I haven’t seen this anywhere else – a California court yesterday vacated an injunction issued by a lower court and threw out a lawsuit filed by Gray Davis’ campaign committee against the American Taxpayers’ Alliance, which had alleged that ATA violated California’s campaign finance laws by running an advertisement that “has no other purpose than to denigrate Governor Davis.” What kind of country would let just anyone denigrate the Governor, on television no less? The court found that the lawsuit ran afoul of a California statute prohibiting “SLAPP” (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation”) and the First Amendment because the ad, while critical of The Governor, did not expressly advocate his defeat in an election. (Of course, campaign finance ‘reformers’ may take heart from the court’s distinction of other cases on the grounds that the ad ran in June 2001 when “no election was imminent . . . [t]he primary and general gubernatorial elections in 2002 were 8 months and 18 months away, respectively.”