"Attorney General Patrick Lynch on Wednesday asked a judge to release all of the testimony to a statewide grand jury that indicted three defendants in The Station nightclub fire case."

... I am speechless at the arrogance and depraved indifference demonstrated by this man.

"Plunder Dome witness shows up in Senate race"

Food fight! Good for Chafee for calling Whitehouse on his claim to have prosecuted Plunderdome and other state corruption. That doesn't stand the laugh test any more than Charlie "eek! corruption!" Fogarty's ads did.

Linc, luv ya, but trust me, you don't want to be jumping into the hay with an unsavory character like Tony Freitas. You make a great point about Whitehouse taking credit for something he shouldn't, but the testimony of a sleaze merchant with a history of domestic violence is going to backfire.

Although I'm not exactly a Chafee supporter, I thought it was a very good move by their campaign to call out Whitehouse on this. It was the indifference of people like him that kept the problems in Providence under the radar for far too long. For nearly the whole time he's been running, he's been getting a free ride and it's about time that he was made to defend his record while in office, which was mediocre, if I were to be kind.

I'm reconsidering my view of this play after seeing the front page of the ProJo this morning - that photo of Sheldon and Buddy yucking it up is a powerful image. Linc needs to incorporate that into an ad - the whole Whitehouse campaign revolves around tying Chafee to Bush, so why not do the same with Whitehouse and Cianci?
It just proves how desperately Sheldon wants to run with the good 'ol boys. That's the same reason he joined them in knifing Myrth York in the back four years ago. Would Mr. Empty Suit even be competitive in this race if not for everything Laffey landed on Chafee in the primary?

I hpe everone realizes the choice is between Chafee for 6 years and robotic hack Whitehouse for 30 years.

That's not true, Mike. If the various issues currently facing the U.S. are trending (as I believe they are) toward being more dire, then poor leadership will only be emphasized. Of all the character types that the Democrats could have put forward to fill Chafee's seat on their behalf, a "robotic hack" will be among the easiest to replace with a more attractive (to conservatives) Republican candidate.

"Working Rhode Island is not registered as a political action committee with the state Board of Elections, although any group that accepts contributions for advocating the election of any candidate or ballot question must do so.

The group did not immediately return a message requesting comment.

“Working R.I. has repeatedly broken Rhode Island election laws by laundering union money to fund political advertisements against Governor Carcieri," said Carcieri campaign manager Kenneth K. McKay in a statement."

Whoa. Working Over RI took in and spent hundreds of thousands like a PAC. Except they weren't one.

Gosh, couldn't have happened to a nicer organization. If the campaign finance violation is bad enough, do people go to jail?

>>Gosh, couldn't have happened to a nicer organization. If the campaign finance violation is bad enough, do people go to jail?

Oooo, what I beautiful thought.

Interstate (due to presumed collaboration with the AFL-CIO), thereby bringing in federal jurisdiction.

Conspiracy?

Wire / postal fraud?

RICO?

Paging U.S. Attorney Corrente!

Dear Tom W and SusanD,

Do you guys have these dreams in concert? I know it's difficult when you can't win elections because your ideas are unattractive but this is right up there with the fringe left praying for "Impeachment".

Poor Bobby. He's looking down the road at all his scumbag buddies going to the federal pen and starting to wonder if any of his own skeletons will surface in Corrente's investigations...

Let's see what we have:

First there was SusanD posting a whistful but heartfelt question. (By the way, the answer is No - but there wasn't a violation to begin with based on precedent. That's ok, I don't expect you to understand the minute details of arcane election law or even worse, case law built on those details.)

Then we had Tom showing off exactly how little he knows about election law. The Chinese could be involved and there's no Federal jurisdiction. However, he was hoping and there's nothing wrong with that. Again, even though I believe Tom is a lawyer, election law is a specialty. (Relying on anything Ken McKay said was your first mistake.)

But finally, in true form, we had Greg. Was Greg whistful and hopeful? No. Greg was just bitter. (Are you starting to understand why you can't win lections now?)

Then we have Bobby. Typical liberal condescending "I know better than you so go run along and play..." attitude.

I wonder how well you'd survive in a state where you couldn't ass kiss your way up the ladder?

Dear Greg,

This isn't knowing better than anybody. This is about a lifetime of experience.

By the way, in Massachusetts, your friends would have a much better case. However, here in Rhode Island, the rules are the rules.

Lastly, everything I got was through hard work. Again, you have no idea about the internal battles. Any member of the rank and file will tell you, especially regarding the Senate, that "kissing to advance" is not something I do.

Yeah, okay. Regardless of what comes out of your mouth, you reek with the stench of your corrupt scumbag buddies.

Bobby,

I presume the precedent that you referred to in an earlier comment was the Democratic Board of Elections complaint against Governor Carcieri and the Republican party from the 2002 campaign. But that’s a little different. The complaint against Carcieri’s and the Republicans was about the dreaded “coordination” between a campaign and a political party.

The complaint against WorkingRI is a different. Since they are not a political party nor registered as a political action committee, they’re not supposed to spend any money on political advocacy, be it “coordinated” or “uncoordinated”, even if the advocacy is as general as a simple statement of support or opposition to one party or the other. The standard of what constitutes political advocacy will be different from what constitutes coordination.

(Also, as I am sure you are aware, the original complaint against the Carcieri campaign/the Republicans was thrown out not on the substance, but on the grounds that the Board of Elections was too screwed up to deal with these cases uniformly, so it’s unclear what the lasting precedents are.)

Note that I’m not saying any of these campaign finance laws and their interpretations are good things. I think that having a court decide if saying “Candidate X sux” is equivalent to saying “Vote against Candidate X” is the height of pedantry.

Dear Andrew,

That's pretty good analysis but it leaves one little bit out.

In RI, not only do you have to prove the pedantic, but you have to prove there was a question before the voter at the time.

How do I know? I lost one of these cases back in 2002 on a local issue where a millionaire was, in my mind, "electioneering". The Board ruled that even though the acts were present, there was no question before the voter at the time the act(s) had occured. (In Massachusetts, the standard is much different.)

These questions also came up in the Tiverton recall case handled by, yes, you guessed it, Bill Harsch.

So not only do we have the advocacy question, we have a timing question. In short, these rules should not be this unfriendly to the average voter and this is an area where some real reform is in order.

>>Then we had Tom showing off exactly how little he knows about election law. The Chinese could be involved and there's no Federal jurisdiction. However, he was hoping and there's nothing wrong with that. Again, even though I believe Tom is a lawyer, election law is a specialty. (Relying on anything Ken McKay said was your first mistake.)

Bobby,

I am a lawyer, but have no expertise in election law or criminal law (I have no desire to associate with Democrat ploiticians in my professional life either).

That said, to the extent that WorkingRI was coordinating with, e.g., AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., then it was (presumably) used U.S. mails and phones, etc.

This brings in an INTERSTATE element and in turn may invoke FEDERAL criminal laws / jurisdiction.

"The complaint against WorkingRI is a different. Since they are not a political party nor registered as a political action committee, they’re not supposed to spend any money on political advocacy, be it “coordinated” or “uncoordinated”, ..."

Yeah, you don't need to be a specialty lawyer in this case. Behaving like a PAC when you're not one is a big campaign finance faux pas.

This was one of Guy Dufault's pet organizations. I wonder why he didn't advise them about this?

Dear Tom W,

It would if thre were any Federal Statutes that applied but there aren't any. Just the Governor Carcieri case, where the $$ came from outside the jurisdiction, this is a local issue only. I know you want there to be, because you can't win elections the normal way, but there's nothing on the books.

SusanD,

Unfortunately, you either have a lifetime of dealing with this or you're a specialty lawyer. Even then, it's amazingly confusing.

In order to behave "like a PAC", you have to be actually influencing a question, in Rhode Island, at the time. That didn't happen here. Simply put, since there was no violation (Ken McKay as an election law expert more than violates the laugh test, especially after the 2002 violation), there was nothing to advise.

Wishing won't make it so. Knocking on some doors might, but as GOP'ers, I know that's beneath you.