Today's Catch goes to Reason's Jacob Sullum, who notes that for all the Goo Goo huffing and puffing, the Citizen's United case does not seem to actually have anything to do with the more important developments in campaign finance during the 2010 election cycle.
I have to admit that I haven't been following the technical details of campaign finance law all that closely, so I wouldn't know whether that was correct or not (sounds right to me, but I don't know it for a fact), except that Sollum notes that a close reading of a NYT story about the major effects of Citizen's United is awful light on actual evidence that such effects exist. Yes, there's lots of money being spend this year, but is that because of changes in the campaign finance rules in general, and Citizen's United in particular? Or is it just the normal effect of intensely motivated and confident GOP donors? If you asked me to bet, my money would be on the latter.
Campaign finance links, by the way? I recommend the Campaign Finance Institute and Rick Hasen's Election Law Blog.
Wow! A libertarian columnist quotes several major Republican fundraisers as insisting that there's nothing to see here and we should all just move along. Glad that's settled.
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