Catching you up on clips, commentary and news of the day. Sign up for the daily email update from Scribe. Ronald Reagan, champion of freedom – Edwin Meese III Riding the Chinese tiger – Kim Holmes Call it Isolationism! – Marion Smith Marital Marshall Plan – Chuck Donovan and Kathryn Jean Lopez Obama’s Enemies List of Contractors’ Donations – Hans von Spakovsky Obama Hints at Deeper Cuts to Defense Spending – Leo Shane III Cornyn shut out of Senate hearing on new air regs that effect Texas – Dave Michaels Clarence …
The House Rules Committee met yesterday to set the rules for debate on the DISCLOSE Act. True to form, the committee kept the public out of a hearing about a bill intended to promote “transparency” in elections. According to the Center for Competitive Politics, they sent one of their staffers to attend the hearing, but she was barred from entry. Apparently, as CCP pointedly said, “their version of democracy wasn’t strong enough to allow regular folks to attend their rubber-stamp hearing for the bill.” The Rules Committee decided to allow …
Yesterday, the federal district court for the District of Columbia issued an injunction against the Federal Election Commission in SpeechNow.org v. FEC. As a former Commissioner on the FEC, many people would probably be surprised to learn that I am almost always pleased when my former agency loses a case. My view is based on what I learned from two years of trying to properly interpret and enforce the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), the campaign finance law that governs anyone running for Congress or the White House. That is …
Last week, eight former commissioners from the Federal Election Commission (including me) tried to warn a committee in the House of Representatives that a bill it was about to vote on was not only unnecessary, but so burdensome to the right of political speech and advocacy that it violates the First Amendment. We summarized our criticisms of the “Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Election Act,” or DISCLOSE Act (H.R. 5175), in this commentary in the Wall Street Journal. As we pointed out, the DISLOSE Act not …
The “First Principles” on which this country were founded are the principles that the Heritage Foundation works to advance everyday. In today’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision of Citizens United v. FEC, a conservative majority on the Supreme Court upheld some of the most important principles: the right to engage in free speech, particularly political speech, and the right to freely associate. It is no surprise that these rights are in the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. The Founders, who had fought a …
Bloggers and web site operators may support, oppose, link to, and work cooperatively with federal political candidates. This freedom was reaffirmed when the newly re-constituted Federal Election Commission released its first two enforcement cases August 12. The Commission’s refusal to regulate blogging and internet sites is not new, but it is notable is that the pro-blogger decision was made within a week or two of the new Commission taking office. Of the scores of items on its docket, the new Commission chose to address this one first: quite likely because …
