FREEDOM IS RESTORED: 1st AMENDMENT WINS!

Better yet: See Plessy v. Ferguson

This isn't a valid criticism. The Supreme Court is not bound by Stare Decisis

OmSigDAVID wrote:

not OK for 60 nanoseconds.

May I just say, I'm enjoying your enthusiasm.

The rich bought votes in ancient Rome and the republic folded.

farmerman wrote:

My feelings about these two guys was from their appointment hearings in fron to the Senate Subcommittee. They both swore up and down to honor the concept of Stare decisis, which established precedent of previous USSC decisions. These two can understand that this decision, too, can be overturned in the future.

This isn't a valid criticism. The Supreme Court is not bound by Stare Decisis. And we should all be grateful for that.
See Dred Scott if you need help understanding why.

ACTUALLY, Freedom has not been restored, since an OLIGARCHIC FASCIST
interpretation of the 1st Amendment has been forwarded by this decision.

WELCOME to the forum!

In a devastating decision, the high court cleared the way for one of those corporate takeovers you read about, only much bigger. If Exxon wants to spend $1 million (a bar tab for Big Oil) defeating an environmentalist running for city council, it can now do so. If Goldman Sachs wants to pay the entire cost of every congressional campaign in the U.S., the law of the land now allows it. The decision frees unions, too, but they already spend about as much as they can on politics. Fortune 100 firms currently spend only a fraction of 1 percent of their $605 billion in annual profits on buying politicians.


This didn't have to happen. The court was asked to rule on whether the Federal Election Commission had the right to regulate a corporate-backed outfit called Citizens United that made the conservative film Hillary: The Movie. But instead of ruling narrowly, the Roberts Court"in a new standard for judicial hypocrisy"struck down the laws of 22 states and the federal government.

So it's on. The Citizens United case is the Roe v. Wade of the 21st century, only the roles are reversed. Conservatives who bashed liberal judges for "legislating from the bench" and disrespecting precedent are now exposed as unprincipled poseurs. Liberals who grew up depending on courts to protect the public interest must now build a mass movement to confront the greatest accumulation of corporate power since the age of the robber barons.
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Until one of these hypocrites retires, we can't expect the judiciary to protect average citizens from the power of big money. "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations," Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a line that Antonin Scalia and others who claim to be guided by the Founders ignore. Jefferson was too hard on corporations, which create wealth and employ people (though the vast majority work for small businesses). But for 100 years, the Supreme Court ruled that our Constitution permitted restraints on concentrated power. Today's Roberts Court Radicals don't believe in restraint, especially when it comes to themselves.

Washington " Thursday was a bad day for democracy. The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission paves the way for unlimited corporate and union spending in elections, and the drowning out of the average citizen’s voice in our public policy debates. In other words, the court has made a bad situation worse by enhancing the ability of the deepest-pocketed special interests to influence elections and the US Congress.

In its 5-to-4 decision, the Roberts Court declares outright that corporate expenditures cannot corrupt elected officials, that influence over lawmakers is not corruption, and that appearance of influence will not undermine public faith in our democracy. These are unsubstantiated claims that will change the ground rules of American democracy.

As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent, “the court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt.”

Justice Stevens explained that corporations are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established. He lamented that the court used “a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel” when it struck down one of Congress’s most significant efforts to regulate the role that corporations and unions play in electoral politics. Stevens added that the court negated Congress’s efforts “without a shred of evidence.”

isn't it amazing how many commentators disagree with you?

Freedom of the people from despotism, to include from the tyranny of an unhinged Supreme court,
is not the provenance of Liberalism. [The liberalism was McCain's devilry.]

Free speech IS important, but the integrity of the process is so much more important.

The Supreme Court has usurped its authority, and while in this case the wayward Court has
done so claiming its desire to promote free speech in actuality it has done so to trample
on the citizens of this nations right to self determination.

Get your priorities straight and/or learn to see beyond the 1984 flavored doublespeak that this Supreme Court flings.

Free speech IS important, but the integrity of the process is so much more important .
The Supreme Court has usurped its authority, and while in this
case the wayward Court has done so claiming its desire to promote free speech
in actuality it has done so to trample on the citizens of this nations right to self determination.

Get your priorities straight and/or learn to see beyond the 1984 flavored doublespeak that this Supreme Court flings.

I repeat, the only way to use this decision is to find out WHO is paying for a candidate and who a candidate is shilling for. When that is determined and the candidates own platform is under scrutiny (by virtue of his "sponsors") we can vote aginst them.

Its no longer one man one vote by any means, since he oligarchs grow in power, money is a huge substitute for "free speech".