Free Republic

"...my friend and colleague Eugene Volokh makes much the same point in his usual erudite way: So just as Congress could therefore ban the speech of nonmedia business corporations, it could ban publications by corporate-run newspapers and magazines — which I think includes nearly all such newspapers and magazines in the country (and for good reason, since organizing a major publications as a partnership or sole proprietorship would make it much harder for it to get investors and to operate). Nor does this proposal leave room for the possibility, in my view dubious, that the Free Press Clause would protect...

The simple answer is no, the Citizens United decision was not an activist Supreme Court decision. The Citizens United decision upheld the principle that organized groups, whether they are corporations, unions, or for that matter groups such as the National Organization of Women, a corporation, have the right to engage in political speech and political activism in the form of supporting candidates and causes with money and in-kind support. Citizens United upheld the Constitutional principle of the right to assemble and to seek redress of grievances. By rendering their decision, the Supreme Court upheld the right of any group, which...

Senator John McCain appeared on This Week today from Afghanistan, but before getting onto matters of foreign policy, he weighed in on the Republican contest going on in the United States and continued to speak out forcefully on an issue that has been part of his political identity for over a decade: campaign finance reform. McCain has not been the biggest fan of Super PACs, and McCain today blasted the Supreme Court for its decision in the Citizens United case two years ago. When Jake Tapper asked McCain about how the GOP’s divisive contest may end up handing the election...

Two Justices Suggest Citizens United Ruling Should Be Reconsidered In Montana Case Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, center, and Stephen G. Breyer, second from right, suggested Friday that the court reconsider its controversial 2010 decision that allowed unlimited corporate and union spending in elections. By Robert Barnes February 17 Two Supreme Court justices suggested Friday that the court reconsider its controversial 2010 decision that allowed unlimited corporate and union spending in elections. The suggestion came as the court blocked a Montana Supreme Court decision upholding a century-old ban on corporate campaign spending in the state. The Montana ruling seems...

The Supreme Court on Friday blocked a Montana court ruling upholding limits on corporate campaign spending. The state court ruling appears to be at odds with the high court's 2010 decision striking down a federal ban on those campaign expenditures. The justices put the Montana ruling on hold while they consider an appeal from corporations seeking to be free of spending limits. The state argues, and the Montana Supreme Court agreed, that political corruption gave rise to the century-old ban on corporate campaign spending. In the 2010 Citizens United case, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled that independent spending by...

Four years ago, candidate Barack Obama reshaped the presidential campaign by raising more money from donors who gave less than $200 than any candidate in history. But analysts say the 2012 campaign will be dominated by wealthy corporations, unions and individuals who can anonymously spend as much as they want in favor of a candidate - thanks to how the Supreme Court decided the Citizens United case two years ago today. The decision gave birth to a new type of political action committee, the super PAC. As thousands of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators in San Francisco and elsewhere protested the...

CHARLESTON, S.C. — The Stephen Colbert “super PAC” is now officially legitimate: it’s running an attack ad. In a 60-second commercial that is being broadcast on the CBS station here, Mr. Colbert’s super PAC calls Mitt Romney a serial killer. Yes, you read that correctly. “Mitt Romney has a secret,” says the announcer, whose deep, distinctive voice people will recognize as John Lithgow’s. “As head of Bain Capital, he bought companies, carved them up and got rid of what he couldn’t use.” Recalling Mr. Romney’s remark that “corporations are people,” the commercial concludes, “He’s Mitt the Ripper.”

One of the biggest headlines of the Republican primary race so far – and the point Stephen Colbert is trying to make with his satirical campaign – is the story of SuperPACs. ....................................................... On the campaign trail, we asked McCain about the ads from the SuperPAC that supports Romney. He told us these SuperPACs will “destroy the political process,” and predicted “scandal” because of them.

Naomi Wolfe has written a screed for the UK's Guardian, "The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy," that is sympathetic to the OccupyWhatever movement, in response to several events where occupiers where pepper-sprayed or arrested. She claims to have received emails that list the wishes of the occupiers and to be privy to a government conspiracy to "suppress" the movement. I believe that the wish list is Wolfe's, and that she has inflated the cohesiveness of purpose around her favored agenda: The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt...

Democrats on Capitol Hill are worried that the Supreme Court will rule against President Obama’s healthcare reform law. Over the last couple weeks, congressional Democrats have told The Hill that the law faces danger in the hands of the Supreme Court, which The New York Times editorial page recently labeled the most conservative high court since the 1950s. While the lawmakers are not second-guessing the administration’s legal strategy, some are clearly bracing for defeat. “Of course I’m concerned,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). The justices “decide for insurance companies, they decide for oil companies, they decide for the wealthy too...

WASHINGTON - Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and six other Democrats charged Tuesday that modern political campaigns - and democracy itself - are threatened by a pair of "awful" Supreme Court decisions that can only be fixed by changing the U.S. Constitution itself. The senators said during a news conference that adding a new provision to the Constitution is necessary if Congress wants to nullify a 1976 ruling that said campaign spending was the same as free speech and a 2010 ruling that removed all limits on campaign spending for special interests, corporations and labor unions. "In the mid-70s the activist...

A pair of House Democrats introduced legislation Tuesday to overturn the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizen's United ruling that freed corporations to spend unlimited money on elections. Sponsored by Reps. John Conyers (Mich.), senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and Donna Edwards (D-Md.), the proposal would amend the Constitution to empower Congress and the states to limit corporate spending on political activities. "Last year, the Supreme Court overturned decades of law and declared open season on our democracy," Conyers said in a statement. "It is individual voters who should determine the future of this nation, not corporate money." In the...

WASHINGTON -- The AFL-CIO hopes to boost its clout by launching a new political action committee that could raise unlimited amounts of money, part of the federation's goal of building a year-round political organizing structure. Forming a so-called "super labor PAC" would allow the labor federation to raise money from sympathetic donors both inside and outside union membership and mobilize support beyond its traditional base, instead of ramping up political activities each election cycle. The move would also help steer more of labor's money to state legislative battles, where unions have been battling efforts to curb union rights in states...

FINE WINE, BEST ENJOYED AMONG FRIENDS AND DONORS?: Cliff Asness, the founding and managing partner of hedge fund AQR Capital, and Rutgers University professor Susan Feinberg may have irreconcilable differences about two $350 bottles of wine at Washington D.C.'s Bistro Bis, but they once found common ground in the campaign of President Barack Obama. Cliff Asness, and his wife Laurel, each gave Obama $2,300 during his 2008 campaign, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics. Feinberg, too, was a 2008 Obama campaign donor, giving $1,700 in support of his presidential bid. Obama was just the second federal-level candidate...

The Rise of the Democratic Super-Secret PACs. Posted by Moe Lane Friday, June 17th at 7:00PM EDT Super PACs are, of course, the political groups that were set up after the Supreme Court’s landmark free speech decision in Citizens United: they are able to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money advocating both for and against political candidates, but may not donate to those candidates directly. The Left ostensibly hates them, which did not stop them from using them to raise over 28 million dollars in the 2010 election cycle (44% of total Super PAC fundraising) to the Right’s over...

The reach of Citizens United v FEC just got longer, if only temporarily. Relying on the controversial ruling, a federal judge in Virginia threw out part of an indictment against two men accused of secretly reimbursing donors to Hillary Clinton with corporate cash. Judge James Cacheris ruled that Citizens United established that corporations have a right to donate to political campaigns, as well as to spend their own money: A judge has ruled that the campaign finance law banning corporations from making contributions to federal candidates is unconstitutional. …Cacheris says that under last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court case, corporations...

The post-mortem photos of Osama bin Laden are must-haves. News organizations, interest groups and now, one presidential hopeful, are pining to peek at the “grisly” fare in the name of public transparency. Politico, the Associated Press, Fox News, Judicial Watch and Citizens United are among those who have dutifully filed Freedom of Information Act requests with defense and intelligence agencies... Andy Martin, a conservative presidential hopeful known for his combative “birther” stance, has also filed a FOIA request with the U.S. Navy. He’s added an aggressive political agenda, however.

Two former White House aides launched a pair of independent groups Friday to defend President Obama and fight the array of conservative efforts that poured money into the last elections, adopting the same tactics condemned by Obama. The move by Bill Burton, a former Obama deputy press secretary, and Sean Sweeney, who was a top aide to former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, confirmed the sharp reversal by Democrats on the use of undisclosed political spending. Burton and Sweeney said they were moved to create the outside groups to fend off conservatives such as the billionaire Koch brothers and American...

In its Citizens United ruling, the Supreme Court held that Americans do not forfeit their First Amendment rights when they join together to form businesses. This hardly remarkable conclusion produced howls of indignation among Democrats, who summarily denounced both the justices and the “corporations,� about which they are inclined to whisper darkly. Now the president is contemplating the imposition of free-speech restrictions through executive fiat. Democrats’ main response to Citizens United was the DISCLOSE Act (if you must know and can stomach it, that’s the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections Act) which, among other things,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Democratic congressman filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the Federal Election Commission, widening efforts to expose anonymous campaign donations as the 2012 U.S. election gets under way. Representative Chris van Hollen, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives' Budget Committee, filed the suit challenging FEC regulations which he said undermined the degree of campaign finance disclosure demanded by U.S. law. "The absence of transparency will enable special interest groups to bankroll campaign initiatives while operating under a veil of anonymity," Van Hollen said in a statement. Democrats claim that attack ads worth millions of dollars...

Judge tosses Mont. corporate campaign finance banBy MATT GOURAS The Associated Press HELENA, Mont. -- A Montana judge says the state's century-old ban on corporate political spending is unconstitutional. District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock of Helena on Monday tossed out the 1912 Corrupt Practices Act that prohibits corporations from making independent political expenditures. Sherlock ruled in favor of conservative think-tank Western Tradition Partnership... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/18/AR2010101804283.html

They say history repeats itself. On July 2, Dave Bossie of Citizens United and writer-director Steve Bannon of Victory Productions began discussing a short "closing argument" video - with a working title called "Bill of Indictment" - for release Oct. 1, about the leftist agenda that, since January 2009, Barack Obama and his Capitol Hill allies have imposed upon unwilling Americans. On July 2, 1776, 234 years earlier, Thomas Jefferson had just crafted his Declaration of Independence - a bill of indictment on the madness of King George III. (A 1994 film captured that year's revolution.) By July 4, "Battle...

When Barack Obama was elected president on the back of an army of small donors in 2008, the commonly held wisdom in Washington was that a new model had emerged in how elections would be funded in the future. Mr Obama’s supporters, giving donations of $25 each over the internet, coupled with substantial support from traditional big Democratic givers, gave him a distinct advantage over rival John McCain. Republicans, unmotivated and lacking the Obama campaign’s organisation, lost the money war. But 34 days before the congressional elections, the table has turned on Democrats. An influx of cash from a relatively...

As Democrats head for what promises to be an election fiasco of historic propor tions, a pre-emptive excuse has begun to circulate: It's all because of Citizens United. Team Donkey fans claim the Jan. 21 decision, in which the Supreme Court overturned restrictions on the political speech of corporations, triggered a flood of negative advertising by what President Obama calls "shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names." If independent groups favoring Team Elephant have a spending advantage so far, it's not because of recent changes in the law. Most of the advertising that irks Democrats was legal before Citizens United, and the...

In his weekly radio and internet address, President Barack Obama once again lashed out at corporate America, foreign corporations, Wall Street banks, Republicans; virtually anyone who dare speak out against him. Instead of changing course from the failed policies that have pushed unemployment high and economic indicators low, Mr. Obama is seeking to stem the tidal wave of rejection heading his way in November by blunting the impact of his critics.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/MAL10274.pdf Before the August recess, the Senate is likely to hold a vote on the First Amendment-shredding DISCLOSE Act (a.k.a. - the Establishment Protection Act). This legislation, S. 3628, targets non-profits such as Campaign for Liberty and seeks to muzzle them during the election season. The House struggled and barely passed H.R. 5175 before the July 4 recess, and with your help, we can make sure it is defeated in the Senate. Incumbent politicians have always sought to separate their actions during the legislative season from the electoral season, and this bill gives them the opportunity to do so. Drawn...

For those of you who believe in bygone notions like free speech rights and the ability to criticize politicians when they do things like nationalize 1/5 of the U.S. economy, you better taken advantage of that while you can. Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has filed for cloture on the DISCLOSE Act, S. 3628, which is intended to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United and impose burdensome new disclosure requirements. The cloture vote will probably occur next Tuesday in a move that avoids committee hearings. If Reid can get 60 votes, then the Schumer/Van Hollen Sedition Act...

One talent Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan displayed in her career climb could create unique ethics questions for her as a justice: the ability to persuade Harvard Law School alumni and other wealthy donors to give hundreds of millions of dollars, more than meeting a daunting fundraising goal that came with her job as dean. The $476 million total Kagan reached for the "Setting the Standard" campaign was a record not just for her university but for all law schools....Kagan's prolific fundraising sets her apart from the current Supreme Court justices. ... If Kagan is confirmed to the court as...

In March, the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision struck down campaign finance limits on political expression by individuals working through corporations and unions as a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. A cry ensued among liberal Democrats predicting doom if they and their special interest allies were required to follow the Constitution. Big Labor's bosses promised to spend millions to protect the Democratic majority if it would speedily pass legislation to circumvent the decision (and thus the Constitution), but restore limits on their corporate foes. The resulting DISCLOSE Act, according to its backers, will ensure transparency...

Hot Air explains how Solicitor General Elena Kagan muffed her argument in front of the Supreme Court on the Citizens United v. FEC case: In fact, the crux of the case was the issue of limiting expenditures as an expression of political speech, not contributions. Kagan started off her argument by misconstruing the issue and then offering a factually incorrect reading of precedent. Both Scalia and Kennedy objected to it before Kagan even had time to get the argument completed, although as the transcript notes, she didn’t pay much attention to them. Transcript below: ORAL ARGUMENT OF ELENA KAGAN ON...

(CNSNews.com) - Solicitor General Elena Kagan, nominated Monday to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Barack Obama, told that court in September that Congress could constitutionally prohibit corporations from engaging in political speech such as publishing pamphlets that advocate the election or defeat of a candidate for federal office. Kagan’s argument that the government could prohibit political speech by corporations was rejected by a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in that case, and in a scathing concurrence Chief Justice John Roberts took...

(D-N.Y.), Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) plan to unveil legislation to close campaign-finance loopholes opened by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. The legislation was written in consultation with the White House. Here are details that have been circulated to Democratic congressional staffers, and were obtained by POLITICO:

In the coming week, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) plan to unveil legislation to close campaign-finance loopholes opened by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. The legislation was written in consultation with the White House. Here are details that have been circulated to Democratic congressional staffers, and were obtained by POLITICO: The DISCLOSE Act: Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act The Response to Citizens United The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision on January 21 (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission), overturned decades of campaign finance...

Legislation that aims to counteract the landmark Supreme Court ruling allowing corporate and union campaign spending could be introduced by the end of the week. The bill would set up an election-year fight over a recent high court decision just as the Senate considers a nominee to fill the seat of retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) are expected to unveil their legislation by the end of this week, although an announcement could slip into the beginning of next week, a Democratic aide said. The Democrats are working to line up...

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) introduced a constitutional amendment today to overrule a recent Supreme Court decision on campaign spending. The court ruled 5-4 last month in Citizens United v. FEC that Congress cannot regulate independent expenditures by corporations and possibly labor unions. The ruling could dramatically increase third party spending on elections. Dodd's amendment, co-sponsored by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) would explicitly grant Congress the authority to regulate campaign fundraising and expenditures for federal elections. The amendment would also let states regular such activity in their own elections. "I strongly disagree with the Supreme Court’s conclusion that money is speech,...

In expansive remarks at a law school in Florida, Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday vigorously defended the Supreme Court’s recent campaign finance decision. And Justice Thomas explained that he did not attend State of the Union addresses — he missed the dust-up when President Obama used the occasion last week to criticize the court’s decision — because the gatherings had turned so partisan. Justice Thomas responded to several questions from students at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Fla., concerning the campaign finance case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. By a 5-to-4 vote, with Justice Thomas in the...

MANCHESTER – U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., said yesterday he intends to introduce a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn a controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision last week that removed corporate and other special interest campaign spending limits. "The upcoming election in New Hampshire should be decided by the people of the Granite State, not special interests with unlimited cash," said Hodes, who is a candidate for the U.S. Senate. "Washington is broken, and this will only make business as usual worse." Hodes said he has been "fighting to stop the power of money in politics and now, after consulting with...

Barack Obama responded to the Supreme Court Ruling with the same benighted and illiterate constitutional comprehension that has decorated his every comment regarding the United States Constitution as far back as his prattle has been documented and continued it through his State of the Union Address.

It is not unusual for presidents to disagree publicly with Supreme Court decisions. But they tend to do so at news conferences and in written statements, not to the justices’ faces. President George W. Bush, for instance, did not hesitate to criticize a 2008 ruling recognizing the rights of prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — but he did it at a news conference in Rome. President Richard M. Nixon said he was disappointed with a 1974 decision ordering him to turn over the tapes that would help end his presidency — in a statement read by his lawyer. President...

<p>In the case of Barack Obama v. Supreme Court of the United States, that was some oral argument on Wednesday night. With the Justices arrayed a few feet in front of him in the House chamber, President Obama blistered their recent decision defending free political speech for corporations and unions. As Democrats in Congress and Cabinet members rose and applauded around them, the Justices sat stern-faced, save for Samuel Alito, who was seen shaking his head and mouthing the words "Not true."</p>

In his State of the Union address, the president of the United States called out the Supreme Court by name for sharp condemnation and egged on his congressional supporters to jeer its recent decision: "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that's why I'm urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps...

January 27, 2010 President Wrong on Citizens United Case [Bradley A. Smith] Tonight the president engaged in demogoguery of the worst kind, when he claimed that last week's Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, "open[ed] the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities." The president's statement is false. The Court held that 2 U.S.C. Section 441a, which prohibits all corporate political spending, is unconstitutional. Foreign nationals, specifically defined to include...

Expect calls for Alito's impeachment to begin no later than tomorrow morning (if they haven't already). It's a natural reaction to Obama's bullshit but it's a breech of etiquette and Alito will likely apologize either privately or in public. I swiped the better video from The Corner so I'll give you this link there

Re: Citizens United [Daniel Foster] A reader caught something I didn't: Justice Alito mouthed the words "not true" when the President suggested that Citizens United overturned a "century" of law.

POLITICO's Kasie Hunt, who's in the House chamber, reports that Justice Samuel Alito mouthed the words "not true" when Obama criticized the Supreme Court's campaign finance decision.

It was rather incredible for Barack Obama to express outrage over the Supreme Court's pruning of McCain-Feingold's regulation of public financing and corporate campaign donations, since in June 2008 Obama became the first presidential candidate to forgo public financing in the general election, expecting that by doing so he could raise several millions more, much of it from the Wall Street and big-money interests that he now serially demonizes. The problem with Obama's hypocrisy is not just that, like most politicians, he does not do what he says, but that he fudges so vehemently and loudly and, to be candid,...

James Bopp Jr. likes to begin speeches by reading the First Amendment. He calls opponents, including President Obama, “socialists.” He runs a national law practice out of a small office in Terre Haute, Ind., because he prefers the city’s conservative culture. And for most of the last 35 years, he has been a lonely Quixote tilting at the very idea of regulating political donations as an affront to free speech. Not anymore. Mr. Bopp won his biggest victory last week when the Supreme Court ruled that corporations, unions and nonprofit groups have the right to spend as much as they...

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--U.S. President Barack Obama used his weekly radio address on Saturday to assail a Supreme Court ruling this week clearing the way for corporations to spend freely on political advertisements, calling it a big victory for special interests and "devastating to the public interest." He added that his administration is working with Congress to develop a bipartisan legislative solution to override the ruling. "The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections," Obama said in his address.

When justices ruled to strike down laws limiting corporate political spending, they signaled a tough road ahead for Democrats' regulatory measures. Reporting from Washington - Five years ago, when John G. Roberts Jr. became the Supreme Court's chief justice, he described the job as though he would be a minor functionary, more like an umpire behind the plate than the star of the game. He also said he favored minimal and narrow decisions, rather than broad but divisive rulings that would abruptly change the law. But in recent weeks, Roberts has shown that when he has the support of moderate...

Obama Calls SCOTUS Ruling on Campaign Spending 'Devastating' January 23, 2010 6:00 AM ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports: President Obama used his weekly address to rail against Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on corporate spending in political campaigns -- calling it a “devastating” and “powerful blow” striking at democracy that he intends to fight against. “The United States Supreme Court handed a huge victory to the special interests and their lobbyists – and a powerful blow to our efforts to rein in corporate influence,” Obama said. “This ruling strikes at our democracy itself.” In a 5-4 decision on Thursday, the...