I’m off to APSA for the next few days, meaning blogging will be sporadic. I’ll be presenting my Michigan paper on Citizens United on Thursday at 4:15 on this panel.
I have a work crunch, travel issues, and family commitments over the next month and a half that also could affect blogging. I am pleased that my new Loyola colleague Justin Levitt will be guest blogging for me from Sept. 3-10. If you have any tips during that period, send them to justin.levitt-at-lls.edu.
There may be some other adjustments through mid-October. Thanks for your continued support.

The NY Times offers this report.

The opinion is here. More from CLC.

Fascinating question about how the conduct alleged here differs from the usual conduct of Members of Congress.

I missed this item last week. The Commission has not been without controversy.

Political Wire rounds it up.

The Detroit News reports.

The Columbus Dispatch offers this report.

At Moritz.

The latest from Harris County, TX.

Fred Wertheimer:

It is a fiction and fantasy to take the position, as the FEC does, that a corporation paying for ads that are written, produced and placed by a Member of Congress, and that promote the Member or attack the Member’s opponent, is not engaged in illegal coordinated spending under campaign finance laws, where such ads are run in the middle of an election season but just over 90 days before the general election.
No one would buy this explanation for a minute, outside of the FEC Commissioners who did. And yet that is precisely what the FEC regulation allows.

Expect a lawsuit.
UPDATE: BNA says Wertheimer has not yet made a decision about suing.
Still MORE from CCP.

Political Wire reports. A write-in campaign apparently would be too late under Alaska law.
UPDATE: Richard Winger emails that although the date to run as an independent candidate in this race has passed, Sen. Murkowski could decide up to five days before the election to run as a write-in candidate.

AP offers this report.

The LA Times offers this report.