Last week a federal judge stepped in to decide when a political ad is a campaign ad, meaning it has to be reported to the Federal Election Commission, as Sunlight wrote on Friday.
The case was brought by a conservative, Virginia-based nonprofit that wants to run five political ads that appear to be aimed at criticizing President Obama without disclosing them to the FEC. The group, the Hispanic Leadership Fund, sued the FEC after the commissioners, beset by partisan gridlock, could not decide whether the ads were so called electioneering communications—a term of art meaning the ads have to ...
Continue readingFederal election commissioners versus the Federal Election Commission
In an odd twist even for a federal agency known for its fecklessness and divisiveness, some commissioners are challenging their own commission. Typically they merely oppose each other--along partisan lines.
Bizarrely, a group suing the Federal Election Commission submitted a statement supporting its case in court this week by Republican commissioner Donald McGahn. Which means McGahn is backing a suit against the body on which he serves.
The rigmarole started in June but came to a head Thursday, when a complicated case involving obscure aspects of campaign finance law landed at the Eastern District Court of Virginia. Judge T.S ...
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