Congress Shall Make No Law.....

[Kosherboy]

Congress shall make no law.......
A Resounding Defense of the First Amendment: ‘Congress Shall Make No Law’
Posted by David Bossie Jan 23rd 2010 at 8:14 am in Culture, Featured Story, First Amendment, Free Speech, Justice/Legal, McCain-Feingold, Supreme Court | Comments (26)

Thursday, in his resounding defense of the First Amendment in the Citizens United decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority:

…[w]hen Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.

“Censorship” is a dirty word in America, and that is why the restrictions at issue in our case were cloaked in the guise of “campaign finance reform.” But the fact remains that any restrictions on political speech, especially those that criminalize such speech, send us down a very slippery and very dangerous slope.

Last March, our government argued in court that it has the Constitutional authority to ban books that mention a candidate for federal office. The government later retracted that statement, but is there any doubt that such a statement never would have been made if there had not been 100 years of progressively more intrusive restrictions on political speech preceding it? Had the Court not acted, what was to prevent the government from asserting that authority over the internet, which does not have the benefit of two centuries of tradition and jurisprudence protecting it?

burning_book

There is also the practical issue of the relatively unremarked and inconvenient fact that 28 states permit corporate political speech during elections. Virginia, which recently held a gubernatorial election, is one such example. If , as many argue, corporate political speech is corrupting by definition, where was the impropriety in that election? In fact, I would challenge opponents of our case to compare the corruption levels in states prohibiting corporate and union expenditures with states that allow it. I think that such a comparison would demonstrate that corporate speech is not inherently corrupting.

Finally, as the Court acknowledged, the position that corporations cannot engage in political speech has a fatal logical flaw. Almost every major media outlet in the country is owned by a corporation and most of them advocate for or against candidates via endorsements, opinion columns, or politically-oriented programming. Why should General Electric, which owns MSNBC, be permitted to use its nearly unlimited resources to influence elections, while I, who made Hillary The Movie using corporate funds for roughly .03% of the budget, could be put in prison for airing the documentary?

SupremeCourt

This issue has little to do with corporate speech. The real issue is whether or not we are willing to take a giant leap down the slippery slope towards government regulation of the content of books, movies, or even the internet. As Justice Kennedy wrote yesterday, “For me, the choice between putting up with corporate ads or jailing citizens for political speech is a simple one. Thankfully for all Americans, the Supreme Court agrees.

[CalHunter]

Amen. Now the SC needs to back up the 2nd amendment in the same way.

[nodog]

It's not something that will be painless.

[burniegoeasily]

Heck, we saw what limiting one industry to voice its oppinion with money and voice, while denying all others. The media industry spent millions, up on millions to get Obama elected. Why silence all others?

[falcon]

Heck, we saw what limiting one industry to voice its oppinion with money and voice, while denying all others. The media industry spent millions, up on millions to get Obama elected. Why silence all others?

+1

It is poetic justice that the putrid McCain-Feingold law came back to haunt McCain. This probably why McCain never complained after the SCOTUS ruling.

[Fieldmouse]

Can't wait til this election season. It's about time our corporations finally get a direct voice in the process. Perhaps now we will see a push back of all these stupid eviromental and OSHA laws.

[Zeke001]

devil's advocate here, so please bare with me. I like the idea of limited corporate influences, because while free speech is a wonderful thing, dont get me wrong, GE has a lot more money than I do, and politicians speak in money nowadays, not english. AND, GE doesnt give a (insert profanity here) about me or you, it cares about its own interests. SO my point is while limiting free speech isnt a good thing, I like my voice to be heard, not GE CEO's money. btw i believe almost all politicians are corrupt at heart and very few have our good at heart to begin with.

[nodog]

Not one reference to how this has played out over the past thousands of years. I'd feel a lot more informed if there were.
If as I have said the fix is the market making friends with the people and not politicians it sounds to me like the catalyst for an even greater expansion of government.
Burnie, your really hurting the media industry by shoveling tons of money on top of them, makes no sense. Since the beginning of this country SCOTUS has been corrupted by the wealthy, that corruption was what I believe brought on the Civil war. A war where the wealthy in the North got the country to bleed and die including the president so it could acquire wealth, the wealth of the south.
This supposed victory for free speech must transfer over to the people, I don't here that and what I have heard is wording that only gareentes freedom of speech for those who do not have anyone’s interests but their own at heart. You think peoples morals have tanked now what until they follow those in authority, unleashed.

I don't think this vote is a victory for free speech. I think it just opened up the market for more corruption, a market that had shrunk or had been refused access to some, and that isn't fair.

I hearrd that the arguement had to be created by SCOTUS from something else. You like the court creating arguments for it's self?

[Fieldmouse]

Zeke:

GE has a lot more money than I do, and politicians speak in money nowadays, not english. AND, GE doesnt give a (insert profanity here) about me or you, it cares about its own interests.

GE was already in the game before. They owned (I think they still do until the comcast deal goes through) MSNBC. They were pushing BHO and his greeen BS because they were going to get major tax dollars and lawsd in their favor. Guess what they did.

Nodog:

Since the beginning of this country SCOTUS has been corrupted by the wealthy, that corruption was what I believe brought on the Civil war. A war where the wealthy in the North got the country to bleed and die including the president so it could acquire wealth, the wealth of the south.

What wealth in the south? The south wasn't oozing wealth.

This supposed victory for free speech must transfer over to the people, I don't here that and what I have heard is wording that only gareentes freedom of speech for those who do not have anyone’s interests but their own at heart.

Sure they have people's interest at heart. They have the share holder's interest. Now that the majority in America owns stocks in corporations, that interest has grown even more.

I don't think this vote is a victory for free speech. I think it just opened up the market for more corruption, a market that had shrunk or had been refused access to some, and that isn't fair.

I have to totally disagree. This has opened up for freer markets. If corruption is what you are really woried about, you need to get the money out of Washington. You need to demand that SS be privatized along with Medicaid and medicare. Furthermore, the House needs to go back to representing the people. Today we have one person representing 800K people. Do you think your voice is being heard? We need to go back to 1:40K ratio. It will take a lot less money to campaign and lead back to the common joe not only running but winning. The Senate needs to revert back to representing the states. Eliminate the direct vote of the Senators and put that process back into the State legisltaors. Let them decide who best represents the values of each state. This would also make local election much more important and therefore get many more people involved at the local level.

[Zeke001]

good post fieldmouse, but there are some facts that i recall to memory, i cant find a link but ill work on it. In the 19th century, the south was VERY rich, in fact. This can be summed up in two words... King Cotton. The problem was that it was distributed very unevenly, as about 1/3 id say of the population was slaves, probably closer to 1/4 or 1/5 maybe, and almost the rest of the white south was poor sharecroppers or worked in fields next to African american slaves. Also, this King Cotton, so to speak, did put one more advantage in the South's favor, and that is close ties with Britain, the big player of the world at the time, but that is off topic. And my point about GE's money buying politicians is still valid, imo, whether they are directly ("donating" large sums of money to incumbents, largely) or indirectly (putting political bias in news, and then holding that over politicians heads.) While neither are good for american interests, the former of the concerns is really the only one we can have any sort of effect on, and even there there will be loopholes as in the mccain feingold act, and a good analogy is a rock and jello, if you set a rock(any financial limit law) somewhere in order to block Jello (the money going to campaigns) from getting to campaigns, the jello will find somewhere to "get through the cracks" and find its way to politicians, the danger being if they are in a loophole there is a super limited chance we, the public, will ever hear about it...