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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/1897132/posts
Fred, Lies, and Audiotape

Excerpt:

Laura: What about the issue ads?

Fred: Well, that’s a different story, I’ll get to that in a minute. But my main motivation for CFR - the issue ads thing wasn’t even being discussed as far as I remember when the first debates were had and when the first bill was proposed - it was a matter of whehter or not you wanted to get rid of soft money. Bill Clinton and Dick Morris showed that you could use soft money in ways that people thought you’d get put in jail for a short time ago. So they poured it in, instead of having the agreed upon limitations that have historically democrats, republicans, conservatives and liberals and everybody else pretty much acknowledged were constitutional, because it had to do with federal elections, and the idea that you don’t wanna give too much money to any individual member of congress then come lobbying him for a bill. That’s called bribery in the real world. But they came in with this soft money to do the same thing, through the backdoor. We wanted to do away with that. Now they added on something that was a mistake. And that is the issue ads you were talking about, and I voted for all of it, so I support the first part, but I don’t support that.

As Will pointed out, this was very disingenuous, citing that this language regarding issue ads and time restrictions had been around a long time, and was not some late addition. In fact it originated in 1997. CFR did not pass until 2001. This egregious slap at the constitution was called the Snowe-Jeffords Amendment, added to the CFR legislation language in 1998. It became part of the base language for this legislation years before the final passage in 2001. And guess what? The amendment had OTHER sponsors as well, not just Snowe and Jeffords. They include one Fred Dalton Thompson. From the Congressional Record:

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