How much will William Ayers be a factor in the election?

[Hamlet]

@Digital Stimulus

So, in your opinion as someone with knowledge of both law (in general) and this situation (in particular), is that letter an accurate assessment? If so, I’m not seeing anything worthy of the term “suppression”.

“Political committees” are required by law to follow certain regulations, including registering, financial regulations, and such (for example, they can’t take donations more than $5,000 from a single donor, which AIP has violated by a healthy margin). What appears to be the case with the American Issues Project is that it does qualify as a political committee, and, since it apparently hasn’t done what is required as a “political committee”, it’s violating federal law and regulations. They also claim tax exempt status, which, the letter points out, should be unavailable for political committees.

The AIP, I’m assuming, thinks it doesn’t fit the definition of a “political committee”. They, from the facts I know, are full of shit. The ads they’ve run, which is just about the ONLY action they’ve taken, is clearly “express advocacy” of a candidate. But they’re claiming they are part of a small exception to the rule, what the FEC calls a Qualified Non Profit Corporation. This exception is available to certain groups, if they are involved in work other than just political campaigning. Which, as I pointed out, is NOT what AIP has done. A great majority of their spending and almost all of their work, has been nothing but political campaigning. Of course, the group claims “we’re really going to start doing other stuff, it’s just we haven’t gotten around to it yet.” You’ll excuse me if I find that … not very credible.

Basically, Obama’s counsel asked the DOJ to investigate this group. And it did so with, what appears to me, good reason and solid factual basis. To me, asking the federal election law to be enforced is not suppression of speech.

Obama’s campaign has also asked for boycotts and email campaigns of the stations running the ads, which is certainly applying pressure to try and stop speech. So there is a grain of truth. Obama is trying to stop speech. Speech that is filled with misinformation and distortions, but speech nonetheless.

But unless you think that free speech means no one can respond to that speech, then I don’t see a problem.

[Hamlet]

@ArizonaTeach

If there was nothing to suppress (and I think it’s so cute how you put it in quotation marks there), why did they, you know, suppress it? I think it’s a non-issue (and wow, I even said so in my post! Whaddaya know!), and yet I’m not comfortable with the whole use-a-lawsuit-to-shout-down-opponents-don’t-release-documents thing.

Obama asked the DOJ to enforce Federal election law. That’s not using a lawsuit to shout down opponents. And, while I’m at it, I’ll point out Obama has had no role in “don’t release documents”. They aren’t his to release.

[Leaper]

More commentary from Obama’s opposition; between that and the links (not necessarily the story itself) at the top of here, you will get an idea of why some are calling it “suppression.”

Not that you have to agree with it (I doubt you will), but then, that IS why this place is called Great Debates.

(The part especially relevant to my OP is the theory in the first link that the Obama campaign is reacting this way because of polling results on impact. It’s just a theory, but it would be interesting if so.)

[JHE1967]

Immediately after the convention speeches Tuesday and Wednesday Fox had “breaking news” on “new evidence” regarding alleged connections between Ayers and Obama. They gave some guy from the National Review 10 minutes to milk the story. Obviously Fox carries the water for the pubs but even I was shocked at how brazen they were with this story.