Score One for Free Speech
A three-judge federal court panel took another bite out of McCain-Feingold today, ruling unconstitutional, as applied to the case before it, that provision of the statute that prohibits corporations and others from engaging in “electioneering communications," defined as:
any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication that refers to a candidate for federal office and that is broadcast within 30 days of a federal primary election or 60 days of a federal general election in the jurisdiction in which that candidate is running for office.
In other words, the statute prohibited soft-money "issue ads" that mentioned the name of a candidate, within 60 days of the election. The case is Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC, and it has already been up to the Supreme Court once. The District Court panel first upheld the challenged statute, relying on the Supremce Court's McConnell decision, but the Supreme Court reversed, holding that the District Court had misinterpreted McConnell.
There is more about the case here. On the technical significance of this decision, I will defer to others who have studied campaign finance issues more than I have. The merits, however, seem abundantly clear. This is the ad that the FEC held to be illegal:
On television, a man prepares for work as he reads the paper, shines shoes and pays bills. The voice of a narrator chimes in to explain."There are a lot of judicial nominees out there who can’t go to work...because a group of U.S. Senators is filibustering – blocking qualified nominees from a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote.”
“Contact Senators Feingold and Kohl and tell them to oppose the filibuster,” the narrator says.
Any statute that makes that ad illegal is, it seems to me, plainly unconstitutional, regardless of who paid for it or how many days before an election it ran. It is quite remarkable that such a law could have been passed by Congress and signed by the President.
Via Power Line News.
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