GOP-Tied Firm Sues Indiana For Right to SmearNow that’s chutzpah.
Earlier this week, Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter (R) sued the GOP attack group the Economic Freedom Fund to stop it from harrassing residents with automated “robo calls” supporting a GOP congressional candidate.
Now a company called FreeEats.com, Inc. has fired back and filed a suit against the state of Indiana, alleging that the state’s ban on automated calls violates its constitutional rights. As part of the suit, the company admits that it was the firm paid by the Economic Freedom Fund to place the calls.
Now, as we’ve reported here, these robo calls — which have bombarded voters in five targeted Congressional districts — have been the nastiest tool in Swiftboat 2.0’s nasty arsenal. A polling expert, when played a recording of one of the firm’s calls, called it “egregious.” Factcheck looked into the call’s claims and found them “misleading.” And as my vain attempt to reveal the firm behind the calls showed, they clearly wanted to stay in the shadows.
But now they’ve come out in a big way. They didn’t like being shut down in Indiana, where they were attacking Democrat Baron Hill, and now they argue that they’ve been deprived of their constitutional rights. To quote from the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in federal court:
By enforcing [the state’s law against robo calls] with respect to interstate telephone calls to residents of Indiana for political purpose, [Indiana] will unlawfully and substantially deprive [FreeEats.com], and the organizations on whose behalf it makes calls, of free speech rights secured by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The suit goes on to explain that the firm disseminates its messages via an “interactive voice response system,” which is “one of the most effective means of communicating political messages.” By squelching the use of such a device, the state is squelching free speech. Ultimately, they argue, both the Economic Freedom Fund and “the citizens of Indiana” will “suffer from an infringement of their free speech rights.”
Keep in mind this is a group aggressively disseminating smears. One of their calls in Indiana charged that “Baron Hill voted to allow the sale of a broad range of violent and sexually explicit material to minors.” Like I said… chutzpah.
So who is FreeEats.com? Well, type the domain name into your browser and you’ll be taken to the site of ccAdvertising.
We’ll get into who ccAdvertising is tomorrow. But for now, suffice it to say that it is a firm with strong, high-level GOP connections. Connections like the fact that its chairman is Donald Hodel, a veteran of the Reagan administration and the former president of Focus on the Family.
Update: Looks like ccAdvertising lost a similar case in North Dakota back in 2004, where there’s a similar law. The case stemmed from calls the firm made in August 2004, asking thousands of North Dakotans questions “about political issues, including whether they favored gun rights, tuition tax credits, tax cuts and President Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq,” according to an AP story. The state sued to stop the calls; ccAdvertising fired back. And ultimately, ccAdvertising got a $20,000 fine for their trouble. I guess it’s just the cost of doing business.
