Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (129909)	2/1/2010 6:44:02 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542214

You say "speak" to a dog and the dog barks. All the parties seem to think it's speech. Funny. You say "speak" to the dog, and it recognizes the sound that indicates you want it to bark. It doesn't know the meaning of the term beyond "she wants me to bark", if it even knows that much and isn't just operating under its conditioning. You could make the phrase "corporation", or "don't speak", and get the same response if that is how you trained the dog. If they don't have standing, then their speech isn't protected. The amendment as written is a limitation of congress, only indirectly a protection of rights for those with standing. Congress has no power to do some specific thing whoever or whatever it applies to. If you think that corporations have standing because the people who inhabit them have standing, then brooks have standing because people swimming in them have standing. The argument is pretty much a non-sequitur. The people in the brook are not part of the brook and don't operate collectively as a brook.

To: Lane3 who wrote (129909)	2/2/2010 7:54:32 AM
From: Travis_Bickle	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542214

If you look at the First Amendment on its face, I think it would apply to a statute that infringed on the free speech of talking monkeys, if monkeys could talk. It applies to a statute that abridges speech, and doesn't seem particularly concerned with WHOSE speech is being abridged. So if a chimp or gorilla is ever determined to be no-kidding capable of speech, it could potentially become an issue. I understand what you are saying about standing, but given what the First Amendment actually says, and given that the 2002 statute appears to fall within the four corners of the Amendment, it seems to me that the burden should be on those who would uphold the statute, rather than those that want to strike it down. When I was a law clerk I worked on cases involving judicial interpretation of statutes and the general rule was if a situation falls squarely within the terms of the statute there is no need to go outside the statute to examine things like legislative history. In the Citizens United case I think the ball is in the dissenters' court ... it is up to them to establish why the statute SHOULDN'T be struck down. In this case we clearly have 1. a law passed by Congress which 2. abridges 3. speech