Last comment from me on the day's and evening's interesting string:

	1.  Why file the complaint now?  Because the ads are running now,
and it more rather than less prudent to act to protect legal interests at
the time they are being attacked.  Perhaps the lower court will stay its
decision; and perhaps not.  And perhaps if it does not, the Supreme Court
will. Or won't. In the meantime the law is as it has been declared by the
lower court that, after all, made a point of issuing an injunction
prohibiting FEC enforcement of the invalidated provisions (such as the
primary provisions). The point here is not that the ads are "devastating":
the point is that as the DSCC contends, under the backup definition, they
are not legal.  The FECA does not rest judgment of the lawfulness of an
action, on its putative actual harm to the complainant's political standing.
Nor would DSCC wish the Club for Growth, or any other such organization, to
assume that because some people object to the law as declared by the
three-judge court, with the result that a stay might issue, or because some
others find the present state of affairs confusing, the holdings now in
effect may be disregarded.

		NB. The complaint is very short, simply presenting the FEC
with the text of the ad; setting out the provision in question; and noting
also the commentary on Club for Growth's election-related purposes and
activities that appears in some of the separate opinions.  

	2.  On the merits generally of the approaches to issue advertising
(and now turning to a more academic point, not bearing on the DSCC
Complaint): It is of course tempting to have a "bright-line" that escapes
vagueness issues.  The constitutional issues presented by the concern with
electioneering communications do not, of course, end with vagueness; and
there is supporting structure to Kollar-Kotelly's argument that is truly
troubling.  Bear in mind that she states that "corruption" for purposes of
the strict scrutiny may be virtually assumed, on the grounds, that it is
"inherent" in any "system of private donor financing". Sometimes she focuses
on money-for-access, but this is not an element in all of her formulations.

	So if Congress can plausibly maintain that an activity has some
"influence" (or elsewhere in her opinion, "significant influence") on
federal elections (not hard to argue with many forms of issue advertising),
Congress can act and courts should defer.  It must meet a "narrowly
tailored" requirement, to be sure, which it does by specifying very exactly
the conduct it wishes to proscribe or limit.  What that means is that within
this overall scheme of Congressional authority to limit campaign finance--an
extremely broad authority in her view--the narrow tailoring requirement
becomes an invitation for Congress to specify in some detail conduct it does
not like and restrict it.  And it can do so, she argues, "predictively",
based on harms not established but hypothesized.  
	
	In other narrow tailoring is really more like a vehicle for the
delivery of precision guided regulatory munitions.  The applications are
potentially unlimited.  Example: Candidates who win cannot raise money
within 60 days (90?  The entire cycle?) of their election from contributors
who supported their opponent.  Reason: corruption, in that the private
interest may feel (and the candidate may intend) that it must surrender the
monies to build the relationship, or risk having no access or worse.
Example: Contributors may not provide contributions to opposing candidates
in the same race.  Reason: the appearance if not the reality is to "hedge"
bets so that the contributors can maintain access to both. In both cases, a
Court might conclude that on these specific facts, the contributions in
question lack the "speech-by-proxy" character that sustained the limits
under Buckley, and are so clearly connected to illicit deals for influence
that more stringent Congressional treatment is justified. (I suspect that
some I know would be perfectly happy with rules of this kind.)

	In sum, "bright line tests", within a framework of very broad
Congressional authority to regulate campaign finance, need not end with the
30/60 days formulation of McCain-Feingold. And under the Kollar-Kotelly
jurisprudence, it wouldn't.

	The alternative Lowenstein-Hasen formulation might address some of
these concerns with the electioneering communications provision (primary),
but would not cover all the potential applications of the jurisprudential
principle.

	The hybrid Lowenstein/Hasen formulation addresses those concerns to
some extent for expenditures like electioneering communications, but it is
solemwha