Free Republic

President Obama and his political allies have dismissed as "phony scandals" mounting evidence that the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies hindered and punished conservative advocacy groups. Meanwhile, efforts are under way to impose even more regulation on core political speech. The government's abuses are very real, but the scandal's lessons are not appreciated: The federal regulation of political speech has already gone further than can be justified by existing law, let alone the Constitution.

The unfolding IRS scandal is a symptom, not the disease.For decades, campaign-finance reform zealots have sought to limit core political speech through spending limits and disclosure requirements. More recently, they have claimed that it is wrong and dangerous for tax-exempt entities to engage in political speech. The Obama administration shares these views, especially when conservative, small-government organizations are involved, and the IRS clearly got the message. While the agency must be investigated and reformed, the ultimate cure for these abuses is to unshackle political speech by all groups, including tax-exempt ones, from arbitrary and unconstitutional government regulation. Beginning in March...

The organizing principle of the administration’s foreign policy is one of weakness and passivity, coupled with a conspicuous rhetorical abdication of American leadership, write David Rivkin and Lee Casey.

Since the Supreme Court's historic three-day ObamaCare hearings in late March, the president and his supporters have tried to pressure the Justices into upholding that law, asserting that any other decision would overstep the court's constitutional bounds. Ruling against ObamaCare would not be what the president called illegitimate "judicial activism," but an appropriate exercise of the Supreme Court's core constitutional role. "Judicial activism" is one of those agreeably ambiguous terms that can support almost any criticism of the courts. Under our constitutional system, judicial activism entails judges rewriting rather than interpreting the laws, exercising "will instead of judgment," in Alexander...

The city of Jerusalem has been fought over for nearly 3,000 years and remains one of the most contentious places on Earth. This fall, the battle will reach the U.S. Supreme Court. The case—Zivotofsky v. Clinton, brought by the parents of Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky, a U.S. citizen born in Jerusalem on October 17, 2002—involves a 2002 effort by Congress to force U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. It sought to do so by, among other things, requiring the State Department to identify Israel as the place of birth on passports issued to U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem. The high...

At least four Democratic senators are advocating legal action against News Corp. for allegedly violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying British police for information. Former Department of Justice attorneys David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey argue that legislation enacted to police bribery in government contracting is not applicable to news gathering.