Campaign finance advocates continue to push a variety of reforms to combat the effects of last year’s Citizens United ruling, including challenging the tax status of outside spending groups.
The confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan provided a miniature seminar on constitutional law. Kagan was asked over 500 questions and she discussed topics as diverse as gun rights to partial birth abortion. But front and center has been the January 2010 Supreme court case, Citizens United v. FEC. This was the case that granted corporations the same right to spend money on elections as a living, breathing human being. . . .
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court issued an order that can only be described as irresponsible. About two months from the primary election and five months from the general, the Court blocked the state of Arizona from providing its publicly-funded candidates with so-called trigger funds – additional public grants triggered by the high spending of nonparticipating opponents or hostile third parties.
While waiting for the details of the NY State Governor's proposal for ethics and finance reform, here's a quick history of the (halting) steps taken in that direction in the past few years.
A day-long conference, "Money in Politics 2009: Horizons for Reform," convened by the Brennan Center, will take place today, May 8th, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC....
Nowhere are political corruption scandals more conspicuous than in Illinois, a state that has been plagued by political corruption for more than a century....
