Liz Sidoti is perhaps the best example from today's news cycle of how badly some of our paid AP journalists suck.

http://mediamatters.org/...

As has been covered extensively at TPM muckraker and noted by Adam B on the front page here today, the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has been disabled by the Bush Administration's efforts to confirm notorious vote-suppression guru Hans von Spakovsky to the FEC.

Democrats rightly continue to block approval of von Spakovsky.  However, in another shameless effort to install Republican Partisans in influential positions in our elections bureaucracy, the Bush Administration has nominated for the FEC a lawyer intimately acquainted with how to suppress voters:

Caroline Hunter

When last we left the Federal Election Commission, the lights were on but no one was really working.  Four of the six commissioners' nominations expired at the end of 2007, leaving the the Commission shy of a working quorum as Democrats remained steadfast that odious nominee Hans von Spakovsky receive a separate up-or-down vote, which Senators on both sides of the aisle recognize would sink his nomination, which is why Sen. Mitch McConnell refused to go along with it.

[A full FEC has six Commissioners, with no more than three allowed from any political party.  It takes four votes for it to do anything.]

Time marched on.  The FEC has been unable to investigate important complaints which have been filed, but it has also been unable to release John McCain from the public financing limits per his request.  It would also be difficult for McCain to then receive public financing for the general election come September should there not be a functioning Commission to administer the program.  

And, in the meantime, former FEC Chairman Bob Lenhard, a Democrat who'd have no trouble being re-confirmed, withdrew his name from re-nomination last month because of the delays.

The solution would seem simple: have Bush replace von Spakovsky with an acceptable nominee, end the logjam and move on.  But, of course, that's not how it works.

Instead, the White House has kept von Spakovsky's nomination and located two new Republican nominees for vacancies on that side of the aisle -- NRCC lawyer (and former lawyer for Rep. Tom DeLay) Donald McGahn and Caroline Hunter, who has sat on the Election Assistance Commission despite having no relevant experience previously.

This, however, required jettisoning Commissioner Mason, who had been a seriously roadblock to McCain's scheme to evade the public financing limits and whose confirmation was assured.  Sen. Reid is, understandably, miffed.

[On the Dem side, Commissioners Ellen Weintraub and Steven Walther will remain; Lenhard's slot would be filled by Cynthia Bauerly, Sen. Schumer's legislative director.]

Democracy 21 president Fred Wertheimer, our frenemy, has this to say:

The White House dumped Mason after President Bush had twice proposed Mason for the FEC in the last two and a half years, in December 2005 as a recess appointment and in January 2007 as a nominee to the FEC for Senate Confirmation.

The only apparent reason for President Bush to drop Commissioner David Mason at this stage, an FEC candidate he had twice proposed for the Commission, is to prevent him from casting an adverse vote against Senator McCain on important enforcement questions pending at the Commission. The questions deal with Senator McCain’s request to withdraw from the presidential primary public financing system and the consequences of a loan the McCain campaign took out and the collateral provided for the loan.

Under these circumstances, President Bush’s dumping of Mason can only be viewed as a bald-faced and brazen attempt to wrongly manipulate an important enforcement decision by the nation’s campaign finance enforcement agency.

The White House action today represents the political equivalent of obstruction of justice.

Noted Democratic election law attorney Bob Bauer weighs in:

The reason for the White House to act now is to restore the FEC to full voting power, which is not usually a Republican priority but now serves the immediate need of giving Senator McCain the most direct, statutorily routine access to public funding for the general election.  In this one move, the White House ended McCain's accountability for his use or abuse of the primary public financing system while putting him in position to take money for the general.  

For this maneuver to have been arranged for the benefit of Senator McCain, of all people -- the John McCain who has regularly, severely criticized the FEC as a "corrupt" agency -- is a remarkable turn in his career as a reformer.  A Commissioner who acted to enforce the law, to just raise an important question of enforcement, has been stripped of his post.  This was clearly in Senator McCain's interest, this raw power play.  It is also in his interest to have the FEC, back in business minus Mason, arrange for his money for the fall campaign.  

It is inconceivable that McCain was not informed of the plan.  In fact, it is highly probable that he was in involved in its formulation or its approval.  In the days ahead it will be seen whether he will be asked about his role.

It is an obvious question and a fair one.  This development at the FEC, after all, is one of kind.  For all the time that McCain has savaged the performance of the FEC, he has led the sizeable crowd of critics who believed that the agency is too beholden, on the whole, to the narrow interests of parties and their candidates.  Yesterday, Republicans could not have acted more narrowly in just this vein:  effectively firing a Commissioner to immunize their Presidential nominee from enforcement action in a pending case but making sure that there is enough of an agency left to get him the money needed to finance his campaign.

I should note that Commissioner Mason was strongly on the netroots' side throughout the whole debate over regulating political activity online, and I always found him to be a decent, sincere man, whatever differences we may have had on other issues.   During those 2005 hearings, he dressed down then-IPDI head Carol Darr on the whole question of who should receive the protection of the "media exception" from campaign finance law, explaining why bloggers merited equal treatment in a way that any of us would agree with:

I think part of the reason is a lot of us kind of don't understand your point or your concerns, so I want to probe it a little bit and first starting from the Internet and one of the first major Internet decisions, which was about protecting pornography, of all things: the Supreme Court celebrated the fact that on the Internet, everyone can be a publisher, and they said this is a great thing. And a lot of us looked at it, and we say this is a great thing. So from the supply side, if you will, what is the problem if lots of the things on the Internet are judged to be publications, just like traditional?

And from the other side, you know, we look down; General Electric, which may be, what, the second biggest corporation in the world owns, you know, big media; Cap Cities, Disney, Murdoch, Time-Warner; I mean, you know, these are -- if you want to talk about holes in the corporate prohibition, these are huge. And as you have suggested, they are limited in some ways by some professional standards, but what we've heard from the Internet people is you have not only the sort of professional obligations of a lot of the sites but their credibility; in other words, the social pressure within the Internet itself to police activity. So I guess I just don't understand what you're concerned about losing by a broad expansion of the media exemption to Internet activities.

But there is good news, if this NYT report is credible: "The White House declined on Tuesday to withdraw Mr. Spakovsky’s nomination, but a spokeswoman, Emily Lawrimore, said Republican officials were now willing to allow each of the nominees to be voted upon separately."

If that's the case, we might actually have a functioning FEC before the Fourth of July.

update: Never mind the alleged good news; McConnell still says no separate vote on von Spakovsky.

There are some items up on News Unfiltered that may interest the community.

DNC files suit encouraging FEC to conduct investigation against McCain:

With reports indicating John McCain has begun the process of applying for public funds in the general election, the Democratic National Committee today announced that it will file suit Monday with the U.S. District Court in D.C. seeking to compel the Federal Election Commission to conduct an investigation into McCain's decision to unilaterally withdraw from FEC's matching funds program. McCain's campaign is also breaking the spending limits to which they agreed when they applied for the matching funds.

Read more.

It's official:

Sen. John McCain has officially broken the limits imposed by the presidential public financing system, reports filed last night show.

McCain has now spent $58.4 million on his primary effort. Those who have committed to public financing can spend no more than $54 million on their primary bid.

The question, as it always is IYAR, is: will he get away with it?

Matt Stoller at Open Left has word from a source that Sen. Russ Feingold intends to object to the procedural trickery in store on Senate consideration of the nomination of professional vote suppressor Hans Von Spakovsky to the Federal Election Commission.

Republicans want to force the Senate to approve all four pending FEC nominations at once, in a single vote. The argument is that previous FEC nominations have been considered that way, so this one should be, too. Such nominations are typically paired up, one Democratic nominee, one Republican. And significant opposition is rare, so the Senate has in the past saved itself some time and considered the nominations together. But Von Spakovsky has significant opposition, so some Senators want -- gasp! -- separate votes on each nominee.

Oh noes!

Republican leader Mitch McConnell says that if the Democrats demand the opportunity to actually vote up or down on Von Spakovsky, he's going to take his ball and go home block the nominations of the Democrats.

Got that?

If Democrats demand that the Senate actually have a vote on this Republican nominee, McConnell's answer is that he'll prevent votes on Democrats.

So as you can see, the media has its "fair and balanced" narrative already written for it: If Democrats do... something, then Republicans will do... some other thing. So that's it! It's all fair and square!

UPDATE: Adam B. notes (in e-mail) that McConnell's claim of strong precedent for only having paired votes is iron clad  b.s. Way, way back, lost in the mists of time, as far back as May 2000, the Senate did indeed vote separately on FEC commissioners.

UPDATE II: The Hill reportsthat the deal currently floating is that Von Spakovsky gets his own vote, but if he's not confirmed, there's no vote on the other three nominees at all. That amounts to another built-in, painless filibuster for the Republicans. But it appears that Feingold's objections (and, the article reports, Obama's too) is to this arrangement, not just the all-or-nothing suggestion floated earlier. Good!

Also mentioned in the article, "Democratic sources say some senators are objecting to the plan and instead want to require a 60-vote threshold for von Spakovsky’s approval."

In the abstract, I disapprove of the use of this sort of procedure, as it also ratifies the painless filibuster. But we may be in a "what's good for the goose" situation here.

Yesterday, Hans Von Spakovsky's nomination of the Federal Election Commission squeaked through the Senate Rules committee and is headed for a vote before the full Senate.

Von Spakovsky, like so many other Bush nominees, is really just about everything you could ever imagine not wanting in a public official. The transgressions are numerous, outrageous, and really, pretty sickening.

But his nomination comes to the floor nonetheless, because Republicans in the Rules committee insisted that all four of the FEC nominees be considered at once, with no separate votes allowed on the individual nominations.

Idiotic? Outrageous? Completely ass-backward?

Of course. But it happened anyway, apparently because Ben Nelson refused to back up committee chair Dianne Feinstein in demanding separate votes, leaving her without a majority for doing so.

What's insane argument could Republicans possibly be making for such a procedure? That it's traditionally been done this way. Has it? Probably so. Why? Because nobody has ever nominated such an outrageously partisan hack to the FEC before, and because of that, FEC nominations usually move through the committee as a package by unanimous consent. There's no reason to object, because nominations are paired up, one Democrat to one Republican, and under a normal administration nobody quite this unsuitable for the job gets nominated. So yes, there's precedent for considering all the nominations together. When none of the nominees are this terrible.

We should also expect the Republicans to insist that the nominations be considered this way when they come before the full Senate for final confirmation. Mitch McConnell says he'll insist on it, and that if it doesn't go his way, he'll "spike" all the Democratic nominations, potentially leaving up to four of the FEC's six seats vacant going into a presidential election year.

So this may prove to be one of the dumbest looking votes ever. One vote on four names. Yes or no. UpperdownerUpperdownerUpperdownerUpperdown?

It may or may not be standard practice for these paired FEC nominations, but it's probably going to require another unanimous consent agreement to do it the way McConnell wants. So one question will be how much pressure Senate Dems face not to screw things up now that one of the Democratic nominees is Steven T. Walther. Of Nevada.

So anybody who objects to considering Von Spakovsky under the cover of the other three nominees (and the threat of leaving seats on the FEC vacant because Republicans threaten to filibuster the others and try to pin it on Dems) may find themselves in the Reid doghouse, depending on how attached he is to Mr. Walther's nomination.

Then again, how bad would it be to have four vacancies on the FEC, really? Versus a full board, but with one Republican thug whose track record shows he'll literally do anything it takes to bury anything remotely troubling for Republican candidates?

I don't know if there's a situation better suited for testing the real ability of Republicans to pin the blame for a filibuster on us. Voters don't really care deeply whether FEC members get confirmed in general, and Republicans will have to tell the public with a straight face that it's really Democrats' fault, because they... wanted to actually vote on each person, individually.

Cra-a-a-a-zee!

It looks for all the world like former Justice Department evildoer Hans Von Spakovsky will slip through and land his share of Wingnut Welfare: a paycheck from the Federal Election Commission.

Von Spakovsky's nomination has been red-flagged for months, since revelations regarding his role in voter suppression schemes, approval of racially discriminatory redistricting schemes, and other transgressions came to light. Von Spakovsky's reward for permanently perverting the electoral system on behalf of the Bush "administration?" A cushy seat with the nation's elections watchdogs. Brilliantly played!

So, you already know where this is going, right? Senate Democrats aren't going to stop his nomination.

Why not?

Well, one suggestion has been that there's some kind of a dealbetween Democrats and Republicans -- specifically to accept Von Spakovsky in exchange for a preferred Democratic nominee -- but I believe the reason is much more mundane than that.

In today's Senate Rules committee session, which met to consider the nominations, Republicans were pulling out all the procedural stops to get this done:

During the Rule Committee’s executive meeting Wednesday, Feinstein originally said she wanted to vote on each nominee separately, as opposed to considering all four nominees together in one vote, as the committee has done in the past. Republicans on the panel objected, arguing that the move breaks all known committee precedent on moving FEC nominations.

"The precedent is very clear," said Sen. Bob Bennett (Utah), the ranking Republican on the panel. "Nominations to the FEC have always been reported en bloc and in pairs."

But Feinstein said committee rules governing FEC nominations allow only for passing nominations that have unanimous consent, which her objection would prevent. After about a half-hour of negotiation, Feinstein and Bennett agreed to pass all of the nominations without recommendation.

See that? Republicans sought to prevent a separate vote on Von Spakovsky, instead saying that all four pending nominations to the FEC had to be voted on together. FEC nominations are made in equal numbers at the suggestions of both parties. In this case, two Democrats and two Republicans. Feinstein wanted to consider each nominee separately, but Republicans said it was all or none.

Bottom line: the nominations now go to the floor for a full Senate vote. Von Spakovsky has passed the first hurdle.

Now, couldn't Feinstein have forced the issue? Couldn't she have held a vote on whether or not they should consider the nominees together or separately? Sure. But the Rules committee is divided 10-9 in favor of Democrats. And guess what?

You'll never guess!

This morning's result: faced with the defection of a Democrat on the committee, later revealed to be Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) chose to agree to send all four nominees, two Democrats and two Republicans, to the floor without recommendation.

Ah, Ben! Ben, Ben, Ben. What are we going to do with you?

So what's next? The floor vote. And how will that be handled?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who was on hand to back up Bennett’s assertions about Senate precedent, said he would not tolerate any attempt to separate von Spakovsky’s nomination from the three other FEC nominations on the Senate floor.

"None of these nominees will move across the Senate unless they move together," he said. "The view has always been that the Democrats pick the Democrat candidates and Republicans pick the Republicans."

Yes, Republicans will presumably filibuster the nominations -- all of the nominations -- if the Senate tries to take an Upperdownvote^TM on Von Spakovsky.

And why will that work?

Because the failure to roll over for the Republicans will leave us with four vacancies on the FEC heading into a presidential election year. And Democrats don't want to be "responsible" for that. Heavens, no! (Even though the biggest knock going against the FEC is that they don't do anything, anyway.)

So, the reasoning goes, it's better to put Von Spakovsky in cold storage at the FEC and let him live on Wingnut Welfare (at taxpayer expense, as all the best welfare is). After all, it's not like he's still at the Justice Department, where he could do real damage. It's just the FEC. During a presidential election year. Which was important enough five seconds ago, as I recall, to justify this whole thing, but appears to have lost its importance toward the end of this paragraph.

What was I saying, again?

Ah, summer, the time for daydreams, like when BlogCritics.org's John Bambenek believed he could haul DailyKos before the Federal Election Commission and have a hearing where he'd prove that we were violating the law by failing to register as a political committee.

Vacation's over, and the FEC has unanimously determined that DailyKos qualifies as a media entity under federal law, and thus none of the site's expenditures count under federal law for determining whether a political committee was formed.  Just like a newspaper isn't charged with making a campaign contribution by editorializing on behalf of a candidate, neither is this site:

Kos Media qualifies as a media entity in its function of operating DailyKos. DailyKos is available to the general public and is the online equivalent of a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication as described in the Act and Commission regulations. Additionally, DailyKos is precisely the type of online media presence the Commission contemplated when revising the media exemption provided in 11 C.F.R. §§ 100.73 and 100.132.  An examination of DailyKos and other supporting materials demonstrates that the site’s primary function is to provide news and commentary to millions of viewers through its "blog" entries providing news stories with links to "breaking news," original political commentary, and calls to action. Like traditional media outlets such as newspapers and magazines, DailyKos has a publisher, Moulitsas, who appears to retain editorial control over the content of the site, and a list of contributing editors, who along with Moulitsas appear to be "front page posters" and draft stories. Further, registered users of DailyKos may post responsive comments, which are similar to letters to the editors in traditional media outlets.

In addition, Kos Media’s creation and distribution of the DailyKos falls within the scope of the exemption. First, the complaint does not allege, nor does publicly available information indicate, that Kos Media is owned or controlled by a political party, committee, or candidate. Second, by creating and distributing the DailyKos, containing news stones with links to "breaking news," original political commentary and calls to actions akin to editorials, Kos Media is acting within its legitimate press function that qualifies it as a press entity. As such, Kos Media’s creation and distribution of the DailyKos falls within Kos Media’s legitimate press. function. Moreover, Kos Media's operation of DailyKos is the type of activity contemplated by the Commission during its rulemaking regarding the media exemption....

While the complaint asserts that DailyKos advocates for the election of Democrats to federal office, the Commission has repeatedly stated that an entity that would otherwise qualify for the media exemption does not lose its eligibility because it features news or commentary lacking objectivity or expressly advocates in its editorials the election or defeat of a federal candidate.

You can see our submission before the FEC via this link.  In an abundance of caution, I opted to be thorough with this one and review the FEC's clear precedents -- if you're doing news, commentary or editorial, and you're not owned/controlled by a political candidate, party or committee, you're exempt.  The law was clear before today, and it's even clearer now: what this site does and what sites like this do is protected under federal law, and should not be the subject of baseless, time-consuming complaints.

We weren't the only folks to win before the FEC today.  Blogger Michael Grace was hit with an FEC complaint in 2006 which alleged that he created a site on something called a "blogspot" to criticize Rep. Mary Bono, allegedly making unlawful, unreported expenditures in coordination with Bono's opponent by blogging as "Mary Bono" on an obvious parody site.  Grace fought this one back by himself and won -- the FEC unanimously ruled that his voluntary expenditures (if any) were perfectly legal, and that his obvious parody was protected under the law: "the content of the blog sites would lead a reasonable person to believe that Grace’s blog was not actually the creation of Mary Bono. Instead, this is, as Grace contends, political satire that does not violate the Act."

Bottom line: no blogger should have to go through what either we or Michael Grace did.  The FEC regulations for which we fought in 2005-06 make pretty damn clear that online grassroots political activity is protected under the law, and none of us should live under the threat of FEC sanction for our activities.  And, hopefully, these clear decisions will quash the cinematic dreams of gadflies like Bambenek who believe they can get their "day in court" to vindicate their personal fantasies of what the law is.  

Now, one hopes, the FEC can focus its attention on more important things.