XPost: dc.urban-planning, wa.politics   
   From: impeach_obama@yahoo.com   
      
   By ADAM LIPTAK   
      
   WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a   
   challenge to federal campaign contribution limits, setting the   
   stage for what may turn out to be the most important federal   
   campaign finance case since the court’s 2010 decision in   
   Citizens United, which struck down limits on independent   
   campaign spending by corporations and unions.   
      
   The latest case is an attack on the other main pillar of federal   
   campaign finance regulation: limits on contributions made   
   directly to political candidates and some political committees.   
      
   “In Citizens United, the court resisted tinkering with the rules   
   for contribution limits,” said Richard L. Hasen, an expert on   
   election law at the University of California, Irvine. “This   
   could be the start of chipping away at contribution limits.”   
      
   The central question is in one way modest and in another   
   ambitious. It challenges only aggregate limits — overall caps on   
   contributions to several candidates or committees — and does not   
   directly attack the more familiar basic limits on contributions   
   to individual candidates or committees. Should the court agree   
   that those overall limits are unconstitutional, however, its   
   decision could represent a fundamental reassessment of a basic   
   distinction established in Buckley v. Valeo in 1976, which said   
   contributions may be regulated more strictly than expenditures   
   because of their potential for corruption.   
      
   The case was brought by Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama man, and   
   the Republican National Committee. Mr. McCutcheon said he was   
   prepared to abide by contribution limits to individual   
   candidates and groups, which are currently $2,500 per election   
   to federal candidates, $30,800 per year to national party   
   committees, $10,000 per year to state party committees and   
   $5,000 per year to other political committees. But he said he   
   objected to separate overall two-year limits, currently $46,200   
   for contributions to candidates and $70,800 for contributions to   
   groups, arguing that they were unjustified and too low.   
      
   He said he had made contributions to 16 federal candidates in   
   recent elections and had wanted to give money to 12 more. He   
   said he had also wanted to give $25,000 to each of three   
   political committees established by the Republican Party. Each   
   set of contributions would have put him over the overall limits.   
      
   In September, a special three-judge federal court in Washington   
   upheld the overall limits, saying they were justified by the   
   need to prevent the circumvention of the basic limits.   
      
   “Although we acknowledge the constitutional line between   
   political speech and political contributions grows increasingly   
   difficult to discern,” Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote for the   
   court, “we decline plaintiffs’ invitation to anticipate the   
   Supreme Court’s agenda.”   
      
   In June, in a brief, unsigned 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court   
   affirmed the Citizens United ruling, summarily reversing a   
   decision of the Montana Supreme Court that had upheld a state   
   law limiting independent political spending by corporations.   
      
   “The question presented in this case is whether the holding of   
   Citizens United applies to the Montana state law,” the opinion   
   said. “There can be no serious doubt that it does.” Montana’s   
   arguments, the opinion continued, “either were already rejected   
   in Citizens United, or fail to meaningfully distinguish that   
   case.”   
      
   In 2006, in Randall v. Sorell, the Supreme Court struck down   
   Vermont’s contribution limits, the lowest in the nation, as   
   unconstitutional. Individuals and political parties were not   
   allowed to contribute more than $400 to a candidate for   
   statewide office over a two-year election cycle, including   
   primaries. In a brief concurrence, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.   
   said there was no reason to address the continuing validity of   
   Buckley v. Valeo in that case, suggesting that a later case   
   might present the question directly.   
      
   The latest case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, No.   
   12-536, may be that case.   
      
   The court also issued a pair of Fourth Amendment decisions on   
   Tuesday.   
      
   In one of them, the court ruled, 6 to 3, that the police may not   
   stop and detain people without probable cause in connection with   
   a search warrant once they had left the premises being searched.   
      
   The case, Bailey v. United States, No. 11-770, concerned Chunon   
   Bailey, a New York man who left an apartment in 2005 as it was   
   about to be searched. The police had a warrant to look for a   
   gun, which they ultimately found. They also followed Mr.   
   Bailey’s car for about a mile before stopping, handcuffing and   
   searching him.   
      
   Mr. Bailey was later convicted of gun and drug charges. He asked   
   lower courts to suppress evidence from the stop — statements he   
   made and a key linking him to the apartment — but they refused,   
   relying on Michigan v. Summers, a 1981 Supreme Court decision   
   allowing the detention of people in the immediate vicinity of   
   the place to be searched.   
      
   Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said none   
   of the interests justifying the detention of people at the scene   
   had allowed Mr. Bailey to be detained. People far from the scene   
   cannot endanger officers conducting the search or disrupt it, he   
   said. Nor could the interest in “preventing flight” be   
   stretched, he wrote, to “justify, for instance, detaining a   
   suspect who is 10 miles away, ready to board a plane.”   
      
   Justice Kennedy added that a detention in public gave rise to a   
   different sort of indignity than one inside a home.   
      
   Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia,   
   Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the   
   majority opinion.   
      
   In a second, unanimous ruling, the court decided the first of   
   two cases concerning dog sniffs on its docket this term, Florida   
   v. Harris, No. 11-817.   
      
   The case concerned a man, Clayton Harris, who was pulled over in   
   2006 near Bristol, Fla., for driving with an expired license   
   plate. A police dog named Aldo alerted his human partner to   
   contraband in Mr. Harris’s pickup truck.   
      
   Based on the alert, the officer searched the truck and found   
   ingredients for making methamphetamine.   
      
   The Florida Supreme Court suppressed the evidence, saying that   
   prosecutors had not adequately established the reliability of   
   Aldo’s nose through comprehensive documentation of his   
   performance in earlier searches. Justice Kagan said the dog’s   
   substantial training and certification sufficed.   
      
   “A sniff is up to snuff when it meets that test,” she wrote.   
      
   The case was argued in October on the same day as Florida v.   
   Jardines, No. 11-564, concerning dog sniffs outside a home, and   
      
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