New Abuses of the Presidency

Several weeks ago, in her Wall Street Journal column Potomac Watch, Kim Strassel broke yet another important story regarding federal politics.

In her piece entitled Obama's 'Gangster Politics,' Strassel disclosed Wonderboy's expected executive order to require companies applying for government contracts "to list their political donations as a condition to bidding for government contracts."

No such requirements are in sight for unions whose members work on such contracts.

Senate Minority Leader McConnell actually called it "almost gangster politics."

It surely is that. And very transparent.

It's such a blatant move to inhibit businesses from donating to Republicans that even liberal Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins is incensed. Imagine that!

Seriously, the two-year history of campaign contributions is clearly meant, not to clean up political finance, as Wonderboy's order alleges, but only to chill sources of GOP funding.

And, of course, if some companies choose not to bid on federal contracts in order to protect their campaign contribution records, then taxpayers will probably pay more for projects, thanks to less competition.

Just what is good about this attempt to selectively intimidate business, but not unions or non-profits, into either being penalized for contributing to non-Democratic campaign funds by being forbidden or not to bid on, or denied federal work, or not making those contributions in the first place?

Court Takes Back First Amendment Rights Congress Took Away

Whenever New York Senator Chuck Schumer complains about and is against something, you can be pretty sure that something is good for you.

In this case, that "something" was the completely unconstitutional element of the more than a decade-old McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

The bill baselessly banned corporations (and unions) from publishing anything mentioning a candidate in a federal election within a fairly short period of time prior to said election.

Schumer and his cronies, taking the free speech-robbing law as their baseline, are screaming that the Supreme Court has erred on the side of allowing large organizations- both corporate and labor- to swamp individuals by their prospectively large influences in campaigns.

However, Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer had it right when he explained that the court has quite simply gutted yet another attempt by Congress to suppress free speech.

Krauthammer went on to note that laws such as McCain-Feingold, while appearing to allow more weight for the individual, in fact give loosely-defined and overseen powers to federal government officials to police campaign speech. Political speech, he observed, is precisely the sort that incumbents like to muzzle. So the Supreme Court's ruling is a victory for American voters, because it removes a rather longstanding and unconstitutional attempt by Congress to control political speech in elections.

Why shouldn't corporations be allowed the same rights to political speech as persons? Corporations have interests, owners who are harmed by government, and have legitimate views which are entwined with their private property rights. Many billions of dollars of America's private property are owned via the corporate form.

Why, then, should that form, and those assets' owners be forbidden to speak out on their own behalf?

They clearly should not. Nor should unions.

In fact, if anything, the recent court decision striking down the offensive part of McCain-Feingold somewhat levels the playing field. It's well known that unions often use their funds and members in ways focused on getting out the vote and influencing elections in ways that corporations cannot match. Now, corporations are allowed to return to the political fray and provide an offset to the time, energy and money which unions like SEI, AFSCME and other liberal, Democrat-leaning labor organizations have been dumping into their chosen candidates' campaigns for years.

Rather than be misled by Schumer's lies and complaints, cheer instead for the return of an important freedom to the American political scene, and free political speech to the First Amendment.

John Edwards' Little Campaign Spending Problem

Someone bought John Edwards' mistress (and her baby) and her baby's reputed father expensive, multi-million dollar homes in Santa Barbara.

Where did the money come from? Who paid, and why?


It looks like Federal campaign finance laws have been violated by Edwards' moves to hush up this scandal over the past two years.

From what I've read and heard so far, Edwards' campaign finance chief wrote the checks for these homes from the campaign's funds.

Unfortunately for John-boy, that makes the purchases of those homes a potential violation of Federal campaign finance laws, because no campaign activity was performed pursuant to the purchases.

It's not a big stretch to imagine the deal Edwards offered his mistress. It may have been something like,

'I'll get you out of North Carolina and buy a very nice home for you and your/my/our baby, plus provide you with a form of regular child support. In return, you are never to take a paternity test for the baby. If you do, the deal is off, and will be unwound.'

The other home? Probably to provide plausible evidence for the cover story that a campaign aide fathered the mistress' child.

But Edwards has a problem, if this is remotely close to the truth. If his mistress did have a paternity test taken, and the baby proved to be Edwards', then pulling the trigger on the arrangement makes him look heartless. He'd be putting his own child out on the curb in Santa Barbara.

On the other hand, if his mistress had the test administered, and it was negative for Edwards, then he might renege on the deal, as he bore substantially less public ignominy if he was clearly not the woman's baby's father.

Suffice to say, John Edwards' web of deceit is growing more and more tangled and potentially dangerous to him by the day.

But for prominent members and Presidential candidates of the Democratic party, it seems to be pretty much par for their behavior.

Obama on Public Funding of His Campaign: Change You Can Bet On

It's official. Obama's latest lie is a matter of record.

Last summer, the rookie Senator from Illinois promised to restrict his Presidential campaign, if he became his party's nominee, to public funds, if his opponent would agree to do so as well.

Today, Obama 'changed' his tune. And lied. He demonstrated that what he says at one point in time about something he can control, can change whenever it suits him.

Is this change you can believe in?

Or merely politically expedient change you can count on?

The latter, I think is now clear.

Obama's a liar and a conventional backroom-dealing, expedient politician.

McCain, The NY Times, & Campaign Funding

Last week's news was full of the ill-advised, largely-unsourced New York Times smear...or, as a liberal would call it, 'story-' regarding John McCain and a female lobbyist with business before the Senate Commerce Committee back when the Republicans were in the majority.

At least one of my liberal Democratic friends avers that the Times is 'the national paper of record,' and 'unbiased,' so if it prints a story, then it's true.

Honestly, this is one problem in our country today. Liberals are so far left that they can't even see how slanted and liberal the three broadcast networks and the Times have been for at least two decades.

There is effectively no 'moderate' newspaper anymore. Most of the daily print media is liberal, while the Wall Street Journal editorial page tends conservative. Its news pages are a toss up.

Among television networks, the ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN are all solidly liberal, while Fox is news-neutral, and even issue analysis-neutral, but editorially largely conservative.

The fact that the McCain story elicited as much furor against the Times as it did questions of McCain's conduct, which is generally considered above reproach, tells you what you need to know about the Times smear piece.

However, as the Wall Street Journal noted last week, the Times story obscured the real McCain story in this campaign season. That story involves how his campaign is twisting itself into a pretzel in order to try to raise funds while conforming with campaign finance laws co-authored by....John McCain.

I have to say that I am actually pleased to see this. Maybe now McCain will stop being so sanctimonious and 'holier than thou' about campaign funding legislation.

From the passage of McCain-Feingold, I felt that both co-sponsors should be summarily disqualified from running for President on the bases of idiocy and attempting to deprive the American voter of his/her freedom of speech. And, in fact, portions of the ill-advised law have been struck down precisely for first amendment violations.

McCain is currently involved in sleights of hand such as filing an intent to request public funding in the general election, in order to use that intent as collateral to borrow money now. But he's not actually, according to his campaign, declaring to use public funds.

Earlier in the race, he pledged his donor lists as collateral for a loan.

Of course, if McCain had used the common sense with which he evidently wasn't born, he would have not only not sponsored his campaign finance 'reform' bill, but repealed the existing laws. And, then, passed a simple bill allowing any candidate to take any amount of money from anyone, provided the candidate publishes, within two days of the donation, in two venues- online and in print- the name, address, phone contact number of the donor and amount of the donation.

That's all you really need. If the Chinese army wanted to fund Bill Clinton's Presidential campaign, so be it. I'd rather just know it, than know that Slick Willie lied about it and covered up the contributions.

So now McCain is caught in his own web of complex, silly campaign finance regulations. It serves him right.

Too bad the Times didn't print that story. Easily sourced, important, and relevant.

Guess that disqualified it from a Times cover piece, eh?