Last Friday morning, I attended a ballyhooed speech given by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at AEI, where I am a resident scholar, titled "Washington's Ongoing Assault on Free Speech."

A thoughtful reformer targets the traditional rules of an aging institution that has retarded progress in the past. Time to modernize those rules, the reformer says, and prevent obstruction in the future.

Let’s be honest: Enacting something like the Empowering Citizens Act would not magically transform our campaign finance world. But it would be a giant step toward tilting the balance in the direction of a more honest system and a more reasonable playing field.

Former White House Counsel, now AEI scholar, Peter J. Wallison comments about the "real significance of the Obama campaign's reversal on the use of super PAC."

It is good that we will have some disclosure of the mega-donors to the spate of super PACs that have dominated the landscape and the airtime across the presidential primaries and caucuses so far — but it is ridiculous that reporting requirements are so lame that the first disclosure in six months will not come until after the Florida primary.

Jan. 21 is an auspicious day, for two reasons. It is the date of the South Carolina primary, and it is the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

There has been much handwringing recently about super PACs and their potential to doom the American political system. As the argument goes, super PACs mean that corporations or wealthy individuals can make unlimited contributions to groups that are thinly-veiled surrogates for candidates, so candidates can stay positive while the PACs function as attack dogs. Trouble is, this argument isn't true.

President Obama and his spokesmen on the campaign trail are charging that the Chamber of Commerce is smuggling foreign money into the campaign, just as they attacked the Supreme Court for ruling that corporations and unions have First Amendment speech rights in January.

This volume explains how to reform our current campaign finance system with a single change: ending the restrictions on spending by political parties in support of their candidates.