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Opinion of Thomas, J.
another significant restriction on individuals' freedom of speech.
The joint opinion now repeats this process. New Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA) § 323(a), 2 U. S. C. § 441i(a) (Supp. II), is intended to prevent easy circumvention of the (now) $2,000 contribution ceiling. The joint opinion even recognizes this, relying heavily on evidence that, for instance, "candidates and donors alike have in fact exploited the soft-money loophole, the former to increase their prospects of election and the latter to create debt on the part of officeholders, with the national parties serving as willing intermediaries." Ante, at 146. The joint opinion upholds § 323(a), in part, on the grounds that it had become too easy to circumvent the $2,000 cap by using the national parties as go-betweens.
And the remaining provisions of new FECA § 323 are upheld mostly as measures preventing circumvention of other contribution limits, including § 323(a), ante, at 164-166 (§ 323(b)); ante, at 174-177 (§ 323(d)); ante, at 182-183 (§ 323(e)); ante, at 184-185 (§ 323(f)), which, as I have already explained, is a second-order anticircumvention measure. The joint opinion's handling of § 323(f) is perhaps most telling, as it upholds § 323(f) only because of "Congress' eminently reasonable prediction that . . . state and local candidates and officeholders will become the next conduits for the soft-money funding of sham issue advertising." Ante, at 185 (emphasis added). That is, this Court upholds a third-order anticircumvention measure based on Congress' anticipation of circumvention of these second-order anticircumvention measures that might possibly, at some point in the future, pose some problem.
It is not difficult to see where this leads. Every law has limits, and there will always be behavior not covered by the law but at its edges; behavior easily characterized as "circumventing" the law's prohibition. Hence, speech regulation will again expand to cover new forms of "circumvention," only to spur supposed circumvention of the new
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