CCP
Surprise, Surprise: Partisan Grandstanding from FEC Commissioners Has Hurt the Agency’s Morale
Joe Albanese
The Federal Election Commission’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently released a July 2016 study on the root causes of its infamously low employee morale. After receiving survey responses from 185 out of the Commission’s roughly 338 employees, the Office found that a chief cause of low morale at the agency is the conduct of the Commissioners. Among the findings, 88% of survey respondents said the Commissioners’ tone towards each other impacts how they felt about their jobs, and 83% believe disparaging statements about the agency itself negatively impacts the FEC’s work and mission.
The report is silent on what specific conduct from which Commissioners it is referring to, only saying “some Commissioners have made negative public statements critical of the Agency.” Although the OIG might not want to call out its top leaders, there is a very real and unfortunate partisan element to the FEC’s rancor. Some pro-regulation Commissioners, especially Democratic Obama appointee Ann Ravel, have taken the lead in perpetuating a toxic culture, while using that same culture to argue for increased powers for the Commission.
FEC
Wall Street Journal: Court Nullifies FEC Super PAC Name Strictures
Rebecca Ballhaus
A federal appeals court on Tuesday effectively struck down a Federal Election Commission rule that bars super PACs from using candidates’ names in their titles, further loosening the already lax regulations governing the relationship between campaigns and outside groups.
A panel of judges of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FEC had violated the First Amendment in restricting super PACs from naming themselves, or their fundraising initiatives, after the candidates they support.
“The FEC understates the importance of a title,” wrote Judge Thomas Griffith, with Judges Brett Kavanaugh and A. Raymond Randolph. “The title is a critical way for committees to attract support and spread their message because it tells users that the website or Facebook page is about the candidate.”
Independent Groups
Atlantic: Trump Wants to Make Churches the New Super PACs
Emma Green
If the Johnson Amendment were repealed, pastors would be able to endorse candidates from the pulpit, which they’re currently not allowed to do by law. But it’s also true that a lot more money could possibly flow into politics via donations to churches and other religious organizations. That could mean religious groups would become much more powerful political forces in American politics—and it would almost certainly tee up future court battles.
Even though religious groups are some of the most vocal opponents of the Amendment today, it was originally about something else: communism. At the time when the measure was passed, McCarthyism was at its peak, and Johnson feared that right-wing groups, parading as charities, would attack his reelection campaign. Although the rule extended to religious groups, the former Purdue University professor James D. Davidson has argued that Johnson never specifically wanted to target religious groups.
Campaign Legal Center: Isn’t It Ironic?: Koch-Backed Group Rails Against Corrupting Influence of Money in Politics
Brendan Fischer
Although Freedom Partners’ super PAC does disclose most of its donors, the source of the vast majority of Koch political network spending remains under wraps. And Freedom Partners and other Koch-backed groups have repeatedly bankrolled efforts to fight political spending disclosure. In one recent court case, Koch groups even cited the civil rights era NAACP v. Alabama decision as justification for keeping their donors secret.
In its latest ads, Freedom Partners suggests that candidates were influenced or corrupted by campaign spending – a claim only made possible because their financial supporters complied with disclosure laws. But if Freedom Partners and the Kochs had their way, those contributors’ names would never have become public.
NBC News: Clinton, Allies Have Reserved $98 Million in Ads
Carrie Dann
According to ad-tracking data provided to NBC News by SMG Delta, Clinton’s campaign and pro-Clinton group Priorities USA Action have reserved a combined $98 million through the fall so far, while pro-Trump PAC Rebuilding America Now has just about $817,000 set to air at this time…
But the lion’s share of Team Clinton’s planned ad spending so far comes from Priorities USA Action, which makes up more than $80 million of the pro-Clinton forces’ reserved airtime until the fall. While the Clinton campaign itself dropped its ad buy in Colorado last week, for example, Priorities is set to advertise there as well as in every major swing state.
Wisconsin John Doe
Wisconsin Watchdog: Free-market group sues John Doe ‘ringleaders’ for violating federal law
M.D. Kittle
The man who launched Wisconsin’s infamous John Doe investigation now faces a class action lawsuit in federal court.
The John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy, a Madison-based free-market think tank, filed the lawsuit Monday against Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, some of his assistants, and senior staff of the former state Government Accountability Board.
MacIver alleges “John Doe ringleaders” illegally seized the organization’s digital records during the so-called John Doe II probe into dozens of right-of-center groups and many more conservative individuals.
The lawsuit charges Chisholm, a Democrat, and his co-defendants violated the federal Stored Communications Act by “secretly requesting, obtaining, and cataloguing millions of personal and politically sensitive emails, contact lists, calendar entries, and associated records from the MacIver Institute and dozens of similarly situated individuals and groups in an attempt to amass a staggering database of political intelligence.”
IRS
Washington Free Beacon: New Documents Reveal IRS Headquarters in D.C. Buried Conservative Groups’ Tax Applications
Ali Meyer
“The FBI’s 302 interviews with Cincinnati IRS employees reveal that the agency adopted a series of policies assuring that Tea Party and other conservative group tax exempt applications would not be approved before the November 2012 presidential election,” according to a statement from Judicial Watch.
A manager from the Cincinnati IRS explained to the FBI that the Tea Party applications were put into a file called “Group 7822,” where they were to be held while employees waiting for guidance from the D.C. IRS office.
Free Speech
Reason: Comedy, Outrage, and Free Speech: Can We Take A Joke is Available for Download Now!
Zach Weissmueller
Everyone, of course, has the legal right to be offended and the right to demand the firing of comedians for telling jokes. The First Amendment only protects against the government censorship of ideas, not corporate or mob censorship. But the film argues that the very idea of “free speech” requires more than simply government protection of the press.
“The First Amendment, although it’s necessary, it’s not sufficient. It has to rest on a social foundation of First Amendment values,” says Jonathan Rauch, scholar at the Brookings Institute and author the book Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought. “Once you get into the business of saying you are going to prohibit things you find offensive or wrongheaded, that’s where the most sensitive person in society gets to determine what all the rest of us can hear.”
Influence
Washington Free Beacon: Feingold Passes $500,000 in Bundled Lobbyist Contributions
Joe Schoffstall
Feingold taking more than a half-million dollars from special interest groups is at odds with his former rhetoric throughout his entire political career.
When Feingold was serving as a state senator in Wisconsin in 1992, one colleague said that Feingold would not even accept a cup of coffee from a lobbyist.
Feingold later led the charge on campaign finance reform in the U.S. Senate by pushing for stricter ethics legislation that included a requirement for politicians to disclose bundled lobbyist contributions.
“The public voted for change last November in part because it was sick and tired of the way Washington works. The final lobbying and ethics reform bill that Congress will consider this week is landmark legislation,” Feingold said in 2007.
Candidates and Campaigns
Reason: Is SCOTUS a Good Reason to Support Trump? Libertarian and Conservative Legal Experts Weigh In
Damon Root
Donald Trump is hoping to pitch himself as the conservative legal movement’s last best hope for securing the future of the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump says that if he’s elected president he will name committed constitutionalists to the bench and will replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia with “a person of similar views and principles.” He insists that non-liberals have “no choice” but to support him in order to prevent Hillary Clinton from packing the Court. Trump has even released a list of potential SCOTUS picks that’s chock full of Federalist Society favorites and at least one libertarian legal hero.
But is that reason enough to support Trump in the 2016 election? I wanted to hear what the key players in the libertarian and conservative legal movements had to say about it… Here are their thoughts on whether the future of the Supreme Court is a good reason to support Donald Trump.
NPR: What Would Donald Trump’s Department of Justice Look Like?
Carrie Johnson
Since there are so many laws on the books, and not enough investigators to sort through all of the allegations of wrongdoing, Jackson said where authorities choose to train their limited resources matters a great deal.
The most awesome power that the federal government has over the day-to-day lives of people is not through the intelligence community and is not through the military. It’s through the Department of Justice.
“Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted,” he added.
The bottom line is, a lot of justice is about judgment. And history suggests people in the White House haven’t always respected those lines.
