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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (25098)	1/21/2010 10:06:23 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

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. In last year's oral argument for Citizen's United, the Court got a preview of how far a ban on corporate-funded speech could reach. Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart explained that, under McCain-Feingold, the government had the authority to "prohibit the publication" of corporate-funded books that called for the election or defeat of a candidate. That was a shock and awe moment at the Court, as it also should have been to a Washington press corps that has too often been a cheerleader for campaign-spending limits. Mr. Stewart was telling a truth already familiar to campaign-finance lawyers and the speech police at the Federal Election Commission. Former FEC Commissioner Hans von Spakovsky recalled yesterday that in 2004 the agency investigated whether a book written by George Soros critical of George W. Bush violated campaign laws. Liberals as much as conservatives should worry about laws that allow such investigations. The Court's opinion is especially effective in dismantling McCain-Feingold's arbitrary exemption for media corporations. Thus a corporation that owns a newspaper—News Corp. or the New York Times—retains its First Amendment right to speak freely. "At the same time, some other corporation, with an identical business interest but no media outlet in its ownership structure, would be forbidden to speak or inform the public about the same issue," wrote Justice Kennedy. "This differential treatment cannot be squared with the First Amendment." For instruction and sheer entertainment, we also recommend Justice Antonin Scalia's concurring opinion that demolishes Justice John Paul Stevens's argument in dissent that corporations lack free speech rights because the Founding Fathers disliked them. "If so, how came there to be so many of them?" Mr. Scalia writes, in one of his gentler lines. The landmark decision—which overturned two Supreme Court precedents—has already sent the censoring political class into orbit. President Obama was especially un-Presidential yesterday, putting on his new populist facade to call it "a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies" and other "special interests." Mr. Obama didn't mention his union friends as one of those interests, but their political spending will also be protected by the logic of this ruling. The reality is that free speech is no one's special interest. New York Senator Chuck Schumer vowed to hold hearings, and the Naderite Public Citizen lobby is already calling for a constitutional amendment that bans free speech for "for-profit corporations." Liberalism's bullying tendencies are never more on display than when its denizens are at war with the speech rights of its opponents. Perhaps one day the Court will go even further and overturn Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 decision that was its original sin in tolerating limits on campaign spending. The Court did yesterday uphold disclosure rules, so a sensible step now would be for Congress to remove all campaign-finance limits subject only to immediate disclosure on the Internet. Citizens United is in any event a bracing declaration that Congress's long and misbegotten campaign-finance crusade has reached a Constitutional dead end. online.wsj.com

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (25098)	1/23/2010 11:10:01 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Dog Surge Along With Troop Surge in Afghan War By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: January 23, 2010 Filed at 10:47 a.m. ET KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, Afghanistan (AP) -- The U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan has led to a dog surge -- and unexpected problems in procuring high-quality dog food with enough protein and nutrients for hundreds of canines used to find explosives and perform other energy-intensive missions. Along with about 37,000 U.S. and NATO troops, the number of military working dogs being brought into the country to search for mines, explosives and to accompany soldiers on patrol is increasing substantially, according to Nick Guidas, the American K-9 project manager for Afghanistan. Guidas, a civilian contractor who primarily oversees dog operations in southern Afghanistan, said he has 50 dogs on operational teams and about 20 more awaiting missions. He expects that number to go up to 219 by July. ''It may go as high as 315 dogs in Afghanistan,'' he said Saturday at a crowded kennel full of highly trained German and Dutch Shepherds, Belgian Malinois and Labradors on this air base, the hub of U.S. and international security forces' operations in the volatile Kandahar area. ''Because of the surge there is more need for working dogs. But one of my main problems is getting dog food,'' he said. ''It's hard to convince people sometimes that it's a priority, but it's a necessity if we are to keep these dogs working.'' Guidas said because of the energy-intensive demands of their missions, the dogs require special food and can't just eat scraps. The dog food, which is made commercially in the United States and has extra protein and nutrients to keep the dogs healthy while working in the heat and cold, must be shipped to Pakistan and then trucked to Kandahar. But space on trucks is limited and prioritized. Food and supplies for humans come first, and logistics planners are still adjusting for the eating needs of the bigger pack of dogs to be put to work. ''It doesn't get a higher priority than a Coke or some potato chips,'' Guidas said of the dog food. ''It moves when it moves.'' Even so, the dogs have become an essential component of many units because of their versatility. They can be trained to search for a wide variety of explosives and parts used in making improvised bombs. In the past month alone, military dogs in southern Afghanistan have made 20 finds of unexploded devices, weapon caches and other materiel. The U.S. has about 2,800 military dogs, the largest canine force in the world. It has used dogs in combat since World War I. The dogs don't come cheap. It costs about $40,000 per dog a year, and each goes through about five months of training. This year, Guidas expects the cost of the dog food that he needs to reach $200,000, up from about $80,000 last year. He said each dog can work for five or six years, but the demands of the terrain and of the mission are harsh, particularly on the dogs' joints. If a dog is injured or sick, it is not sent out on operations. Only two military dogs have been lost in southern Afghanistan in the past five years, Guidas said. ''We take very good care of these dogs,'' he said. ''In some cases they are treated better than us.''