Mickey Kaus, in Slate, analyzes the campaign finance "reform" bill, including the editorial coverage in the Washington Post and New York Times, and comes to the same conclusion I did: McCainShaysFeingoldMeehan is unconstitutional, and the Times and Post are being two-faced in their support of this law. Kaus looks at the role played by Paul Wellstone in passing the most egregiously unconstitutional part of the law:
Then along came Paul Wellstone, the Senate's most liberal member. Wellstone saw McCain-Feingold's protection of "advocacy" groups as a "loophole" allowing "special interests" to run last-minute election ads. (Since corporate and union money was already banished in the bill, Wellstone was presumably worried mainly about money from rich individuals.) Last year, Wellstone pushed an amendment to extend McCain Feingold's ban on last-minute ads to non-profits like "the NRA, the Sierra Club, the Christian Coalition, and others." Under the Wellstone Amendment, these organizations could only advertise using money raised under strict "hard money" limits—no more than $5,000 per individual. So if you wanted to give the Sierra Club $6,000 to denounce some environment-raping legislator, you'd be out of luck.We can only hope the Supreme Court sees this as clearly.