that ordered a preliminary injunction of the wisconsin investigation of the governor s friends of scott walker campaign and conservative groups. the investigation was into the possibility of illegal coordination between the campaign and those groups. and judge randall s injunction was made on the grounds that the investigation itself violated the first amendment rights of all those organizations and the campaign in wisconsin club for growth. amazingly, judge randall also ordered prosecutors to, and i m quoting, return all property seized in the investigation from any individual organization and permanently destroy all copies of information, other materials obtained through investigation. that, that is not something you hear from a federal judge every day. you are hereby ordered to destroy evidence. indeed, three-judge panel of the seventh circuit u.s. court of appeals in chicago stayed judge randall s preliminary injunction, saying he had overstepped his authority. the appeals court ru
and they ve created an entire academy of lawyers, who believe very strongly in it. and have been very effective in getting those ideas advanced throughout the court system. it s astonishing, in a lot of ways. the walker propose has sort of been dogging him for a while. there s reporting today, a person close to the investigation of wisconsin governor scott walker s campaign and other conservative groups said wednesday, walker s attorney is talking with a lead investigator about a possible settlement that would end the probe. that would probably be good news for him campaign wise, to get this out of the way. i think so. look, it s one of the main issues that the democratic opponent is using against him. it hangs over him. you know, if he can put this behind him, then everything else that happened was the old probe, the last probe, not his problem. right. but if this continues and drags on, it only hurts him, but if the investigation went on, it drags in all the national players
campaign finance laws. stop for a second. normally, any legal authority using the word circumvent about law is saying you re doing the wrong thing. in fact, circumvention appears over and over again in the penal code, the criminal code, as something you should not do. right, exactly, you don t say, hey, mom and dad, i m going to go out and circumvent some laws today. then he goes on to say, that circumvention should not and cannot be condemned or restricted. instead, it should be recognized as promoting political speech and activity that is engrained in our culture. so you have this wonderful full circleness. you have money pouring into the political and ideological system that has produced, helped to aid and facilitate a supreme court and legal structure, that says money is speech. right. and then you have this judge here who s ruling that it is so. we are in the middle of a four-decade or more battle against campaign regulation, against the idea that the money in politics
in fact, circumvention appears over and over again in the penal code, the criminal code, as something you should not do. right, exactly, you don t say, hey, mom and dad, i m going to go out and circumvent some laws today. then he goes on to say, that circumvention should not and cannot be condemned or restricted. instead, it should be recognized as promoting political speech and activity that is engrained in our culture. so you have this wonderful full circleness. you have money pouring into the political and ideological system that has produced, helped to aid and facilitate a supreme court and legal structure, that says money is speech. right. and then you have this judge here who s ruling that it is so. we are in the middle of a four-decade or more battle against campaign regulation, against the idea that the money in politics, you know, should be, somehow, capped or shifted. it s been going on, and they ve been successful almost from the watergate era on, and slowly whittl
reversed by the seventh circuit. he recently issued a pretty remarkable and scathing opinion that ordered a preliminary injunction of the wisconsin investigation of the governor s friends of scott walker campaign and conservative groups. the investigation was into the possibility of illegal coordination between the campaign and those groups. and judge randall s injunction was made on the grounds that the investigation itself violated the first amendment rights of all those organizations and the campaign in wisconsin club for growth. amazingly, judge randall also ordered prosecutors to, and i m quoting, return all property seized in the investigation from any individual organization and permanently destroy all copies of information, other materials obtained through investigation. that, that is not something you hear from a federal judge every day. you are hereby ordered to destroy evidence. indeed, three-judge panel of the seventh circuit u.s. court of appeals in chicago stayed judge