This post was co-authored with John Samples.

Another good day for free speech, and a bad day for campaign finance zealots. Following on the heels of the Supreme Court’s stunning decision two months ago in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and applying that holding, all nine active judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously today that government restrictions on the right of citizens to pool their money for independent political ads are unconstitutional.

Individuals have long been able to spend unlimited funds on independent political ads. But if two or more people joined together and pooled their money for the same thing, they were considered a “political committee” and were subject to numerous burdensome regulations, including limits on how much they could contribute to fund the group’s political speech. Today’s ruling removes those restrictions. Citing the fundamental rationale for campaign finance restrictions, Chief Judge David Sentelle wrote, “the government has no anti-corruption interest in limiting contributions to an independent expenditure group.”

The case, Speech​Now​.org v. FEC, was brought by the Institute for Justice and the Center for Competitive Politics. Although a major First Amendment victory, the decision was not a complete win. The court upheld regulations requiring SpeechNow to disclose its contributors and their contributions and to organize itself as a committee. The court concluded such requirements would not be much of a burden on the speech of the group. We shall see. Experience may indicate otherwise, especially if disclosure leads to retaliation against groups like SpeechNow.

For today, however, the First Amendment is once again vindicated. Take a moment to pause and smile at the achievement.

Excellent recent posts by my colleague David Rittgers have covered the legal (and practical) issues involved in terrorist detention. Take a look at “The Case against Domestic Military Detention” and his follow-up, “Playing Chicken Again.” He has also lectured on the Hill about terrorism strategy, relating themes I used to open our 2009 and 2010 counterterrorism conferences.

The gist is that terrorism seeks overreaction on the part of the victim state. Lacking power of their own, terrorists try to goad states into overzealous and misdirected responses that serve their aims.

A prominent aim among members of the al-Qaeda franchise is mobilization of others, one of five strategies that U.S. National War College professor of strategy Audrey Kurth Cronin lays out in a chapter of the forthcoming Cato book, Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy is Failing and How to Fix it. Writes Cronin:

Mobilization has been al Qaeda’s most effective strategy thus far. A global environment of democratized communications has increased public access to information and has sharply reduced the cost… If a group is truly successful in mobilizing large numbers, this strategy can prolong the fight and may enable the threat to transition to other forms, including insurgency and conventional war.

Chances are extremely remote that al Qaeda will ever make this transition. But a recent AP story illustrates how groups in the weakened al Qaeda network may be stumbling onto a strategic option that our political leaders opened to them with their reactions to the Fort Hood shooting and the 12/25 bombing attempt:

For the first time, the group that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and has prided itself on its ideological purism seems to be eyeing a more pragmatic and arguably more dangerous shift in tactics. The emerging message appears to be: Big successes are great, but sometimes simply trying can be just as good.

U.S. officials and counterterrorism experts say the airline attack and last November’s shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, prove that simple, well-played smaller attacks against the United States can be just as devastating to the democratic giant as complex and riskier ones.

In a recent Internet posting, U.S.-born al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn made a public pitch for such smaller, single acts of jihad.

“Even apparently unsuccessful attacks on Western mass transportation systems can bring major cities to a halt, cost the enemy billions and send his corporations into bankruptcy,” Gadahn said in a video released and translated by U.S.-based Site Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamic militant message traffic.

Al Qaeda is a franchise—not a single group or even necessarily a cohesive network—so Gadahn almost certainly speaks only for his own outfit. But the progression of al Qaeda groups from coordinating attacks to encouraging lone wolves shows that their capabilities have been degraded. Lone wolf attacks are comparable to other terrorist threats that are always out there, including white supremacists, black separatists, eco terrorists, tax protesters with planes, random spree shooters, and so on.

But the “al Qaeda” label has a special power. U.S. politicians’ response to Fort Hood and the 12/25 bombing attempt signaled to al Qaeda terrorists that small—even failed—attacks can help them achieve their aims. With rare exceptions, the political class and media have yet to recognize that cool, phlegmatic public reponses to terrorism are an essential part of dismantling the strategy.

Poorly considered reactions to al-Qaeda-branded terror attacks are part and parcel of making those attacks succeed. Our so-called leaders should not give 9/11- or 7/​7‑style publicity and panic to failed attacks.

Over at Downsizing Government, we focused on the following issues this week:

• A discussion of the mechanisms that fuel government growth.
• The Postmaster General inadvertently makes the case for privatizing the USPS.
• The growth in federal health spending is almost beyond superlatives to describe it, and it will increase even faster as a result of President Obama’s new health legislation.
• Federal homeownership subsidies have caused lots of trouble, but that doesn’t mean we need more rental housing subsidies instead.
• It’s hard to imagine, but the Congressional Budget Office finds the president’s latest budget to be worse than we thought.

Greece is in trouble for a combination of reasons. Government spending is far too excessive, diverting resources from more efficient uses. The bureaucracy is too large and paid too much, resulting in a misallocation of labor. And tax rates are too high, further hindering the productive sector of the economy. Europe’s political class wants to bail out Greece’s profligate government. The official reason for a bailout, to protect the euro currency, makes no sense. After all, if Illinois or California default, that would not affect the strength (or lack thereof) of the dollar.

To understand what is really happening in Europe, it is always wise to look at what politicians are doing and ignore what they are saying. Political union is the religion of Europe’s political class, and they relentlessly use any excuse to centralize power in Brussels and strip away national sovereignty. Greece’s fiscal crisis is simply the latest excuse to move the goalposts.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Germany and France are now conspiring to create an “economic government” for the European Union. Supposedly this entity would only have supervisory powers, but it is a virtual certainty that a European-wide tax will be the next step for the euro-centralizers.

Germany and France have [proposed] controversial plans to create an “economic government of the European Union” to police financial policy across the continent. They have put Herman Van Rompuy, the EU President, in charge of a special task force to examine “all options possible” to prevent another crisis like the one caused by the Greek meltdown.

…The options he will consider include the creation of an “economic government” by the end of the year. “We commit to promote a strong co-ordination of economic policies in Europe,” said a draft text expected to be agreed by EU leaders last night. “We consider that the European Council should become the economic government of the EU and we propose to increase its role in economic surveillance and the definition of the EU’s growth strategy.”

…Mr Van Rompuy, the former Prime Minister of Belgium, is an enthusiastic supporter of “la gouvernement économique” and last month upset many national capitals by trying to impose “top down” economic targets. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has called for the Lisbon Treaty to be amended in order to prevent any repetition of the current Greek crisis, which has threatened to tear apart the euro.

The Chinese government has issued instructions to media outlets telling them how they may report on the decision of Google to discontinue providing censored search results in China.

This week the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the president’s FY2011 budget. The CBO projects that combined deficits for 2011–2020 under the president’s budget will be $1.2 trillion (for a total of $9.7 trillion) higher than the Office of Management & Budget’s forecast.

The CBO projects that debt held by the public as a percentage of GDP will be significantly higher:

One major reason why the CBO projects higher deficits than the OMB is because the CBO projects that cumulative revenue over the period will be lower (its economic growth assumptions aren’t as rosy as the OMB’s).

But a lack of revenues isn’t the big problem. The CBO projects that revenues as a percentage GDP would rebound from 14.5 percent in FY2010 to 19.6 percent in FY2020. The big problem is that spending as a percentage of GDP is projected to remain at post-war record highs throughout the decade:

That’s the outcome in the Second Circuit (full decision here), where a Connecticut man who has held a concealed handgun permit since 1982 was given the run-around when he tried to renew it, prompting a year-and-a-half of delay.

In March 2007, Kuck applied to DPS to renew his permit to carry a firearm. He was subsequently contacted by Defendant Albert J. Masek, an employee of DPS, who requested that Kuck provide a U.S. passport, birth certificate, or voter registration card in support of his renewal application…

Kuck objected to the requirement, arguing that he had submitted proof of citizenship when he first applied for a permit in 1982 and, over the subsequent 25 years, had never before been asked to provide such proof with a renewal application. He claimed then, as he does now, that the DPS requirement was arbitrary, designed to harass, and, in any event, not authorized by state law. Ultimately, he refused to provide the requested documents. As a result, DPS denied his renewal application.

Why the additional citizenship inquiry?

Notably, at the time of his renewal application, Kuck was the Secretary of the [Board of Firearms Permit Examiners]. Members of the Board are appointed by the Governor and include individuals nominated by gun clubs in Connecticut. In 1998, Kuck was nominated by Ye Connecticut Gun Guild, Inc. to the seat on the Board reserved for its representative.

Kuck alleges that, since his appointment, the estimated waiting-period for a hearing has increased dramatically, and that the Board Chairman, Christopher Adams, opposed his efforts to speed up the appeals process. He contends that DPS and the Board have acted to burden gun-owners’ ability to obtain carry permits by improperly denying applications in the first instance and then subjecting applicants to unjustified and prolonged appeals…

It appears that being critical of the discretionary licensing process can earn you extra scrutiny from bureaucratic overseers.

As I’ve said previously (and before that), enforcement of the right to bear arms against the states will force them to abandon discretionary “may-issue” permitting regimes. Where Due Process is owed, Due Process shall be honored.