If I’m not mistaken this was a challenge to the Campaign Finance law of 2002 (John McCain’s baby). That limited maximum aggregate donation from an individual to $46,000 a campaign. A Republican businessman challenged that as a limit on his free speech, and apparently won. It will be interesting to see how far the ruling goes, and if it just threw out the $46,000 aggregate or the $2,000 limit to individual candidates as well.
Sure makes sense to me.
To limit the amount a candidate can spend on his own campaign doesn’t seem legit—and if that’s the case, there shouldn’t be a limit to what one can contribute to other campaigns, either.
In response to case, a coalition of environmental, voting rights, labor, and government reform groups rallied outside of the Supreme Court. Environmentalists from Greenpeace and the Sierra Club protested what Phil Radford of Greenpeace called a “legalized system of corruption through money in politics” that had resulted in few major environmental laws passing in the U.S. since 1980.
If the leftist loons supported this law, and the Supreme Court threw it out on a 5-4 Conservative/Liberal break. I would say it was a really good thing for us. Expect to see liberal heads explode and the president give the Supreme Court another finger wagging lecture next State of the Union.
'Nough said...
There's two prongs to this law imo. The first prong is that although the feds do have limited constitutional authority to make laws regulating elections, the Constitution's Clause 1 of Section 4 of Article I for example, I don't see where federal laws that limit campaign contributions are reasonably based on those powers. Can anybody enlighten me?
The other prong is that many campaign contributions are undoubtedly based on the perceived powers of the federal government as opposed to the constitutionally limited powers. More specifically, corrupt politicians are laughing all the way to the bank because they are likely promising constitutionally indefensible earmark spending to the low-information elite, wealthy contributors who were never taught about the federal government's constitutionally limited powers.
In other words, unless a candidate for federal office is basing a promised earmark kickback on one of the clauses in Congress's constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers, wealthy contributors are unknowingly contributing to the constitutionally indefensible abuse of Congress's limited powers.