| Subject: news of the day 9/24/04 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 9/24/2004, 9:13 AM |
| To: election-law |
See here.
John Fund offers this column.
Here is a taste, and don't miss the third paragraph:
But at least one independent-expenditure group claims to be completely positive in its approach and outlook. Let Freedom Ring, based in suburban Philadelphia, isn't spending anything to attack Sen. Kerry. Instead it is reaching out to people of faith to tout the record of President Bush. "We want to counteract the mudslinging that turns many Christians off of the political process," says Colin Hanna, its president. "Religious conservatives are a unique kind of 'swing voter' in that they don't swing between Bush and Kerry, but between Bush and not voting."
To further separate itself from 527 groups, Let Freedom Ring was formed as a 501c4, a nonprofit designation that allows groups to spend up to 49% of their donations on political activity without having to disclose contributors. It is attracting wealthy Christians who don't want to be seen as political but who are willing to support positive messages. Still, the group is agreeing to voluntarily disclose the names of contributors who finance any political TV ads they run.
The Washington Post editorializes here.
Bob Bauer responds (and also comments on the 501(c) issue related to
the proposed 527 legislation) here).
Thomas Cmar has posted Toward
a Small Donor Democracy: The Past and Future of Incentive Programs for
Small Political Contributions on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
For Supreme Court and election law junkies, the Vanity Fair article is a very interesting read (though I can't say I disagree with Will Baude's comment that the article has a "relentlessly partisan tone"). As a matter of pure prurient interest, it is hard to beat the article's quoting of Justice Scalia as saying the following about the majority opinion: "Like we used to say in Brooklyn...it's a piece of shit." Scalia denies disparaging the majority opinion. He signed a concurrence raising a separate rationale for ending the recount.
I think drafting histories can be useful, and have used them in my work, in understanding apparent gaps or inconsistencies in opinions. In this regard, the most valuable insight of the VF article, if it is to be believed, is how the dissenters dealt with the equal protection argument put forward by the majority. The article suggests that the dissenters failed to respond to the equal protection argument because it was not clear until near the end that this (rather than the Article II argument) would be the basis for the majority opinion. The article also states that Justice Kennedy added a line about seven justices agreeing with the equal protection rationale (but not the remedy) too late in the process for the dissenting Justices to do anything about it. (It states that it originally said 8 justices, until Justice Stevens protested, and later failed to concur in the relevant portion of Justice Breyer's dissent.) Regarding the equal protection language in the Souter and Breyer opinions, the article also notes that "whether [Justices Souter and Breyer had] come to believe that judging ballots under different criteria was really unconstitutional, or were still chasing after Kennedy, was never clear."
Finally, the article states that Justice Scalia convinced Justice Ginsburg to drop a footnote on disenfranchised black voters. (The article states that this "Al Sharpton footnote," as Scalia allegedly called it, was ostensibly wounding the Court's credibility.)
Of perhaps most interest is the fact that these clerks---again
assuming the truth of the reporting---have chosen to talk about such a
recent event on the Court involving sitting Justices with such detail
and candor.
-- 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