I’m handling a couple of political cases at the moment.   One of them is a case with the Fair Political Practices Commission.   The other is a case with the Federal Election Commission.

     These two regulatory bodies, the FEC and the FPPC, try to impose campaign finance rules in Federal and California state election campaigns, respectively.

     I know a little bit about these agencies.   My wife worked as a lawyer at the FEC for four years during the Reagan/Bush administrations.  And I actually handled my first FPPC case for a client, former Republican State Senator Dan O’Keefe, way back in 1979.

     Well, I have learned that the current FPPC is not only diligent, but a lot easier to deal with than the FEC.   In my FPPC case, the staff has been tough, accessible, and willing to negotiate a fair solution to the problem.   They are going to get a fine paid from my client and we are happy to close the file.

     On the other hand, the FEC is really annoying.   They are attempting to impose a $6,000 fine on the client, because a name of a vendor was "too long" to be processed by the FEC’s computer system.  Of course, the glitch had no impact at all on the outcome of the presidential race last November, let alone the problem was addressed before the election date and publicly reported.

     Liberal election lawyers love to sit around and think up new ways to compromise the First Amendment’s guarantee of "free speech" in a campaign context.   That is why you can have a Federal agency that attempts to fine someone for being involved in the democratic process for having the audacity to do business with a vendor "whose name is too long" for their Federal agency computer system.

     Noted columnist Peggy Noonan recently wrote a column that stated she was "terrified by Barack Obama."   We should be equally terrified by the Federal Election Commission.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 29th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.