John McCain And " The Millionaires Amendment "

  Not sure where to start on this one. It seems that presidential wannabe John McCain may have a slight problem with taking the oath "preserve, protect and defend, the Constitution," because a few of his past actions put in some serious doubts on whether he can do that.

   I am thinking of one case, in particular. This one is before the Supreme Court at the moment and it concerns the "millionaires' amendment" which is part of the McCain-Feingold legislation which is supposed to fight corruption among our people running for office in the Senate, House and whatever else.

  So what is this amendment?

The Millionaires’ Amendment is a part of the McCain-Feingold Law passed in 2002 that increases contribution limits for candidates who face opponents who put substantial sums of their personal funds into their own campaigns.

• There is a $350,000 threshold that triggers the Millionaires’ Amendment in House races. 

• In Senate races, it depends on how populous the state is.  For example in Arizona the threshold is $663,040, and in Connecticut it is $514,960.  In a large state like California, the millionaire would have to put in at least $2,454,000 before the Millionaires’ Amendment is triggered.  This link has a list of the threshold amounts for Senate races in every state.

• Once the millionaire candidate trips the spending threshold, the candidate must notify his  opponents and the FEC by filing a FEC Form 10 within 24 hours.
• Opposing candidates then follow the instructions on Form 11 to determine whether or not they have increased limits.

How much do the contribution limits go up?

• In House races, the limits can increase to $6,900 per election.
• In Senate races, the increase in limits depends on how much money the millionaire candidate puts it.  Increased contribution limits will be $6,900 or $13,800 per election.

Under certain circumstances the national and state parties may make unlimited coordinated party expenditures on behalf of their general election candidate.    Source

   Here is how this works, according to Newsweek

When a self-financing House candidate spends more than $350,000, his opponent gets three benefits. The opponent can receive contributions of $6,900, triple the statutory limit of $2,300 per election (primary or general). Second, the donors' tripled contributions are not counted against those donors' aggregate contribution limits for the two-year cycle. Third, the opponent is permitted to coordinate with his party committee unlimited party expenditures that otherwise would be limited by statute. Senate campaigns are subject to even more generous provisions for candidates with self-financing opponents.

This incumbent-protection measure mocked McCain-Feingold's pretense of being concerned exclusively with corruption—candidates cannot corrupt themselves by spending their own money on their own behalf.  

     But wait, there's more!

He ( McCain ) seemed aghast that under the amendment, "A millionaire can spend $1 million and immediately the other person can raise $50 million in coordinated and direct party expenditures." So McCain understood that the amendment punishes self-financing candidates who use their noncorrupting money to disseminate their political speech. And it punishes them by increasing their opponents' access to supposedly corrupting money. But McCain voted for it. Perhaps he, like many other legislators, wanted to "level the playing field." The court, however, has held that it is unconstitutional to legislate equal quantities of speech. More Here

  It would seem that John McCain is in no position to take any kind of oath to defend our Constitution, seeing as he has no idea what is in it, much like his boss Bush.

Technorati Tags: McCain-Feingold legislation, John McCain, millionaires amendment, Constitution

The Take On FISA From The Editorials In Our Newspapers

   From DailyKos

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

According the American Civil Liberties Union, the president could have extended the act until Congress could figure out how to hammer out a palatable version of the FISA bill. But, says Timothy Sparapani, senior legislative counsel, on the ACLU's Web site, "The president continues to misrepresent the situation with FISA. Fear mongering and making unsubstantiated claims of lost intelligence does not help Congress reach a resolution."

No, but it might force Congress' hand, nonetheless, into passing a version of the bill that has everything Bush wants.

He's already threatened to veto anything less. But what of those who feel the government is violating their privacy?

"Suck it up," said the president of the United States, the same guy who led the charge into Iraq to, you guessed it, protect our freedoms.

We'd like to take this opportunity to remind the House that we'd like to see less sucking up and more standing up, please.

The Houston Chronicle:

What this dispute is really about is shielding telecoms from any responsibility for enabling surveillance of customers that might have violated their constitutional rights to privacy.

It's understandable that Bush would want to prevent court scrutiny of a potentially illegal spying program that operated outside the law for so long. But the administration is putting the protection of corporations and partisan posturing above the constitutional rights of the American people.

The San Jose Mercury News:

Congress is supposed to keep presidents from overreaching. Since the Senate has already caved, it's up to the House to defend both our privacy rights and the principle of accountability against the president's power grab.

Americans didn't buy it when Richard Nixon asserted, "When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."

They shouldn't buy that argument now, either.

The Philadelphia Daily News:

"Telecom immunity" legislation could just as accurately be called "justice obstruction" legislation. If passed, it not only lets lawbreakers avoid detection, it provides a blank check for future spying. Just cry wolf - er, terror.

Right now, your rights to privacy are hanging by a thread in the U.S. House of Representatives.

On Feb.16, 19 Democratic senators who should have known better got so weak in the knees at the thought of being labeled "soft on terror" that they voted to give the telecom companies the pass from prosecution that Bush demanded....

Contact members of the House and tell them to take these threats seriously - that is, the threats to our privacy rights, and the threat to the rule of law represented by "telecom immunity."

Technorati Tags: FISA, illegal wiretaps, telecom amnesty