The Detroit News. Campaigns are really now financed in a post-FECA system that has moved far beyond what the reforms of the '70s intended to the point where it is now a matter of how you divide up the money to meet legal technicalities rather than controlling the flow of money in national elections. If citizens are not free to talk about public issues or the actions of public officials, we will have no democracy. It becomes very difficult to draw a line and say some of that speech is for the purpose of influencing an election and has to be regulated.
Water runs downhill.
As soon as you put up a regulation, the money flows like water around the regulation. There are election lawyers who are always out finding clients who are willing to test the parameters of the law to find what's acceptable and what's not. Then the courts enter the picture and the courts make some changes. It's an evolutionary kind of process in which some of the law gets chipped down.