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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dougjn who wrote (3849)	9/19/1998 4:19:00 PM
From: jimpit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Here's another example of "sordid right wing extremism", Doug. New York Times EDITORIAL September 19, 1998 The Change in Ms. Reno's Course Attorney General Janet Reno's recent decision to review the advertising blitz orchestrated by President Clinton during his re-election campaign marks an important if belated turnaround. For two years, Ms. Reno has misread Federal campaign finance laws to justify her refusal to seek investigation by an independent counsel of the "soft-money" shenanigans by the President and the Republicans in the 1996 campaign. Her laissez-faire stance protected Clinton, but viscerated restrictions on campaign spending and contributions designed to curb the buying of access and influence. Ms. Reno's move is the latest of three separate inquiries that could lead to a broader investigation of campaign fund-raising abuses. It targets the audacious scheme by which Clinton and his team used unregulated soft-money contributions from unions, corporations and wealthy donors that are barred in Federal campaigns to pay for a barrage of television commercials. In a videotape that emerged a year ago, Clinton is seen telling supporters about the scheme to run the money through party accounts to evade restrictions he had agreed to as a condition of receiving $75 million in public financing. The subterfuge fooled no one but Ms. Reno and her advisers in the Justice Department's misnamed Public Integrity section. Even before the election, it was clear that the commercials were really Clinton campaign ads, not generic issue ads on which the party may spend unlimited amounts of unregulated soft money. But in a 1997 letter to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, Ms. Reno tolerantly embraced the White House claim that by having the Democratic Party write the checks, and by omitting language urging the election or defeat of a candidate, it had transformed the campaign ads into issue ads not chargeable to the Presidential spending limit. But in truth the party's only role was to act as a conduit for the money, which all those White House coffees and sleepovers helped to raise. Clinton and his team totally controlled the funding, content and broadcasting of the ads. Both the statute establishing the public financing system and Election Commission regulations make plain that expenditures made by or at the request of a candidate count as a "qualified campaign expense." Unfortunately, Ms. Reno's change of position has not led to an increase in candor. She attributes her decision to re-examine the Clinton ads to a preliminary finding by a Federal Election Commission auditor that White House control of the commercials rendered them campaign ads. But that finding hardly comes as a surprise. As Trevor Potter, a former F.E.C. chairman, testified a year ago, F.E.C. advisory opinions hold that party commercials coordinated with a candidate's campaign and containing an "electioneering message" depicting an identifiable candidate are campaign ads, whether or not they tell viewers to vote for or against someone. Ms. Reno was finally goaded into action by the memo left by the outgoing chief of her campaign finance task force, Charles La Bella. It said the known evidence required an independent counsel, and advanced a refreshing legal theory that campaign finance laws mean what they say.