Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who sponsored the campaign finance bill in the Senate with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he believes the measure protects First Amendment rights. He said they will assemble their own legal team, ,b>and he has Attorney General John Ashcroft's assurance that the Justice Department would defend the statute's constitutionality.

And from the following:

Functions of the Office of the Solicitor General

The major function of the Solicitor General's Office is to supervise and conduct government litigation in the United States Supreme Court. Virtually all such litigation is channeled through the Office of the Solicitor General and is actively conducted by the Office. The United States is involved in about two-thirds of all the cases the U.S. Supreme Court decides on the merits each year.

The Solicitor General determines the cases in which Supreme Court review will be sought by the government and the positions the government will take before the Court. The Office's staff attorneys participate in preparing the petitions, briefs, and other papers filed by the government in its Supreme Court litigation. The Solicitor General personally assigns the oral argument of government cases in the Supreme Court. Those cases not argued by the Solicitor General personally are assigned either to an attorney in the Office or to another government attorney. The vast majority of government cases are argued by the Solicitor General or by one of the Office's other attorneys.

Another function of the Office is to review all cases decided adversely to the government in the lower courts to determine whether they should be appealed and, if so, what position should be taken. The Solicitor General also determines whether the government will participate as an amicus curiae, or intervene, in cases in any appellate court.

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Well we might see Starr battle Olsen......

This is just sickening. Our own Ted Olson being forced to defend a patently unconstitutional bill before the US Supreme Court. And all because the President, who Ted helped elect through his Supreme Court arguements, has abandoned (or most certainly will abandon) his sworn oath of office in search of a political consensus that he does not need. I would hope that the White House would at least have the decency to appoint a junior lawyer to this case and save a very honorable man from having to fall on his own sword.