| Subject: news of the day 9/23/04 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 9/23/2004, 7:42 AM |
| To: election-law |
Ed Still has all the details here.
See this report (via Political Wire). You can find some links to my analysis of the constitutional issues raised by the amendment here.
A.P. offers this report.
Thanks to Steven Sholk for the pointer.
Howard Bashman has the scoop here.
One needs a scorecard to keep up with this. See here.
The New York Times offers this
report.
See Roll Call; The Los Angeles Times; and the Washington Post.
In response to my questions in the post below this one, some on the election law listserv have suggested that the bill extends much wider than simply to 527s, encompassing any organization "described in" section 527 of the tax code. That would be very wide indeed. (See also Bob Bauer's analysis.)
The constitutional question I posed below is among the most difficult ones facing the issue not just of 527s, but also of organizations that are already considered political committees under the FECA but who engage only in independent spending. If there is a constitutional right to spend unlimited sums on electioneering independently, why not a right to contribute unlimited sums to these efforts? I've written a bit about this here, and one of my current projects will delve into this question more deeply.-- Rick Hasen Professor of Law and William M. Rains Fellow Loyola Law School 919 South Albany Street Los Angeles, CA 90015-1211 (213)736-1466 (213)380-3769 - fax rick.hasen@lls.edu http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html http://electionlawblog.org