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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (40321)	1/8/2010 2:11:39 PM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

Are you pointing at Bolton or yourself? <;0)>

To: RMF who wrote (40321)	1/22/2010 1:25:55 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 71588

A victory for free speech By TigerHawk at 1/21/2010 10:20:00 AM The Supreme Court decides, correctly, that the phrase "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" actually means what it says. The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on their participation in federal campaigns. By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states. Good. No constituency, not even businesses or labor unions -- hey, fair is fair -- should be forbidden to respond when defamed by ambitious politicians. Allowing such organizations to express opinions again should, at least, make politicians on both left and right (as the case may be) more reluctant to demonize them. If you want to get money out of politics, make far less money flow through, or only by permission of, the government. MORE: SCOTUSblog "live blog" here, text of the opinion target="_blank">here. STILL MORE: A couple of commenters have raised an old question one predictably hears from people who want to go after corporations and are frustrated by Constitutional restraints: That the rights in the Constitution should not apply to corporate persons, only natural born individuals. As I wrote in a responsive comment below, presumably such people do not believe that the protections of the First Amendment should apply to the New York Times Company, or that the government should be free to take the property of corporations without due process of law or just compensation, or that the police should be able to search and seize the property of corporations without a warrant issued upon probable cause. Strange ideas from purported liberals, who would no doubt explode with rage when the target is the Sierra Club of the National Organization of Women or the United Auto Workers rather than a Fortune 500 business corporation. More on that subject at Volokh, particularly on the confusing notion that freedom of the "press" protects such corporations even when freedom of speech does not. tigerhawk.blogspot.com