January 14, 2000

McCaffrey's Ministry of Truth
Slow Vote to China
Campaign Laws at Odds with First Amendment

McCaffrey's Ministry of Truth

Scripts for prime-time programming on the six major broadcast television networks are reviewed by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, with changes often suggested, reports the Washington Post. How does the scheme work? The drug czar's office takes $185 million to buy anti-drug ad time on the networks. Networks that adhere to the administration's anti-drug stance receive credits that free them from providing the ad time and can then sell the time again to other advertisers. Alan Levitt, who runs the program in the White House drug czar's office, said his office reviews television scripts "to see if they're on strategy or not."

In an Orwellian nightmare come true, tax dollars are taken to politically sanitize entertainment. In "The Drug War on the Constitution," Steven Duke writes, "If there is any phase of American life in which the rights of the people have not diminished during the drug war, it has escaped my notice. The anti-constitutional effects of the drug war have been so relentlessly obvious for so long that a cynic might wonder whether the Constitution is not the true enemy of the drug warriors."

Slow Vote to China

A Congressional vote on China's entry in the World Trade Organization is being planned by the GOP for August. Democrats want the vote much sooner noting that the closer the vote is to the August Democratic convention, more troublesome it will become for Al Gore's relations with anti-trade unions. Commerce Secretary William Daley warns that is the vote is politicized, China's entry might be rejected.

In "The Right Way to Get China into the WTO," trade research fellow Mark Groombridge warns that time is of the essence. He writes, "The overarching goal should be to keep China on the reform path, something they are close to falling off because of their rapidly deteriorating economy."

Campaign Laws at Odds with First Amendment

A federal judge in Pennsylvania has questioned the constitutionality of the nation's oldest law on campaign finance - a 1907 ban on corporate contributions to federal candidates - and has asked the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on the statute, according to the Associated Press. The challenge stems from a federal indictment of corporate executive Renato Mariani for allegedly using corporate money to reimburse employees and friends for contributions to Bob Dole's presidential campaign.

While that case was pending, Mariani sued the U.S. government, contending the ban on corporate contributions to candidates was unconstitutional. The judge found many of Mariani's arguments to be true. In a memo, the judge said soft-money contributions and loopholes have "essentially rendered the contributions and spending limits meaningless."

In testimony before Congress last July, vice president for legal affairs Roger Pilon made it clear that "the Constitution authorizes Congress to regulate federal elections. But, just as plainly, that regulation must conform to restraints imposed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. And here, the Supreme Court has said repeatedly that, under the First Amendment, campaign contributions and expenditures are protected speech."