Forbes: Wisconsin's Progressive Police State Betrays Campaign Finance Folly

he latest battle in Wisconsin’s political wars shows what happens when laws that regulate political speech intersect with prosecutorial power to engage in open-ended investigations. “When government attempts to regulate the exercise of this constitutional right, through campaign finance laws or otherwise,” explained U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa in a recent ruling, “the danger always exists that the high purpose of campaign regulation and its enforcement may conceal self-interest.”

Judge Randa was writing about Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm’s pursuit of “all or nearly all right-of-center groups and individuals in Wisconsin who engaged in issue advocacy from 2010 to the present.” Finding that Eric O’Keefe, the Wisconsin Club for Growth, and other limited-government advocates “have been shut out of the political process merely by association with conservative politicians,” Randa stopped a probe that had begun in August 2012 and was now run by a special prosecutor.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/ilyashapiro/2014/05/28/wisconsins-progressive-police-state-betrays-campaign-finance-folly/