Join us on Sunlight Live as we cover the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing examining the impact that Super PACs and the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision are having on elections. The hearing, called "Taking Back Our Democracy: Responding to Citizens United and the Rise of Super PACs," will be held by the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights and will be covered live today at 2:30p.m. today.
Chariman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., will lead the subcommittee as two panels of witnesses testify to the state of our democracy and the influence of Super PACs ...
Continue readingWhat You Should Know About the DISCLOSE Act Part 5: What Can I Do?
Our democracy is threatened. Not by partisanship run rampant, not by an electorate that stays home, (although those are big... View Article
Continue readingThese Senators Were For Disclosure Before They Were Against It
Later today, the Senate is expected to vote along party lines to deny cloture to the DISCLOSE Act. Republicans have... View Article
Continue readingWhat You Should Know About the DISCLOSE Act Part 4: Is the DISCLOSE Act Constitutional?
This evening, the Senate will vote on the DISCLOSE Act, a bill that would shine a light on the dark... View Article
Continue readingDark money in the 2012 elections (so far)
As the Senate this week takes up the DISCLOSE Act, a bill that Sunlight and other open government groups are... View Article
Continue readingWhat You Should Know About the DISCLOSE Act Part 3: Does the DISCLOSE Act Favor Unions?
Opponents of the DISCLOSE Act are so desperate to keep the light from shining on massive amounts of secret, dark... View Article
Continue readingWhat You Should Know about the DISCLOSE Act Part 2: How does the DISCLOSE Act Shine a light on Super PACs and Dark Money?
As we wrote yesterday, the Senate will vote on the DISCLOSE Act on Monday. In a series of blog posts... View Article
Continue readingWhat You Should Know about the DISCLOSE Act Part 1: What is the DISCLOSE Act?
The Senate is expected to vote soon on the DISCLOSE Act, a bill that will shine a light on the... View Article
Continue readingMontana decision puts campaign finance reform in Congress’s court
With the Supreme Court's decision Monday not to revisit Citizens United, the high court appears to be a dead end for those seeking to address the problem of dark money in elections. Now, key congressmen and reformers say, Congress must act. But the prospects for lawmakers doing so appear slim.
In response to the decision, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., urged Congress to swiftly enact the DISCLOSE Act, a bill he's sponsoring to require organizations making election ads to disclose their underwriters. Whitehouse, seen at left with now Justice Elena Kagan when she was making courtesy calls before ...
Continue readingSupreme Court Fails to Correct or Amend its Citizens United Decision
The Supreme Court had a chance to right a wrong. Unfortunately, by a five to four vote, it declined. Today the court announced its decision to overturn a Montana law prohibiting corporate contributions in elections. The decision comes as no surprise. The Montana law was in direct conflict with the Court’s decision Citizens United, which gave corporations the right to spend unlimited sums of money on political activities, as long as they don’t contribute to candidates directly. But the same activist court that enlarged the scope of the issues presented by Citizens United in order to fabricate a reason to overturn a century of law, today took the narrow approach. By summarily reversing the decision of the Supreme Court of Montana, the court ignored an opportunity to reconsider two important issues in Citizens United: First, that independent expenditures do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption, and second, that current disclosure laws would provide “citizens with the information needed” to “see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.”
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