Editorial: Greitens stashes his sneaky money behind the First Amendment – STLtoday.com

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens has decided that taking millions of dollars in anonymous campaign loot makes him a champion of the First Amendment.

You have folks in the liberal media who are out of touch and have lost their minds, Greitens told KTVI Channel 2 last week. Now they are opposed to the First Amendment.

The governor rarely uses the word media without the adjective liberal, nor his political opponents as anything but career politicians. Both the media and politicians from both parties have criticized him for preaching ethics reform while taking nearly $4 million in dark money from federal super PACs during his campaign. He used a dark money Committee for a New Missouri to pay for his inauguration. It was then rolled into an ongoing dark fund to promote Greitens.

This would be ethically dubious for anyone, but particularly for a man who early in his campaign criticized candidates who set up these secretive super PACs where they dont take any responsibility for what theyre doing.

He told St. Louis Public radio in January 2016 that Ive been very proud to tell people: Im stepping forward, and you can see every single one of our donors, because we are proud of our donors and we are proud of the campaign we are running.

As Greitens, a scholar of Greek ethics, certainly knows, the word hypocrite comes from the Greek hypokrites, which means an actor whos pretending.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never definitively said that anonymous political contributions are protected by the First Amendment. The case law on anonymous speech is all over the place. Anonymous leafleting is OK, but petition signatures cant be kept secret.

The court never envisioned that groups would incorporate as social welfare organizations under the IRS code and use the anonymity granted to, say, Rotary Club donors to hide political donations. Indeed, in Citizens United vs. FEC, which opened the door to unlimited corporate campaign donations, the court took it for granted that full disclosure would cover any suspicions of corruption or bribery.

Greitens dubious First Amendment claims are supported by conservative activists like the Center for Competitive Politics. Its president, David Keating, once said his goal was to do for the First Amendment what the NRA did for the Second. If he means distort it beyond anything the Founders ever imagined, hes well on his way.

We prefer the up-front attitude of Geoffrey Standing Bear of Oklahoma, chief of the Osage Nation, which hopes to build an Indian casino in Crawford County. Yes, he told the Post-Dispatchs Tony Messenger, hed given $52,700 to Greitens dark money committee.

That was me trying to establish a good relationship with the governor of Missouri, he said. We thought we would show him respect.

The Tony Soprano rule applies: Those who want respect, give respect.

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Editorial: Greitens stashes his sneaky money behind the First Amendment - STLtoday.com