Free Republic

WASHINGTON - Defying Republican Party demands to strike down the plans of a network of pro-Democratic political committees, Federal Election Commission chairman Bradley Smith now argues that these committees should remain free to raise and spend large contributions known as "soft money." Smith's argument, spelled out in a 37-page proposal to his five FEC colleagues, sharply increases the likelihood that new, pro-Democratic groups with multimillion-dollar budgets will become significant forces in the 2004 election and become what amounts to a "shadow" Democratic Party. One of the new groups, America Coming Together, has already raised $12.5 million toward an election-year goal...

<p>NEW HAVEN — The Board of Aldermen’s Legislation Committee Thursday unanimously approved a resolution that calls for partial public financing of mayoral campaigns.</p> <p>The proposed "Democracy Fund" is meant to level the playing field among candidates by setting a voluntary spending cap of $200,000. The Legislation Committee held a public hearing Thursday and the resolution goes to the full board Tuesday.</p>

WASHINGTON - Big donations known as soft money found a fresh channel into politics in the months after a new law broadly banned them, flowing to political groups that raised more than $100 million likely to influence this year's elections. Top recipients include new groups such as America Coming Together and the MoveOn.org Voter Fund, which want to help Democrats win back the White House, and the Republican State Leadership Committee, which is focused on state and local races. Such tax-exempt political groups began cropping up in larger numbers after the new law took effect in November 2002 banning political...

Rep. Blunt Seeks Repeal of McCain-Feingold's Attack on Freedom of Speech WASHINGTON – The third-ranking member of the House Republican leadership is a co-sponsor of a bill to repeal the anti-free-speech sections of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform” law. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., has signed on to the measure, just introduced, to “restore Americans’ First Amendment rights,” in the words of the prime sponsor of the repeal, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md. The very fact that a major player in the House GOP leadership would affix his name to Bartlett’s bill sends an unmistakable signal to the rank-and-file Republican...

<p>Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland Republican, will introduce legislation tomorrow to undo the pre-election political-speech restrictions imposed by the McCain-Feingold law.</p> <p>Mr. Bartlett's campaign-reform legislation would repeal those sections of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, commonly known as McCain-Feingold, that ban non-PAC-funded issue advocacy for a specific period of time prior to a primary or general election, United Press International reports.</p>

Imagine an organization established by people who are concerned about the direction of their country and seek to change it. They are not politicians or political party officials. They are activists on issues such as fairness to working families, women's rights and the environment. Their aim is to encourage their fellow citizens to register and vote for change in this November's elections - and to shake up the dismal reality of one-third of adults being unregistered and half of all adults not voting. This classic case of American democratic action is America Coming Together, or ACT. Yet an attempt is...

Cash Flow: Political Nonprofits Rake in Donations at a Record Pace, from Left to Right, Says Center for Public Integrity WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Political nonprofits reported raising just over $93 million in 2003, about $10 million more than they did in 2001, the last year without federal elections, the Center for Public Integrity has found. The increased fundraising in 2003 came despite a 2002 federal campaign finance law that banned federal candidates and national parties from using such fundraising vehicles, the nonprofits, known as 527 organizations. The Republican Governors Association topped the list in 2003, raising $12,537,847,...

Give them credit for candor, at least. Even as the Supreme Court upheld most of the latest campaign finance reform statute, the Justices conceded that their massive 300-page ruling, and the well-meaning law, the so-called McCain-Feingold effort, won't truly protect politics from the corrupting influence of money. "We are under no illusion that (the law) will be the last congressional statement on the matter," wrote Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and John Paul Stevens in what surely has to be the understatement of the term. "Money, like water, will always find an outlet. What problems will arise, and how Congress will...

Mr. McCAIN: Madam President, I join my friend from Wisconsin on the floor to discuss the entire issue of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act and also at a time when the Federal Election Commission is about to make some decisions regarding implementation of this legislation. I think it is very important that as the Federal Election Commission is considering making these rules, that it be made very clear what the intent of the authors of the legislation was. Because as I will go into in my statement, it was the Federal Election Commission that created the loopholes that caused the...

Make no mistake --- the purpose of the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act is to silence voices of political expression. The all-out assault by so-called reformers promises treatment for the symptoms of electoral abuses at the expense of the First Amendment. The provisions of the act challenged by more than 80 plaintiffs in a current lawsuit do nothing to address the perceived Clinton-era campaign scandals. In fact, those transgressions were illegal under existing federal law and regulation. Rather, what lawmakers --- all sitting incumbents --- have imposed is a deafening silence at the time the U.S. Constitution encourages the most...

More than a month has passed since the Supreme Court handed down its decision narrowing First Amendment protections for underwriting free speech. Because the initial reactions of fear and loathing have largely passed, now is the time to think about what should be done next. Certainly, the people who gave us the McCain-Feingold campaign finance laws have their agenda firmly set: Impose more legislative restrictions on money in politics and elections. To resist their plans, defenders of free speech need to think about how America got to the point that McCain-Feingold could be enacted and subsequently blessed by the Supreme...

New Election Regulator Opposes Campaign Finance Law Today, Bradley A. Smith takes the gavel of the Federal Election Commission under pressure from an exceptional array of conflicting forces as the regulatory agency addresses the first major issue in the enforcement of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law . For Chairman Smith, almost all campaign finance regulation is wrongheaded, does the opposite of what it claims and routinely infringes on the right to free speech. Intellectual convictions, partisan interests and a Supreme Court decision are all pounding this former law professor, and he is getting a little testy. "I'm not going...

How to Achieve Real Campaign Finance Reform: Have a Government That Can't Sell "Public Interest" Favors Summary: Only when Congressmen have no special favors to sell will lobbyists stop trying to buy their votes -- and their souls. Congress is once again addressing the issue of campaign finance reform -- and no wonder. The American public has become increasingly disgusted by the unprincipled manner in which our legislative process is conducted. The process, in essence, consists of swarms of lobbyists descending like locusts on Washington, demanding special favors in return for campaign contributions. “Wealthy special-interest groups,” and the money they...

Peter Robinson: Today on Uncommon Knowledge: should the Supreme Court go soft on soft money? Peter Robinson: Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. Our show today: campaign finance reform--is it constitutional? In March 2002, President Bush signed into law the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, better known as the McCain-Feingold Bill. Among the bill's many provisions, a ban on soft money, that is, money contributed to political parties rather than to individual candidates, often used to skirt limits on campaign contributions. Also, a ban on political attack ads near an election date. These are ads that are run not by...

Commentary Campaign Finance Reform Muzzles Political Dissent By Rep. Ron Paul In a devastating blow to political speech, the Supreme Court recently upheld most of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill passed by Congress last year. The legislation will do nothing to curb special interest power or reduce corruption in Washington, but it will make it harder for average Americans to influence government. "Campaign finance reform" really means the bright-line standard of free speech has been replaced by a murky set of regulations and restrictions that will muzzle political dissent and protect incumbents. Justice Scalia correctly accuses the Court of supporting...

The decision marked the first time the nation's highest court had allowed Congress to make it a crime to engage in explicitly political speech. Loophole. Get used to that word, because you'll be hearing it a lot now that the Supreme Court has upheld politicians' latest attempt at campaign finance "reform." It happened on December 10, when the high court ruled that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 is constitutional. The court said Congress could ban soft money contributions to political parties, and prohibit groups from broadcasting so-called issues ads on radio or television within 60 days of a...

I. History and Constitutional Issues Thank you Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee for once again inviting me to testify before this Committee. Today I am testifying on behalf of the Cato Institute, for which I am an Adjunct Scholar. I am also an Associate Professor of Law at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, where I teach, among other subjects, Election Law. I have researched and written extensively, in both academic and popular journals, on the subject of campaign finance. Today I would like to talk with you about soft money and the presidential campaign system. "Soft...

The New York Times reports that Robert Matsui was "surprised by (the) fine print" in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Matsui, the California representative who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, confesses, "I didn't realize what all was in it." Well, how could he have known? It's a complicated piece of legislation. You didn't expect him to actually read the bill prior to voting for it, did you? Anyway, 60 senators and 240 representatives voted for McCain-Feingold, a.k.a. Shays-Meehan, a.k.a. the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. Surely at least some of them knew what all was in it. Maybe not. In...

After an extraordinary four-hour oral argument on Sept. 8, the Supreme Court justices retreated to deliberate on the constitutionality of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Their decision will confront our democracy with one of two futures: a continuing, necessarily imperfect effort to limit the troublesome ways in which money distorts elections and public policy making or a return to a 19th-century state of nature in which anything short of bribery or extortion goes. This stark choice was lost in the oral argument before the court and in the commentary that followed. But it flows inexorably both from unrefuted...

Having spent years as a newspaper reporter and editor, I am proud to be called an "ink-stained wretch." But I am mystified by the newsroom silence about a legal dagger aimed at the heart of the First Amendment and the free press. That silence should worry every citizen who cares about preserving his or her right to speak out on the issues of the day. The Constitution makes journalists our independent watchdogs to keep the politicians honest. We all lose if the politicians muzzle our watchdogs. But must journalists help tie their own muzzles? The dagger is the underlying logic...