Free Republic

Democratic lawmakers and campaign finance reform advocates quickly bashed Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision to strike down total limits on individual campaign contributions, warning of future corruption in elections. Meanwhile, Republicans largely cheered the ruling from the narrowly divided court, which found it unconstitutional to impose caps on the aggregate amounts that one person can donate to campaigns, parties and political action committees. Calling himself “all for freedom,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday commended the ruling, saying “donors ought to have the freedom to give what they want to give.” And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who had filed...

Dinesh D'Souza is accused of giving too much money to a candidate who sought to replace former New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. Producer Gerald Molen tells The Hollywood Reporter the charges are politically motivated. Conservative filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, whose documentary 2016: Obama's America took a critical look at President Barack Obama and was a surprise hit in 2012, will be arrested in New York on Friday for allegedly violating campaign-finance laws, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Federal authorities accuse D'Souza of donating more than is legal to the campaign of Wendy Long, who ran in 2012 for the U.S. Senate...

This IRS politicization is not an isolated problem. It is an inevitable result of the broader efforts to regulate and, in fact, suppress political speech. The IRS crackdown on tax-exemption approvals for conservative groups was directed at nonprofit social-welfare groups, often called 501(c)(4)s after the Internal Revenue Code section granting them tax-exempt status. Such groups do not have to disclose their donors and are exempt from most taxation, although donations to them generally aren't tax deductible. Social-welfare organizations are permitted to engage in a range of political activities promoting their causes or beliefs, so long as these activities aren't their...

The "Affordable Care Act" might die a death of a thousand legal cuts. Last June, upon learning that the Supreme Court had ruled Obamacare's individual mandate constitutional, many observers were forced to concur with the Dickens character who opined, "If the law supposes that… the law is an ass." Yet, the increasing number of anti-PPACA lawsuits that have been receiving serious attention from the courts suggests that the legal system may not be as irrational as it seemed when Chief Justice John Roberts began braying from the bench on June 28. If this seems Pollyannaish, consider the fate of McCain-Feingold....

Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist slammed for radicalizing Washington Washington is more dysfunctional than it has been in 40 years, and while Democrats have deserved their share of the blame over the years, today "the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party," write Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein in the Washington Post. What makes their column particularly interesting is that Ornstein is not liberal, but a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Together, they call the GOP an "insurgent outlier in American politics" because of the...

Yesterday on Laura IngrahamÂ’s radio show, she asked Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell about a recent Roll Call article that framed me as one of the loud leaders of conservatives opposed to Mitch McConnell. The Senator from Kentucky responded that he had never heard of me and I did not have an audience. That sounds a bit like the child, when asked if he ate the cookie, replying that he had not and besides it did not taste good. If heÂ’d never heard of me, how can he comment on my audience? If he states plainly I have no audience,...

Senator John McCain appeared on This Week today from Afghanistan, but before getting onto matters of foreign policy, he weighed in on the Republican contest going on in the United States and continued to speak out forcefully on an issue that has been part of his political identity for over a decade: campaign finance reform. McCain has not been the biggest fan of Super PACs, and McCain today blasted the Supreme Court for its decision in the Citizens United case two years ago. When Jake Tapper asked McCain about how the GOP’s divisive contest may end up handing the election...

The president of local biotechnology firm GenPhar is accused of defrauding the federal government out of at least $3.6 million the company received to research vaccines against deadly diseases. The charges are contained in federal indictments unsealed today that also accuse GenPhar president Jian-Yun Dong and his estranged wife of making at least $31,000 in illegal campaign contributions to U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and his political action committee. Dong, who also is chief executive officer of GenPhar, is accused of submitting false claims to federal agencies, converting grant funds to his own use and committing wire fraud to scam the...

As a U.S. senator, John Edwards, a staunch defender of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, decried "a system in which huge amounts of money continue to flow unregulated into the campaign process and ordinary people feel their vote makes no difference anymore." Last week, a federal grand jury indicted the North Carolina Democrat for allegedly violating federal election law by funneling nearly $1 million in campaign contributions - in violation of the $2,300 federal campaign contribution limit per election - to conceal an extramarital affair while he ran for president in 2008. Edwards denies any guilt. "I did not...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 2 (UPI) -- If the Republican National Committee has its way, the already battered McCain-Feingold law will be stripped of one of its last remaining bastions, reducing the once powerful engine restraining the unbridled use of political contributions to a squeaky nub.

...my nutshell case for why McCain was functionally a Democrat: As a war hero who's hawkish on foreign policy, he more than matches Bush on the military front. As a reform-minded foe of corporate welfare, Big Tobacco, and the Republican right, he is peerless. McCain is Bush's most vociferous critic, voted against the president's tax cut, forced his hand on campaign finance reform, and federalized airport security in the face of White House opposition. He has co-sponsored numerous bills with Democrats--many of them in the presidential-aspirant class--requiring background checks at gun shows (Lieberman), a patients' bill of rights (Edwards), better...

John McCain said a reluctant goodbye to his longtime Senate colleague and “true friend” Russ Feingold on Tuesday. “I have to confess I think the Senate will be a much poorer place without Russ Feingold in it,” McCain said in a floor speech.

With most predicting he will go down in defeat, Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold earned compliments from his former GOP ally, Sen. John McCain, on Monday. The Arizona senator and 2008 GOP presidential nominee has campaigned hard for Republican Senate candidates this cycle while sharply criticizing their Democratic rivals, such as Sens. Barbara Boxer (Calif.) and Patty Murray (Wash.) But McCain saved kind words for Feingold (Wis.), with whom he worked on landmark campaign finance reform legislation eight years ago.

Russ Feingold has spent 18 years on the fringes of the Senate Democratic Caucus and one very hard year here in his home state, running the opposite of this year’s standard-issue Democratic campaign. But Feingold appears on the brink of going down in a national tide that’s blind to distinction. Infuriatingly to the Wisconsin Democrat, he’s been painted not as a leftist but as, of all things, a Washington insider. He’s been forced to defend a claim to independence that he feels is self-evident – “A guy did his doctorate at Princeton on this,” he says indignantly – against an...

National Democrats have asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate whether Arizona Sen. John McCain violated campaign finance laws when his campaign paid to run ads for Republican House candidates in Arizona — charges the McCain campaign said are “baseless.” The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee filed a FEC complaint Tuesday against McCain and his campaign committee, Friends of John McCain, because of recent ads backing Ruth McClung, the GOP nominee in Arizona’s 7th District, and Jesse Kelly, who is running in the 8th District. The complaint also asks the FEC to investigate whether McClung, Kelly and their respective campaign committees...

Comparisons are always a great way to show how differently the Old Media treats conservative and leftist politicians in America today and Obama's nomination of the Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court gives us another opportunity to see the Old Media's penchant to excoriate a Republican's actions while soft peddling and excusing away similar actions by a left-winger. In this case, it is instructive to see how the Old Media treated the claim that Sarah Palin banned books from the Wasilla library when she was mayor and today how it is treating the recently highlighted Supreme Court arguments made...

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 17, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Delayed, but not undaunted, the leadership of the Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress may force a Thursday vote on a new campaign finance bill, the Orwellian-named “Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act” that has pro-life, pro-family groups, and even the ACLU crying foul. Critics say the measure will have a chilling effect on political free speech, especially with mid-term elections just around the corner. Late Wednesday afternoon, National Right to Life Legislative Director Douglas Johnson told LifeSiteNews.com that the House Rules Committee was meeting at that moment to make...

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) on Monday accused the Supreme Court of a constitutional power grab. In a nearly hour-long floor speech, Specter said the court had ignored congressional will and ceded federal power to the presidency. The outgoing senator, defeated in a Democratic primary last month, criticized Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito by name, saying both had paid “lip service” to Congress during their confirmation hearings. Specter also urged his committee colleagues to take an especially sharp look at Solicitor General Elena Kagan, whose confirmation hearings for the Court begin next Monday. Otherwise, he said Congress risks...

Senator John McCain's record as a staunch conservative came under fire during his Yuma town hall meeting Friday evening at Booth Machinery, prompting the senator to fire back in his own defense with a level of fiery passion reminiscent of his younger days. “It seems to me that every time you run for election you tack very much to the right…” Steve Replogle, a member of the Colorado River Tea Party, told McCain during the town hall. “I have personal questions in regards to your positions. You have at times advocated cap and trade… amnesty, and the McCain-Feingold Bill made...

Editor: It's time to retire Senator John McCain, 73, who's been in office 24 years. Contrary to how he depicts himself, McCain has been a big government globalist during his entire senatorial career. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which is dedicated to one-world government and the relinquishment of all national sovereignties. McCain is a RINO (Republican In Name Only), a closet Democrat. Suddenly running scared, and with a $5 million campaign war chest to spend, McCain is blitzing TV with ads in support of securing the border: a 360-degree turnaround. If you're wondering why...