Judge’s Ruling a Loss for Free Speech

Well, campaign contributions and TV ads, that’s the essence of political speech — and the federal government moved in with McCain-Feingold to control it on the basis that “money corrupts good people.” Yes, if it weren’t for the money in politics, why, the people would all be just clean and pure as the wind-driven snow. So get the money out of it and, voila! Our politicians will be saints. Well, the only problem in this is that the federal government by law, by constitutional amendment, cannot do this, and yet it was done, and it was signed into law by President Bush, and I’m sure one of the reasons was to try to send a little caveat, a little carrot over to Senator McCain for use in the future. So where it’s taken us now is: You have McCain-Feingold, the FEC looks at it, says, “Ah, this is crazy. You can’t go this far.” Now a federal judge has told the FEC, “You are wrong. The original law was right, and we the courts are going to decide who can say what when.”
Because McCain-Feingold is not the final statement, the courts are when people appeal it, and so the courts — which are supposed to defend the Constitution — now are instead participants in watering it down. The courts are now saying who can say what when, who can say what, and how much can be spent by whom when they say what it is they want to say and where they can say it. What the judge has done here is just arbitrarily substitute her views for the Federal Election Commission which has primary regulatory authority over the interpretation of campaign finance laws.
So the FEC now — not just the Constitution, but the FEC — has been trumped by a federal court. McCain and others, including the president, as it applies to 527s have complained that the FEC is not enforcing the McCain-Feingold bill aggressively enough. This judge appears to agree, at least as it applies to 12 parts of the law. So what this means is that the full force of McCain-Feingold probably at some point, who knows when, will go back into play, and the net result is for the present, everybody is confused — and the advice has gone down from on high at the federal government:
Just keep doing what you’re doing now till these new rules are interpreted. So this is really not good. I guess the crux of this is what I said: the courts are supposed to defend and protect the Constitution — as our McCain and Feingold and all these people that supported this. But, you know, there’s checks and balances in case people screw up. So the checks and balances in this case are supposed to be the court defending the Constitution. Instead the courts said, “No, we want to get in on this ourselves, and we’re going to determine who can say what, when, where, why, and how, and how much can be spent on all of this.” Hunky-dory, is it not, ladies and gentlemen? Just hunky-dory.
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