Troubled as always that the government might be dabbling in politics, George Will wrote this last week about the Patent Office cancellation of the “Redskins” trademark registration. His larger point is that once the government has the discretion to jump into political debates, it may choose those occasions that suit its political or ideological preferences. Citing Jonathan Turley,  he gives an example from campaign finance: the FEC’s exercise of discretion in approving the financing of Michael Moore's documentary about George W. Bush, Fahrenheit 911, while disapproving Citizen United’s now-famous documentary about Hillary Clinton.

In his recently published criticism of Stanley Fish, Russell Jacoby returns to Fish's position (in Jacoby’s words) that “there are no abstract principles outside of society and history.” “Making It,” The New Republic (September 2, 2013 at 36). This position, Jacoby reminds the reader, accounts for Fish’s insistence “that there’s no such thing as free speech”—that speech has no worth independent of context and any value it is assigned is the outcome of a political struggle. See, e.g. Stanley Fish, There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech (1994) at 102. (“Free speech is not independent value but a political prize….”)

A report produced by the Commission on Accountability and Policy for Religious Organizations calls for the reform of the IRS ban on campaign intervention by 501(c)(3) groups. Government Regulation of Political Speech by Religious and Other 501(c)(3) Organizations (2013). It makes the point that the test by which the IRS judges political intervention is loosely constructed and unpredictable in application. The report also notes the additional problem that IRS enforcement is erratic; this is not the agency’s favorite assignment and the agency by and large either does what it can to avoid it, or gives up quickly in the face of dedicated resistance. The report’s authors, presenting their recommendations to Senator Chuck Grassley, propose a remedy in two major parts: one to address the treatment of “no cost” sermons and other religious statements made in the ordinary course of a religious organization’s operations, and the other to cover any other institutional expenditures for political purposes. The first of the recommendations makes sense, but the second does not.

Edmund Corsi from Ohio has strong views about politics and political candidates, and he makes them known through a website, and in other ways, in the name of the Geauga Constitutional Council. Corsi was called on to answer to the Ohio Elections Commission for failing to register a “political committee” under Ohio state law. Corsi lost there, and then in two appeals, and the Center for Competitive Politics has petitioned for writ of certiorari, challenging the basis upon which Ohio has applied its definition of a “political committee.” Ohio Rev. Code. Ann. § 3517.01(B)(8).