Posted on 01/21/2010 7:34:05 PM PST by GOP_Lady
Freedom has had its best week in many years. On Tuesday, Massachusetts put a Senate check on a reckless Congress, and yesterday the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision supporting free political speech by overturning some of Congress's more intrusive limits on election spending.
In a season of marauding government, the Constitution rides to the rescue one more time.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote yesterday's 5-4 majority opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which considered whether the government could ban a 90-minute documentary called "Hillary: the Movie" that was set to run on cable channels during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Because it was funded by an incorporated group and was less than complimentary of then-Senator Hillary Clinton, the film became a target of campaign-finance limits.
The 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Finance Act, aka McCain-Feingold, banned corporations and unions from "electioneering communications" within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. Yesterday, the Justices rejected that limit on corporate spending as unconstitutional. Corporations are entitled to the same right that individuals have to spend money on political speech for or against a candidate.
Justice Kennedy emphasized that laws designed to control money in politics often bleed into censorship, and that this violates core First Amendment principles. "Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy—it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people—political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence," he wrote. The ban on corporate expenditures had a "substantial, nationwide chilling effect" on political speech, he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
It sure has been some week!
Of course, Pres Bush should have never signed this bill in the first place.
This is a huge thing. Plus the sour puss look on Chuckey Schumer's face was priceless.
Corporations (profit and non-profit) are statutory entities created in law. They have whatever rights we grant them in law. The founding fathers knew the threat that corporations were to the republic.
Here is a great discussion on the threat that corporations pose to our republic: Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights by Thom Hartmann
Rachel Madcow and Barney Frank fulminating against this decision on MSNBC today.
This is just hilarious, because MSNBC is the political propaganda arm of General Electric and Microsoft.
General Electric and Microsoft are “giant corporations” and push the most vile propaganda out 24/7 with Madcow, Olbermann and the rest of the demented lunatics, through MSNBC with no legal limits.
What incredible hypocrisy and corruption.
GE and MS no longer need to pay Miss Olberdor or Mr. Madow to spew propaganda.
they can use the same money to push their propaganda directly.
CNN and MSNBC and NPR crews are a few notches lower in job security.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus
Very unseemly for a President to smear, without even catching a breath, those typical leftie targets. President G. W. Bush could occasionally wax populist, but the vast majority of the time he was carefully inclusive of all players big and small.
From the link in my previous post:
"Thus, with the founding of America, for the first time, only humans could hold rights. Institutions -- churches, civic groups, corporations, clubs, even government itself -- held only privileges. Of course, you'd want government -- that is, We the People through our elected representatives -- to control the privileges of institutions like corporations. And that's what we did. For example, to prevent kingdom-like accumulations of wealth that could, as Jefferson noted, "threaten the state" itself, corporations in the first hundred or so years of this nation couldn't exist longer than 40 years, and then had to be dissolved. Their first purpose had to be to serve the public, and their second purpose to make money. Their books and all their activities had to be fully open and available to inspection by We the People. Their officers and directors could be held personally liable for crimes committed by the corporation."
I can't force you to recognize the threat to our republic that corporate influence of government pose, but you have to have your head in the sand to miss it...
One of the best 5 - 4 decisions ever !!!
I want to read Scalia’s opinion. WSJ references it.
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