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The Corrupt Mr. Whitehouse

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is corrupt and he wants everyone to know it. The Ocean State senator so declared recently in The Nation magazine. According to Mr. Whitehouse, despite warnings by conscientious lawmakers like him, the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC ruling flung open the corporate-corruption door. And now he and his 99 feeble-minded colleagues simply can’t be trusted when greenbacks start flying to independently support or oppose them. Presumably — for the booty of some slick adverts supporting his next election — “Big Oil” can depend on Senator Whitehouse to ignore his party, ideology, and constituents the next time it wants a government goodie

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#daily caller phj #campaign finance #first amendment #corruption

Larry Lessig: Tammany Hall’s 2016 Presidential Candidate

They were heady days. Over the 2014 July 4th weekend Harvard law professor and now Democrat presidential candidate Larry Lessig celebrated the results of his grand political crowdfunding experiment. The cyber-law guru had set the holiday deadline to raise $6 million dollars to seed a Super PAC that would elect candidates vowing to end the corrupting influence of political money. Mayday PAC would be ‘the Super PAC to end all Super PACs.’

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#misc phj #lessig #lessig2016 #campaign finance

Campaign Finance Restrictions Fit Like a Straitjacket

In the Sacramento Bee, Professor Jessica Levinson recently compared federal campaign finance to a custom-tailored suit ripped and shredded by a zealous Supreme Court and now badly in need government alterations. Her sartorial analogy, however, is too clever by half. For most, her preferred arrangement would function like a straitjacket. The current system may not be glove-snug, but it’s ‘reformer’ policies that created the tailoring dilemma.

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#misc phj #campaign finance #feca

Conservatives Beware: The Speech Police Are Coming For You

Imagine this: Amidst a close election, a partisan government lawyer with questionable authority investigates a conservative nonprofit supporting a political candidate. The government theorizes the candidate and organization are communicating too much—”coordinating” in legal parlance. A court eventually exonerates the group finding the government’s theory onerous. But it does so only after a years-long investigation that clouds the group’s operations, impedes its fundraising efforts, and ultimately negates its ability to influence voters during the election.

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#the federalist phj #free speech #campaign finance #corruption #john doe

Larry Lessig: Lost in Middle Earth

Larry Lessig’s latest idea is for once apt — at least in its analogy to fantasy fiction. He has apparently given up on Mayday PAC’s original idea to elect reform-minded Congressmen and women, and now looks to the executive for deliverance. But Lessig’s change of focus does little to ameliorate the structural problems inherent in his misunderstanding of politics, myopic view of Americans, and lack of quantifiable evidence.

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#misc phj #lessig #lawrence lessig #campaign finance #frodo baggins

Political Corruption, Equality, and Campaign Finance Reform — A Response to Larry Lessig

In the Atlantic last week, Harvard law professor Larry Lessig dissected Hillary Clinton’s prospects as a campaign finance reform torch carrier. Lessig argues the political system is inherently corrupt impeding America’s promise of equal citizenship. He wonders if Ms. Clinton can effectively champion reform given questions surrounding the Clinton Foundation and her status as a long-time Washington insider.

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#misc phj #lessig #lawrence lessig #campaign finance #corruption

CREW affiliate attempts to stifle speech in Colorado

When Hillary Clinton-votarist David Brock “acquired” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) last August DC insiders immediately recognized the significance. Politico described it as “a major power play that aligns liberal muscle more fully behind the Democratic Party

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#rnla phj #crew

Going Rogue At The FEC

“I’m speechless,” exhorted Federal Election Commissioner Ellen Weintraub at last Thursday’s public meeting. Umbrage-laden retorts have come to define public pronouncements by Ms. Weintraub and fellow Democrat Commissioner Ann Ravel. Weintraub was responding to Republican Commissioner Lee E. Goodman’s concern that resolving enforcement complaints by hard deadlines would disproportionately harm conservative groups — currently 49 of the 65 docketed actions.

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#daily caller phj #fec #mccain feingold

The FEC, ‘the system,’ and the cave

Amidst alleged intractable difficulties, FEC Chairwoman Ann Ravel has been hosting vanity panels and blitzing reverent media with woebegone tales of Commission “paralysis,” “dysfunction,” and “public betrayal.” Despite her full schedule, however, her quest’s philosophical underpinnings remain in tatters.

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#rnla phj #lessig #lawrence lessig #fec

FEC dysfunction a California dream

As the saying goes you can’t swing a dead cat around Washington, DC without hitting someone—a journalist, reformer, professor, or Chairwoman—complaining about the Federal Election Commission’s dysfunction. (One particularly uninformed reporter stated the Commission had come to a “complete halt.”).

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#rnla phj #fec #campaign finance

Free Speech For Me, But Not For Thee

The pilot episode of “The West Wing” features fictional progressive President Josiah Bartlet lecturing caricatured Christian leaders on America’s commitment to freedom of expression—no matter how personally distasteful the expression. The scene portrayed a familiar banality: progressives are the First Amendment’s proud defenders. Left-wing intellectuals populating America’s most elite universities join Hollywood liberals as professed sentinels of free expression. In particular, a trio of Harvard law professors supplies the intellectual bedrock of most current First Amendment understanding.

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#lawrence lessig #lessig #free speech #first amendment #the federalist phj

Jossey: Citizens United hardly a boogeyman

January 31, 2015

Lynn Evans took to these pages to bemoan the effect of Citizens United v. FEC on the body-politic and the campaign finance system. Her thesis is emblematic of the case's common misrepresentations.

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#misc phj #citizens united

Inside The Dark-Money Consortium Backing Hillary Clinton

April 13, 2015

Revelations then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had “home brewed” her official emails caught even the most cynical political operatives off guard. The audacious disclosure-evasion plan impugned her already shaky performance at State and produced another black eye for the self-professed “most transparent administration in history.” One can only imagine how her newly announced presidential campaign will evade discussing this and other Clinton-style shenanigans.

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#the federalist #the federalist phj #campaign finance #hillary clinton #democracy alliance #david brock #crew #brennan center

Don’t Let Prosecutors Terrorize Citizens Under Secret Charges

February 19, 2015

In the predawn hours of October 3, 2013, armed deputies raided the homes of R.J. Johnson, Deborah Jordahl, and several others in a paramilitary style blitz across Wisconsin. The detainees weren’t terrorists bent on mass murder or the overthrow of the government. The agents weren’t looking for contraband narcotics or illegal firearms. In fact, no one was quite sure what they wanted, but agents got it all; computers, phones, business records, files, and communications dating back years. Deputies told the raided subjects to keep quiet or there would be consequences, as a pedophile might tell his prey.

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#the federalist #the federalist phj #scott walker #scotus #john doe #prosecutorial abuse

The Government’s War on Speech: Citizens United at Five

January 21, 2015

The most reviled Supreme Court case in America history is undoubtedly Dred Scott v. Sanford. The ruling, which essentially denied U.S. citizenship to an entire group of Americans, fractured the nation, and presaged the bloodiest episode in American history. In 2013, Massachusetts Senate candidate Ed Markey analogized Dred Scott to Citizens United v. FEC—a case involving the rights of people and groups to criticize government officials. Although the comparison may seem outlandish, he was hardly alone in hyperbolic denunciation. An environmental group, for example, asserted the case’s ramifications could endanger the continued existence of fish in the ocean.

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#the federalist #the federalist phj #citizens united #doj #free speech #irs #first amendment #tea party

EPA’s war on property rights

04/10/2012

“War,” as political metaphor, is most often a tasteless accessory that demeans the term to those who have actually experienced it (“war on poverty,” “war on drugs”). But to the extent it connotes a full-fledged attempt to subjugate a group of people by depriving them of their rights, the term may appropriately describe the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) posture toward landowners.

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#epa #property rights #scotus #daily caller phj

The courts should do more to defend economic freedom

04/25/2012

District of Columbia Circuit Court Judge Janice Rogers Brown raised eyebrows recently with a concurring opinion in an otherwise mundane economic-regulation case. Here is the passage that got keyboards tapping:

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#economic freedom #new deal #daily caller phj

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