Inside the Beltway

Court faces corruption

Today is the day the Supreme Court will hear four full hours of arguments in what some are calling the most important political speech case to be decided by the court in more than a quarter century: the consolidated constitutional challenges to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, popularly known as McCain-Feingold.

One of the plaintiffs in the case is the Center for Individual Freedom.

“Given last term’s ruling upholding campaign finance restrictions against not-for-profit advocacy groups like the Center for Individual Freedom, it may be that a majority of the court now buys into the rationale advanced by campaign finance reformers that the only way to end corruption in politics is to strictly limit all the private money and, as a consequence, the political speech generated about candidates and our country’s political future,” comments Reid Cox, the center’s assistant general counsel.

Pastime first

“Washington — President Bush attends the T-ball game … on the South Lawn of the White House and later Sunday addresses the nation on the war on terrorism and the situation in Iraq. The ball game is scheduled for 4 p.m.; his speech is scheduled for 8:30 p.m.”

—Top stories of the hour from the Associated Press yesterday.

When all else fails

We were debriefing Ray Wannall, former top intelligence chief of the FBI, yesterday when his conversation turned to last week’s debate of Democratic presidential hopefuls: “I was reminded of that old saw on advice to new lawyers as they start their practice: If the law is on your side, stress the law; if the facts are on your side, stress the facts; if neither is on your side, pound the table and shout.”

Cloned but clothed

“Ever since that first meeting with Howard Dean some five years ago, I’ve been trying to think of what politician he most resembles,” Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, said in the latest Weekly Standard.

“The former governor of a small state, he is charismatic, good looking, wonkish, craving of the spotlight, and capable of telling a room full of people precisely what they want to hear. The obvious answer recently hit me: Dean is Bill Clinton, but without the skirt-chasing.”

Subnations

We’d known the nation’s immigrant population grew by 11.3 million during the 1990s — faster than at any other time in U.S. history.

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