« Ind. Law - More on: "Hammond's red light camera ordinance not legal" | Main | Environment - More on: Air permit request raises concerns in Allen County »
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Courts - "Conservatives plot on campaign finance"
A story today in Politico, reported by Jeanne Cummings, features a photo of Terre Haute attorney James Bopp Jr., described as "making a name for himself by challenging federal and state campaign finance laws." Some quotes from p. 2:
Bopp recently won a Supreme Court case that loosened the rules around corporate interest groups’ ability to run issue advertisements in the weeks before Election Day. And last week, he filed a lawsuit on behalf of another 527 organization, challenging a requirement that it disclose its donors. The group — Real Truth About Obama Inc. — intends to run advertisements critical of Democrat Barack Obama’s support of abortion rights.With Bopp already in action, the arrival of [former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley] Smith “seemingly doubled the number of challenges to campaign finance restrictions,” said Paul S. Ryan, an associate legal counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, which supports the regulations. “There is plenty of work to do,” Ryan explained.
Richard L. Hasen, a campaign finance expert at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the rightward shift on the Supreme Court is the fuel behind the spate of legal challenges.
“What the Center for Competitive Politics can do and is trying to do is to bring the right kind of cases before the court,” Hasen said, so Chief Justice John Roberts and his new coalition of conservatives can “knock them out of the park.”
Critics of the Smith-Bopp campaigns say their handiwork could roll back campaign finance laws to the Watergate era, when there were scant public records of who was giving money to politicians, no limits on how much they could give and little, if any, disclosure of how the money was spent.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 12, 2008 09:15 AM
Posted to Courts in general