Former FEC chairman Bradley A. Smith doesn’t let Sen. Russ Feingold
skate on First Amendment questions regarding the McCain-Feingold bill.
In a column in The Examiner, Smith says:
For just a few sentences after telling us the law ?doesn?t ban or
censor any speech,? he tells us that McCain-Feingold was necessary to
prevent some voices from being ?drowned out? by others. As
McCain-Feingold does nothing to affirmatively create or encourage
speech ? it offers no subsidies or platform for political speech ? the
only way it can prevent anyone?s voice from being ?drowned out? is
through the suppression of other speech ? and that is indeed what
McCain-Feingold does, as the senator must know.
And this:
Sen. Feingold can say what he wants, but he cannot deny that the
explicit purpose of McCain-Feingold was to reduce the political speech
of American citizens.
