Wednesday, June 27, 2007

McCain-Feingold takes a hit from SCOTUS

In FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N v. WISCONSIN RIGHT TO LIFE, INC., SCOTUS held that McCain-Feingold's ban on pre-election ads mentioning candidates by name and are paid for directly by corporations and unions was unconstitutional as it was applied to the advertisements at issue. The Court announced a new rule that would allow such ads to be banned only if the ad is "susceptible of no other interpretation than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate." In other words, the corporation could run an ad criticizing policies, but not urging that the electorate vote against the candidate. Seems like the courts will be very busy deciding whether ads fall into the former or latter categories. In my opinion, political speech fully protected under the First Amendment and McCain-Feingold is an affront to the Constitution.

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