The McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform bill represents the greatest infringement on the First Amendment in my lifetime. Now we find out that the grassroots groundswell of support for the bill was manufactured by a handful of monied left-wing foundations. Last week, Ryan Sager blew the lid off this scandal in the New York Post:

Campaign-finance reform has been an immense scam perpetrated on the American people by a cadre of left-wing foundations and disguised as a “mass movement.”

But don’t take my word for it. One of the chief scammers, Sean Treglia, a former program officer of the Pew Charitable Trusts, confesses it all in an astonishing videotape I obtained earlier this week.

The tape — of a conference held at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication in March of 2004 — shows Treglia expounding to a gathering of academics, experts and journalists (none of whom, apparently, ever wrote about Treglia’s remarks) on just how Pew and other left-wing foundations plotted to create a fake grassroots movement to hoodwink Congress.

“I’m going to tell you a story that I’ve never told any reporter,” Treglia says on the tape. “Now that I’m several months away from Pew and we have campaign-finance reform, I can tell this story.”

Ryan’s video evidence is posted on his website. McCain/Feingold should be repealed, and it should be repealed now.