Montana Commission on Political Practices Targets Ideological Opponents
31st January 2016
My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
In Washington, D.C., Lois Lerner, head of the tax-exempt organizations division of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), allegedly slowed or killed the nonprofit applications of conservative and libertarian organizations. In Wisconsin, Kevin Kennedy, director of his state’s political ethics organization and Lerner’s longtime “professional friend,” worked with a rogue Milwaukee district attorney to spy on, and seize the personal papers and equipment of, supporters of Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican. In Texas, the benign-sounding Texas Ethics Commission convened to determine whether a conservative nonprofit journalist is really a journalist and therefore deserving of First Amendment protections—or is an activist who does not.
In each case, the officials leading the charge are Democrats. And in each case, they invoke the language of campaign-finance reform and the specter of so-called “dark money”—donations to nonprofit organizations that Democrats allege have tipped the electoral scales rightward.
Campaign finance regulations are designed to make it as difficult as possible to get people elected who don’t already have the newspapers and TV on their side (i.e. Democrats). This is just more blatant than usual.