Redstate

Can we bar lawyers from the FEC? Please?

By krempasky Posted in Archived | FEC | SpeechNow — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Odds are, you've not been following the *other* story at the Federal Election Commission (the primary one being the fact that thanks to Democratic incompetence in the Senate, the FEC doesn't have a quorum. Alas) - the direct challenge to speech limits being driven by SpeechNow.org.

But now they've got some good news: the FEC has released a draft opinion (.pdf) as well as a dissent authored by FEC Chairman Dave Mason (.pdf) (as an aside, the only non-lawyer on the Commission, I believe)

On one hand, Mason's excellent dissent would make an excellent approach to regulation, but even if the FEC weren't crippled by Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and company - I'd have a hard time seeing 4 votes for it.

On the other hand - the draft from the General Counsel may well serve SpeechNow even better. As Bob Bauer puts it,

"Having this draft can’t but help SpeechNow at the next stage in this fight. Apart from having dutifully checked with the agency, the organization can show, further, that the agency has little to say of any interest on the subject but confines itself to defending its statutory turf. The draft gives no sense of the stakes of this confrontation: all of the passion, all of the intellectual energy, is found on the other side, where SpeechNow is found. "

The notion that the support and defense of speech in all its forms (nevermind the most precious speech of all, that driving our politics) should have the upper hand is a very welcome thing indeed.