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Article: John McCain's war on political speech: how the Arizona senator and other campaign finance reformers use the law to muffle critics and trample the First Amendment.
- Article from:
- Reason
- Article date:
- December 1, 2005
- Author:
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During Bradley A. Smith's legendarily testy 2000 confirmation hearing for a slot on the Federal Election Commission (FEC), senators piled on the insults like pork for home-state contractors. None were more effusive in their outrage than the Glimmer Twins of campaign finance reform, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), whose eponymous legislation, also known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, has helped usher in a repressive age of limits on explicitly political speech.
Putting Smith, a Harvard-trained lawyer who was then 42 years old, on the commission responsible for making sure campaigns followed the law would be "akin to ...