Campaign finance regulation

Happy new year, DFL style

Featured image Reflecting the Democrat mania to control free speech, Minnesota Democrats enacted a law conflicting with the proposition that corporations have a constitutional right to speak independently about politics. I learned about the law from the December 18 Wall Street Journal column “Minnesota’s Xenophobic Restrictions on Speech” by Brad Smith and Eric Wang. The “xenophobia” flagged in the Journal headline is entirely pretextual. The subhead homes in on the problem: “[The] »

The Left Is Awash In Money

Featured image There is vastly more money on the Left than the Right. You can see this across the country, but Minnesota provides a useful case study. It was the topic of Episode 2 of the American Experiment podcast. In the 2022 election cycle, if you add up all of the various sources of money as best public records allow, the Democrats and their supporters spent two to three times as much »

Can the Democrats’ Structural Advantages Be Overcome?

Featured image American Experiment’s Bill Glahn has done a detailed analysis of campaign finance in Minnesota’s 2022 election cycle. He provided links to his findings here. In this Twitter thread, he sums up his thoughts about the structural advantages that Democrats enjoy in Minnesota, and, to one degree or another, across much of the United States. If you sometimes wonder how a party whose ideas are so awful can remain electorally competitive, »

Ezra Levant tells them to stuff it

Featured image Ezra Levant writes: I wrote a best-selling book about Justin Trudeau in the last election. After the election, I received a letter by registered mail notifying me that I was being investigated for that book. Trudeau’s elections commissioner claimed it was an illegal campaign activity and demanded that I submit to an interrogation. So I went to Elections Canada’s Ottawa headquarters last week, where I was grilled for an hour »

Let’s Prosecute Google For Illegal Campaign Contributions

Featured image If we are going to start prosecuting illegal campaign contributions–sadly, too late to go after Barack Obama’s two scofflaw campaigns–maybe we should begin by charging Google and its executives with federal crimes. Earlier today, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on, among other things, Google’s apparent attempt to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 presidential election. Tyler O’Neil at PJ Media reports: On Tuesday, Google CEO »

Will Trump be indicted for alleged campaign finance violations?

Featured image Scott has described Andy McCarthy’s article “Why Trump is likely to be indicted by Manhattan US Attorney.” McCarthy does the heavy lifting associated with a legal analysis of whether Trump has, in fact, violated campaign finance law, as the Manhattan U.S. Attorney seems to believe. The six observations I want to add involve light lifting, at most, but may be of interest even so. First, as McCarthy says, Justice Department »

Trump’s tangled (campaign finance) web

Featured image Andrew McCarthy has a deep reading of the 40-page sentencing memo filed filed by New York prosecutors in the campaign finance case against Michael Cohen. Reading the memo with a trained eye, Andy explains “Why Trump is likely to be indicted by Manhattan US Attorney.” I posted the memo and summarized it in Cohen can and cant (1)” Andy goes much further than I was able to in making out »

Cohen can & cant (1)

Featured image The government filed two sentencing memos late yesterday afternoon in the cases brought against Michael Cohen. The Special Counsel referred the investigation of the largest basket of Cohen’s misconduct to the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (the prosecutors, as I will refer to them). The 38-page sentencing memo filed by the prosecutors is below. It is a biting document. Despite his plea »

Get Money Out of Politics? It’s a Thought

Featured image The Democrats are always telling us they want to get money out of politics, but I don’t know why. They are the ones who are rolling in cash. The nonentity Beto O’Rourke raised more money than any Senate candidate in American history. Untold millions have flowed into Florida to support the socialist Andrew Gillum. Here in Minnesota, the air waves are full of Democratic Party ads bashing Republican candidates. When »

Trump Is Right About Stormy Daniels

Featured image In an interview today, President Trump made a very important point about his payoff to Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels. As usual, he wasn’t particularly clear, but the point comes through: I don’t know if you know but I tweeted about the payments. But they didn’t come out of campaign. In fact, my first question when I heard about it was did they come out of the campaign because that »

Wisconsin John Doe update

Featured image Republican Wisconsin State Senator Tom Tiffany has kept us updated on the political aftermath of Wisconsin’s fascist John Doe investigation. We took a look back on the investigation, most recently, in “Deborah Jordahl: Wisconsin’s Comey-over.” Now Senator Tiffany provides this current update: I promised to update you on events surrounding the John Doe investigation in Wisconsin. In December the Wisconsin Department of Justice issued a scathing report about the handling »

Deborah Jordahl: Wisconsin’s Comey-over

Featured image We have followed recent events in Wisconsin’s scandalous John Doe investigation of Governor Walker’s allies and supporters here (also citing background on the scandal) and here. State senator Tom Tiffany then updated us on the scandal’s aftermath. Now Senator Tiffany has directed our attention to Matt Kittle’s current MacIver Institute report “In John Doe’s shadow: Showdown looms in bitter battle over bureaucrats’ jobs.” Senator Tiffany has also forwarded Deborah Hawley »

What happened in Wisconsin: Sen. Tiffany comments

Featured image Shortly after posting “What happened in Wisconsin, cont’d” yesterday morning, we received the message below from Wisconsin state Senator Tom Tiffany. Senator Tiffany’s message updates and comments on the story so far. I am grateful for Senator Tiffany’s comments and thought they might be of interest to readers following this important story. Senator Tiffany writes: Thank you for your continued interest in the John Doe situation in Wisconsin. You ask »

What happened in Wisconsin, cont’d

Featured image Last week I noted that by order dated December 6 a Wisconsin judge unsealed an 88-page report on the state Department of Justice’s (WisDoJ) investigation into a leak of sealed evidence from the politically motivated “John Doe” investigation of Gov. Scott Walker, his supporters, and various conservative groups related to his recall election campaign. The 88-page report is posted here. The investigation was triggered by the Guardian’s publication of leaked »

What happened in Wisconsin

Featured image On Wednesday, a Wisconsin judge unsealed an 88-page report on the state Department of Justice’s (WIDoJ) investigation into a leak of sealed evidence from the politically motivated “John Doe” investigation of Gov. Scott Walker, his supporters, and various conservative groups related to his recall election campaign. The 88-page report is posted here. The report lacks an executive summary. The pseudonymous Warren Henry summarizes and comments on the report for the »

Cleta Mitchell: Brazile describes “a massive violation of federal law” that “triggers criminal penalties”

Featured image I’m not on Facebook, but I was told that Cleta Mitchell’s page contains a brief discussion of the legal implications of the Hillary Clinton-DNC scandal. As many of our readers know, Cleta Mitchell is a star lawyer. She has played a leading role in defending conservatives targeted by the IRS under the Obama administration and in pushing to hold the IRS accountable for the targeting. Here is Cleta’s take on »

Return of the Power Line Show: Two Cheers for Tammany Hall!

Featured image The dormant Power Line podcast is back up today with a fresh edition, featuring me in conversation with Jonathan Rauch of The Atlantic and the Brookings Institution, talking about his new ebook, Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Backroom Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy. You can download it for free from this link! I like Jon’s counterintuitive thinking, namely, that 40 years of political “reform” from people like »