington.
“And yet, it’s easy to see why Americans would be so united in opposition to this regulation. The First Amendment exists to protect political speech. And the government should be doing everything it can to protect that right, not hurt it.
“That’s why you saw a record number of Americans register their complaints with the IRS. In fact, there were more than 140,000 comments in all, which I hear is just about the highest number ever received in the agency’s history.
WND: The Real IRS Targeting Scandal
By Joseph Farah
Bill Clinton’s Treasury Department admitted here that the audit of my news organization originated with a letter written by a taxpayer to the White House, which forwarded it to the IRS office dealing with tax-exempt organizations for action.
That taxpayer letter was specifically written to Bill Clinton who sent it on to his political appointee who headed the IRS exempt office.
Now some people, like me – and maybe you – would look at this chain of events and the supporting documents and recognize they represent the smoking gun that proves the IRS was used by Bill Clinton to target his critics. But that’s not what the Treasury Department found. Instead, it concluded that since Bill Clinton didn’t personally write a note on that letter instructing IRS officials to audit me and my organization, and since all the IRS agents involved denied any wrongdoing, there was no harm, no foul.
SCOTUS/Judiciary
USA Today: Cincinnati political brawl lands before SCOTUS
By Deirdre Shesgreen
WASHINGTON – What could bring together the American Civil Liberties Union, the Cincinnati anti-tax group COAST and one-time National Lampoon editor P.J. O’Rourke?
How about a four-year-old Cincinnati political brawl turned Supreme Court case that touches on everything from abortion to Obamacare to the First Amendment?
Washington Post: A brief history of the ACLU and campaign finance
By PROFS. RONALD COLLINS & DAVID SKOVER
In 2013 the American Civil Liberties Union did not file an amicus brief in McCutcheon v. FEC, the First Amendment campaign finance case now awaiting a decision in the Supreme Court. But the group had not always been silent on the issue. Quite the contrary; it had once been quite vocal in its First Amendment opposition to many campaign finance laws.
For decades the ACLU had been at the forefront of this controversial issue, filing merits and amicus briefs in support of First Amendment claims in such landmark campaign finance cases as Buckley v. Valeo (1976) (Joel Gora, counsel of record) andCitizens United v. FEC(2010) (Steven R. Shapiro, counsel of record), among many other Supreme Court cases. That changed, however, after Citizens United came down. At that pinpoint in time, the past ceased to be prologue.
Disclosure
ProPublica: Who Controls the Kochs’ Political Network? ASMI, SLAH and TOHE
By Kim Barker
Four other leading nonprofit experts and three conservative operatives with knowledge of the Koch network said the most likely reason that the Kochs and their inner circle are using this arrangement was to exert control over the groups without saying publicly who was in charge. In particular, they said, the Kochs likely wanted to prevent any of the groups that they help fund from going against their wishes — as happened with the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank the Kochs had long supported before they got into a dispute with its president, Ed Crane.
After a top Cato official ridiculed Charles Koch in a 2010 New Yorker article, the brothers pushed to put allies on the think tank’s board. The following year, they pressed Cato to provide “intellectual ammunition” for their oldest politically active nonprofit, Americans for Prosperity, Cato officials later alleged. The dispute was settled in 2012, with the departure of Crane and the installation of a traditional board. (Cato previously was controlled by four private shareholders, including the Kochs, an unusual setup for a nonprofit.)
Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
Politico: New Clinton docs detail W.H. messaging woes
By Josh Gerstein
A new batch of previously secret documents from the Clinton White House provided fresh glimpses into the way President Bill Clinton struggled with crises like the violence in Rwanda, doled out political favors and responded to the fight over the disputed presidential election in 2000.
State and Local
District of Columbia –– Washington Post: D.C.’s Office of Campaign Finance is failing its mission
Editorial
BY THE time the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance gets around to releasing its audit on Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s 2010 campaign, the findings may well have lost any relevance. But then, that is perfectly in keeping with an agency that increasingly has shown itself to be tangential to its core mission of policing local elections.
Virginia –– Washington Post: McDonnell foiled in request to immediately see documents gathered by prosecutors
By Rosalind S. Helderman
A federal judge on Friday rejected requests from former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell’s attorneys that prosecutors immediately turn over a variety of documents they sought to prepare for a corruption trial this summer.
Since the indictments of McDonnell and his wife in January, McDonnell’s attorneys have argued in a series of biting legal motions that prosecutors have been withholding evidence that might show McDonnell’s innocence or otherwise aide in his defense.
Wisconsin –– Wisconsin State Journal: John Doe prosecution focuses on coordination
By Dee J. Hall
Prosecutors in a secret John Doe investigation are seeking to find whether recent recall campaigns coordinated their work with groups engaged in so-called “issue advocacy,” according to legal papers filed this week in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee.
The filing suggests such advocacy, which is not regulated because it stops short of expressly advocating for the election or defeat of a particular candidate, must be reported as campaign contributions if it is done at the behest or in concert with a campaign.
“Simply put, contributions to a candidate’s campaign must be reported whether or not they constitute express advocacy,” according to the brief written on behalf of John Doe prosecutor Francis Schmitz and members of the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office.
