See here. Regardless of what one thinks of the WRTL ruling of the Supreme Court, and the specific proposal of the James Madison Center, a rule from the FEC put in place before the 2008 election season gets into full gear would seem to make a great deal of sense. Corporations and unions (and those entities taking corporate and union money) should have as much certainty as possible regarding what kinds of ads can be funded with corporate and union money.
UPDATE: Today the FEC announced “that it will undertake a rulemaking to incorporate the Supreme Court decision in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC into the Commission’s regulations. The Court determined that Wisconsin Right to Life Inc. was entitled to an exemption from restrictions on broadcast advertising contained in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The law imposed funding restrictions on ads referring to federal candidates within 30 days of primaries and 60 days of general elections (electioneering communications). The Court found that the ads in question advocated issue positions and not the election or defeat of candidates to whom they made reference.”
Further update: In response to a post on the Election law listserv by Bob Bauer, noting that some may attempt to use the rulemaking to “wriggle free” of the court’s ruling, Jim Bopp wrote to the listserv: “I suspect that the Court will have little patience for such ‘wiggling.’ It seems obvious to me that the ‘as-applied’ remedy, that Chief Justice fashioned, must be effective in allowing constitutionally protected speech to go forward on a timely basis. If this is not the result of this rulemaking, expect the Court to seriously consider striking the whole ‘electioneering communication’ prohibition and I bet that they will get that opportunity.” Thanks to Jim Bopp for permission to reprint these comments here.