"The GOP’s War Against Facts" By Dahlia Lithwick and Raymond Vasvari at Slate

The GOP’s War Against Facts

By Dahlia Lithwick and Raymond Vasvari at Slate

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/07/mitt_romney_and_the_republican_party_do_not_want_to_disclose_basic_truths_for_fear_that_someone_will_use_these_facts_against_them_some_day_.html

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Probably not coincidentally, last week Senate Republicans filibustered the DISCLOSE Act—a piece of legislation many of them once supported—again on the grounds that Democrats might someday use ugly facts against conservatives. The principal objection to the law is that nasty Democrats would like to know who big secret donors are in order to harass, boycott, and intimidate them. The law requires that unions, corporations, and nonprofit organizations report campaign-related spending over $10,000 within 24 hours, and to name donors who give more than $10,000 for political purposes. Even though eight of the nine justices considering McCain-Feingold in Citizens United believed that disclosure is integral to a functioning democracy, the idea that facts about donors are dangerous things is about the only argument Senate Republicans can muster. Last week even Justice Antonin Scalia told CNN’s Piers Morgan that “Thomas Jefferson would have said the more speech, the better. That's what the First Amendment is all about. So long as the people know where the speech is coming from.”

That’s a ringing defense of the need for disclosure, which Scalia has always supported.

Yet GOP senators aren’t brave enough to have true facts on display anymore. For Republicans, the truth is almost Nixon-esque now. Here’s Mitch McConnell comparing the disclosure requirements to an “enemies list” last Tuesday: “This amounts to nothing more than member and donor harassment and intimidation, and it's all part of a broader government-led intimidation effort by this administration. There are parallel efforts at the FCC, SEC, IRS, DoJ, and the White House itself to silence its critics. The creation of a modern day Nixonian enemies list is currently in full swing and, frankly, the American people should not stand for it. As I've said before, no individual or group in this country should have to face harassment or intimidation, or incur crippling expenses defending themselves against their own government, simply because that government doesn't like the message they're advocating.”

If those claims sound familiar, it’s because these are precisely the arguments donors from the National Organization for Marriage recently raised in an unsuccessful 2009 legal challenge to a California statute that requires political campaigns to disclose the identity of donors who contribute more than $100 to their cause.

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