Wiretap: High Court still OK with campaign-finance corruption

 
To no one’s surprise – after all, we’ve seen this movie before — the rich win another one. Money is speech, and big money, says the court, just means more speech. And even though the rich (according to Chief Justice John Roberts) are the embattled few, their freedom of speech/spending is as inviolate as anyone else’s. Amy Davidson gets right to the heart of the matter in her piece on the McCutcheon ruling, citing Roberts’ majority opinion, in which he writes: “If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades — despite the profound offense such spectacles cause — it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.”

In the Atlantic, Garrett Epps writes about legalized corruption and the end of campaign finance reform. He quotes Justice Stephen Breyer in his dissent from the bench: “Today’s decision substitutes judges’ understandings of how the political process works for the understanding of Congress, fails to recognize the different between influence resting upon public opinion and influence bought by money alone, overturns key precedent, creates serious loopholes in the law, and undermines, perhaps devastates, what remains of campaign finance reform.”

Copyright-turned-election-reform-crusader Lawrence Lessig, founder of Rootstrikers, says the “originalists” on the bench were wrong even by their own logic and that the government and the liberals on the bench were too exhausted with phony originalism to even point it out. Writing at the Daily Beast: “At the core of the disaster that is the Supreme Court’s McCutcheon v. FEC decision lies a mistake… The decision was made possible by a dangerous, narrow definition of ‘corruption’ the Framers wouldn’t recognize.”

The Borowitz Report: By a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upholds the right of the rich to own the government.

The Fort Hood shooting brings back the horror to the victims of the 2009 attack. Via the Dallas Morning News.

The anti-vaxxers, Jeffrey Kluger writes in Time, are wrong. In fact, he says, they’re dead wrong.

In which the New York Times’ new app tries to one-app (OK, sorry for that) Facebook. Via the Atlantic.

Joel Achenbach writes in the Washington Post that, after covering Flight 370 for three weeks, this is what he thinks happened. (Spoiler alert: The truth is, he doesn’t know, and he’s afraid we might never know.)

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Here we go with the ignorant comments from the left on this issue. Pssst…to all you liberals that refuse to see the truth, and the truth is, both sides get big money from corporations period.The democrats dominate the contributions from unions by a huge margin. And those of you anti-corporation nuts, if you have an IRA or any retirement program, you support big business, because that is who your dollars are invested in.

  2. This is expected from the court who decided that rich people should speak louder than everyone else. Now they base the next corrupting ruling on the previous one like that one was good sense.

    Mike, buddy, you seem to think that corporate money and union money are a one to one ration. Try 11 to 1, more like it. If you REALLY think that the unions can come CLOSE to competing with corporate America, then it’s clear YOU haven’t been paying any attention. Are you aware that big business is sitting on cash reserves of well over $2.7 TRILLION that they took from us in the form of wages we DON’T get, and that they use that against us every day? Apparently not, you seem to have a very corporate view of reality, which is a shame. It’s slitting your own throat every time you express it. Corporate America is NOT your friend, you’re nothing but a bottomless pocket for them to pick whenever their palms itch.

    Try being on the side of HUMANS for a change. You keep on kissing the ass of corporate America, and before long, they will OWN your life, lock stock and barrel. That is their goal, to bring back slavery. It’s their business model. Look at what they have been doing to the WORLD and tell me it’s NOT. You can’t. MY eyes are open to what they really DO. Yours are only open what they say. Unfortunately, MY side wins. Which means we ALL lose, unless we’re in the 1%. Are you?

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