Typically, if the Supreme Court declares legislation favored by an administration unconstitutioal, those favoring it set about writing a new version lacking constitutional infirmities. But the Obama administration is nothing if not atypical, and thus in keeping with its habitual executive disregard or revision of laws it finds inconvenient, Obama’s IRS is poised to promulgate a new violation of the First Amendment that the Court, in Citizens United, has already held fails to pass constitutional muster. (In the past, of course, it would have been incorrect, improper, and even insulting to refer the Internal Revenue Service as “[the president’s] IRS,” but this president has turned this IRS into the enforcement arm of his partisan political agenda.)
As eight former members of the Federal Elections Commission observed rather drily in a statement opposing the proposed rule,
When the Supreme Court has struck down as unconstitutional a federal campaign finance provision restricting public communications within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election that refer to one or more clearly identified candidates in that election, the IRS may not attempt to impose he very same type of regulatory restrictions on §501(c)4 organizations.
And what does the president who claims “not a smidgen of corruption” in the agency whose senior official pled the Fifth Amendment when interviewed Congress say? Yes, we can.
