This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, April 6, 2016, and Caleb Brown.

When a member of the Federal Election Commission takes to the pages of the New York Times to indicate that not only was the Citizens United decision wrong, but also that she has a

path to blunt that decision, you have to wonder what she thinks her job is.

Alan Dickerson is legal director at the Center for Competitive Politics.

We spoke yesterday about the role of the FEC and the rights you retain when you form a corporation.

Ellen Weintraub is a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission and writes this piece in the New York Times,

essentially taking issue with a Supreme Court precedent, an important Supreme Court precedent,

on the degree to which private individuals banded together can speak freely about politics.

This has become a lamentable trend among certain personnel on the Commission of sort of deciding essentially that Citizens United was wrongly decided in their view and therefore should be the subject of public

program.

And she refers to this as an attempt to blunt the effect of Citizens United, which I think

some people could reasonably question whether it's really appropriate for a federal officer who's bound by a Supreme Court opinion

extending constitutional rights to people she regulates to be publicly questioning that decision.

Well, but it's also kind of odd as it's almost as if she's saying, well, we all agree

that this was bad.

So here's how we deal with it.

I think there's some truth to that.

I think that's a fair statement of how she views the case.

I disagree with the premise. I mean I think Citizens United was probably a poorly

understood decision that extended the law far less than people are assuming and

then the the heated rhetoric would lead wouldn't believe.

So what is her argument broadly about how the FEC or federal regulators general ought to blunt the effect of this Supreme Court decision?

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