Stephen Colbert: "Knock knock."
Crowd: "Who's there?"
Colbert: "Unlimited union and corporate campaign contributions."
Crowd: "Unlimited union and corporate campaign contributions who?"
Colbert: "That's the thing - I don't think I should have to tell you."
So went the joke Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central's "Colbert Report," told a group of supporters from the steps of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in Washington, D.C. on Thursday. Colbert had just appeared before the FEC regarding a potential loophole in the campaign finance laws he had uncovered in pursuit of establishing his SuperPAC (political action committee), according to NPR News.
The Supreme Court's decision last year in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission says that the First Amendment allows unlimited corporate contributions to "independent" political groups, (PACs included), to broadcast political messages during election campaigns. The implication that Colbert's query to the FEC brought up was whether Comedy Central's parent corporation, Viacom, could be allowed to finance all of Colbert's SuperPAC operations. If FEC allowed it, it may have allowed corporations to funnel unlimited resources through PACs to support political candidates, without the PACs ever having to release the names of their donors.
In the end, however, the FEC decided such a scheme was beyond the scope of the Supreme Court's loosening of campaign finance restrictions. "A lot has changed, but not everything has changed," said Republican Commissioner Matthew Peterson. But in all other respects, the FEC allowed Colbert's SuperPAC to proceed as planned, open to unlimited private individual contributions. "I don't know about you, but I do not accept limits on my free speech," Colbert told supporters. "I don't know about you, but I do not accept the status quo. But I do accept Visa, MasterCard and American Express."
