The Week

■ Alger Hiss was the last surviving law clerk of Oliver Wendell Holmes, who certainly had a long and varied career, since he had also known John Quincy Adams. To put it another way, Justice Holmes knew men who worked for George Washington, and for Stalin.

■ Of course there’s a mandate from the election, all the poohbahs of punditry tell us: for campaign-finance reform. There are just a couple of problems with this notion. 1) Voters don’t care about finance reform, as they proved once again by handily re-electing Sen. Mitchell McConnell (R., Ky.), who regularly kills reform bills (and is promising to do so again this year). 2) The Democratic National Committee shenanigans that sparked the latest calls for reform are already illegal. What advocates of reform like Bill Bradley and the New ϒork Times really want is a stifled public debate in which their voices will have less competition from grubby special interests like, say, small businesses, homeowners, political parties, etc. Their favorite vehicle is the bi-partisan McCain-Feingold bill, which would ban PACs, eliminate issues advocacy (e.g., Christian Coalition voter guides), and impose “voluntary” spending limits on Senate campaigns. Huge chunks of the bill are plainly unconstitutional. And its effect would be to shut out ordinary citizens—who band together in groups like the National Right to Life PAC to increase their clout—from the political process. Senator McConnell, over to you.

Featured Tags

William F. Buckley Jr.

National Review

■ Alger Hiss was the last surviving law clerk of Oliver Wendell Holmes, who certainly had a long and varied career, since he had also known John Quincy Adams. To put it another way, Justice Holmes knew men who worked for George Washington, and for Stalin.

■ Of course there’s a mandate from the election, all the poohbahs of punditry tell us: for campaign-finance reform. There are just a couple of problems with this notion. 1) Voters don’t care about finance reform, as they proved once again by handily re-electing Sen. Mitchell McConnell (R., Ky.), who regularly kills reform bills (and is promising to do so again this year). 2) The Democratic National Committee shenanigans that sparked the latest calls for reform are already illegal. What advocates of reform like Bill Bradley and the New ϒork Times really want is a stifled public debate in which their voices will have less competition from grubby special interests like, say, small businesses, homeowners, political parties, etc. Their favorite vehicle is the bi-partisan McCain-Feingold bill, which would ban PACs, eliminate issues advocacy (e.g., Christian Coalition voter guides), and impose “voluntary” spending limits on Senate campaigns. Huge chunks of the bill are plainly unconstitutional. And its effect would be to shut out ordinary citizens—who band together in groups like the National Right to Life PAC to increase their clout—from the political process. Senator McConnell, over to you.