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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (545660)	1/22/2010 5:35:42 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576329

I work for an oil company and we're planning on buying control of California and drilling the crap out of their coasts. Cheaper than getting the US to invade Iraq and Afghanistan so we can steal their oil. jk I know some will believe that.

To: koan who wrote (545660)	1/22/2010 5:57:28 PM
From: TimF	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576329

You think corporations should have the same rights as people? Corporations are people acting collectively. They should lose their rights when they act as a group, and the constitution says "congress shall pass no law", not "no law unless it involves a corporation". The same "no law" idea applies to the freedom of the press. If the 1st amendment only protects individuals acting as individuals, than I guess it would be ok to shut down or censor the New York Times.

To: koan who wrote (545660)	1/22/2010 6:29:12 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576329

Koan, > You talk big, but have you ever walked the walk. I doubt it. You talk big, but I did it! LOL, what exactly did you do, big boy? Tenchusatsu

To: koan who wrote (545660)	1/23/2010 12:24:45 PM
From: i-node	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576329

Try running for congress against big oil, or whatever big corpoations are in your district. Freedom of speech must be absolute or it is worthless. Roberts, in the concurring opinion, points out that what we're talking about here is CENSORSHIP. "Its [the government's] theory, if accepted, would empower the Government to prohibit newspapers from running editorials or opinion pieces supporting or opposing candidates for office, so long as the newspapers were owned by corporations--as the major ones are". I just can't imagine how the Left is finding this kind of censorship to be something they want. Scalia, in his concurring opinion, addresses the freedom of speech by corporations issue head-on, which is the most interest paragraph in the opinion to me -- and flies in the face of the liberal argument: "It [the Government] never shows why “the freedom of speech” that was the right of Englishmen did not include the freedom to speak in association with other individuals, including association in the corporate form. To be sure, in 1791 (as now) corporations could pursue only the objectives set forth in their charters; but the dissent provides no evidence that their speech in the pursuit of those objectives could be censored." ... "The Amendment is written in terms of “speech,” not speakers. Its text offers no foothold for excluding any category of speaker, from single individuals to partnerships of individuals, to unincorporated associations of individuals, to incorporated associations of individuals—and the dissent offers no evidence about the original meaning of the text to support any such exclusion." ... "A documentary film critical of a potential Presidential candidate is core political speech, and its nature as such does not change simply because it was funded by a corporation." Scalia's remarks are the crux of the matter. Whether corporations have "freedom of speech" is a secondary point. What matters is that people, by virtue of banding together, DO NOT GIVE UP their constitutional right to freedom of speech. How long before a group of individuals protesting on the street corner would be denied their rights because they speak "as one"? Moreover, the Left has tried to characterize the decision as a rejection of stare decisis the reality is that the Government, in its case, relied on concepts that had nothing to do the with the precedent in the Austin case. In effect, they attempted to extend the precedent well beyond its actual implications. The Court decided, as it should, to draw the line. The Austin precedent had been revised and extended time and again beyond what the Court had ever intended, and so they now recognized that it had begun to impinge on the constitutional issues of free speech. So, the Court was compelled to stop it. Scalia also points out that Stevens, in his dissent, gets all involved in the "role of corporations in society", and whether the framers "liked" corporations in determining whether corporations had rights of free speech. Basically, a statement that, no matter what the Constitution may say, the "righteous" thing to do is stop corporations from having a voice. This, of course, is the basis for bad law (refer to Dred Scot, which was considered "righteous" at the time).