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Our View: Civility seen on all sides in Wisconsin Right to Life case

If Wisconsin Right to Life is joined by the National Abortion Rights Action League as a friend of the court in a free-speech lawsuit, you know it's a pretty solid case.

If Wisconsin Right to Life is joined by the National Abortion Rights Action League as a friend of the court in a free-speech lawsuit, you know it's a pretty solid case.

Just before Christmas, two judges on a federal three-judge panel agreed.

"It was a huge win at the district court level," Barbara Lyons, WRL's executive director, told the News Tribune's editorial staff from Milwaukee late last week, talking about the anti-abortion group's challenge to the McCain-Feingold law. "It's a big victory for citizens groups that want to petition the government."

We'll get to the petitioning part in a moment. What makes the victory truly big, and an inspiring display of civility, is that Lyons' group was joined not just by erstwhile foe NARAL but also interests as disparate as the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO, the libertarian Institute for Justice and the NAACP.

At issue is a provision in McCain-Feingold that prohibits groups from running issue-oriented ads naming elected officials while those officials are up for re-election. Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold himself happened to be at the center of the case when, during his 2004 campaign, Lyons' group ran an ad against filibustering of Supreme Court nominees that mentioned him. Wisconsin Right to Life sued the Federal Election Commission, previously winning a unanimous Supreme Court victory on the admissibility of the case in the district court.

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All of this may seem like something of an arcane technicality and an affront to the noble intent of McCain-Feingold. But Wisconsin Right to Life and its unlikely supporters aren't seeking to swift-boat their way into television spots with so-called 527 ads, commercials spouting thinly veiled direct attacks on candidates allowed under a dangerous loophole to the law not covered by the FEC.

Instead, they're seeking the right to say a candidate's name in an ad that's not necessarily against the candidate.

As an example -- and another challenge to the law: The group ran an ad during the reelection campaign of Wisconsin's other senator, Herb Kohl, naming him while taking the Senate's Democratic leadership to task for thwarting an parental-notification abortion bill, Lyons said. The ad stated that Kohl voted in favor of the bill.

Will all future ads of Wisconsin Right to Life and its court allies be so civil? That's hard to say, but a ban on saying a candidate's name in a window of a few weeks certainly won't stop any group from finding another way to run an attack "issue" ad against a candidate, as 527s have proven.

The unlikely allies' victory isn't complete. The Federal Election Commission is likely to appeal to the Supreme Court, and its friends-of the-court -- Republican Sen. John McCain joined by Democrat Rep. Tammy Baldwin -- have filed a brief.

"Feingold has stayed out of the case because it revolved around him," Lyons said.

Yet another show of civility.

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