How would a rape/incest exception be implemented?

[Jon Miller]

I am fine with allowing wealthy people to use their wealth to have high influence in politics as long as we tax them heavily.

Wealth tax

JM

[Wiglaf]

At least you are honest that you have no rational argument, just a basic hatred for people smarter and richer than you are.

[kentonio]

Double Post

[kentonio]

Wiglaf, Reg, Kuci and Ozz, all being full of **** in this thread just for a change. Yes, it was all about banning books and totalitarian government which is why the court split 5-4 with the dissent including a warning that the ruling 'threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution' and 'A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.'

Except to you dumb bastards the political process has become so polarized that a peice of horrendous judicial activism that opens up US elections to incredible corruption has to be defended tooth and nail. Despite the fact that 22 states are currently fighting to try and stop its perfidiuous affects on democracy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1530771.html

Citizens United was a partisan filmmaker trying to get an exception to show his attack ad close to an election. Not even Citizens United themselves were trying to change the law, they just wanted to show their attack peice and milk the TV rights. The justices were the ones who turned this into an attack on democracy, and they deserve to be held accountable. You don't need to be a lawyer to read the majority opinion and be disgusted by the immoral and ridiculous line of reasoning. It was utterly disgraceful and will not stand the test of time.

As for trying to make out like those opposing are just some poor saps who don't understand what they are talking about, lets listen to a few other people who share those concerns..

..gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington — while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates

This decision was a terrible mistake. Presented with a relatively narrow legal issue, the Supreme Court chose to roll back laws that have limited the role of corporate money in federal elections since Teddy Roosevelt was president.

the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case, ..the court had opened the door to political bribery and corruption in elections to come

there's going to be, over time, a backlash ... when you see the amounts of union and corporate money that's going to go into political campaigns

With this decision, corporations can now directly pour vast amounts of corporate money, through independent expenditures, into the electoral swamp already flooded with corporate campaign PAC contribution dollars

The ruling especially hurts the ability of parties that don't accept corporate contributions, like the Green Party, to compete

In a transparently political decision, a majority of the US Supreme Court overturned its own recent precedent and paid tribute to the giant corporate interests that already wield tremendous power over our political process and political speech.

the decision "marks a major upheaval in First Amendment law and signals the end of whatever legitimate claim could otherwise have been made by the Roberts Court to an incremental and minimalist approach to constitutional adjudication, to a modest view of the judicial role vis-à-vis the political branches, or to a genuine concern with adherence to precedent" and pointed out that "Talking about a business corporation as merely another way that individuals might choose to organize their association with one another to pursue their common expressive aims is worse than unrealistic; it obscures the very real injustice and distortion entailed in the phenomenon of some people using other people's money to support candidates they have made no decision to support, or to oppose candidates they have made no decision to oppose."

In invalidating some of the existing checks on campaign spending, the majority in Citizens United has signaled that the problem of campaign contributions in judicial elections might get considerably worse and quite soon

argued that the ruling "is activist, it increases the dangers of corruption in our political system and it ignores the strong tradition of American political equality". He also described Justice Kennedy's "specter of blog censorship" as sounding more like "the rantings of a right-wing talk show host than the rational view of a justice with a sense of political realism".

This decision was the ultimate evidence if any more was needed that the Democrats have to win in November. If the GOP get to pick the next few Supreme Court Justices then America is going to descend into a nasty age of corporate plutocracy where democracy and freedom are bought and paid for.

[regexcellent]

Oh my god, with scholars like Barack Obama and RUSS FEINGOLD (who wrote the stupid law) opposing me I'll have to reconsider my case.

[kentonio]

Yes, you should definitely listen to great thinkers like Wiglaf over a huge list of lawyers and constitutional law experts who say that this ruling was full of ****.

[Guynemer]

Gentlemen, gentlemen, PLEASE.

You can both be right, you know.

The Citizens United decision does defend the First Amendment, thank heavens, and it ALSO dooms us to a thoroughly corrupt and distasteful elections process, curse the gods.

And that is American governance in a nutshell, as far as I'm concerned.

[Kuciwalker]

Citizens United was a partisan filmmaker trying to get an exception to show his attack ad close to an election. Not even Citizens United themselves were trying to change the law, they just wanted to show their attack peice and milk the TV rights.

THAT'S CHANGING THE LAW.

[Wiglaf]

The best part was when he quoted Alan Grayson --- Alan ****ing Grayson --- saying it was the worst decision since Dred Scott. I am sorry, I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

[Kuciwalker]

Yes, you should definitely listen to great thinkers like Wiglaf over a huge list of lawyers and constitutional law experts who say that this ruling was full of ****.

An even better rule of thumb is that if you disagree with the ACLU, you're wrong.

[regexcellent]

The ACLU supports abortion, among other things unrelated to the first amendment, so no. Also the ACLU supports public financing of campaigns, which is even worse.

[Kuciwalker]

I am not yet seeing a problem.

[kentonio]

THAT'S CHANGING THE LAW.

In response to Souter’s questions, Olson made a key point about how he thought the case should be resolved. In his view, the prohibitions in McCain-Feingold applied only to television commercials, not to ninety-minute documentaries. “This sort of communication was not something that Congress intended to prohibit,” Olson said. This view made the case even more straightforward. Olson’s argument indicated that there was no need for the Court to declare any part of the law unconstitutional, or even to address the First Amendment implications of the case. Olson simply sought a judgment that McCain-Feingold did not apply to documentaries shown through video on demand.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...fa_fact_toobin

[Wiglaf]

Toobin's piece has been thoroughly discredited, including on that point.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/jeffrey-toobin-rewrites-supreme-court-history-and-his-own_645093.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Toobin's effort does not end with the initial scene setting. Proceeding to oral argument, Toobin suggests that Ted Olson, counsel for Citizens United, urged the Court to avoid the First Amendment question altogether:

In response to Souter’s questions, Olson made a key point about how he thought the case should be resolved. In his view, the prohibitions in McCain-Feingold applied only to television commercials, not to ninety-minute documentaries. “This sort of communication was not something that Congress intended to prohibit,” Olson said. This view made the case even more straightforward. Olson’s argument indicated that there was no need for the Court to declare any part of the law unconstitutional, or even to address the First Amendment implications of the case. Olson simply sought a judgment that McCain-Feingold did not apply to documentaries shown through video on demand.

Again, to anyone familiar with the case, this description of Olson's argument does not pass the laugh test. Far from minimizing the case's constitutional stakes, Ted Olson and Citizens United made the First Amendment the centerpiece of their opening brief. In the very title of the lead argument, Olson's brief argued that McCain-Feingold's corporate campaign speech restriction "IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL AS APPLIED TO THE DISTRIBUTION OF CITIZENS UNITED’S DOCUMENTARY FILM THROUGH VIDEO ON DEMAND."

And Olson's reply brief reiterated this point: "As applied to Video On Demand dissemination of Hillary: The Movie, BCRA’s criminalization of election-related debate plainly exceeds Congress’s sharply limited authority to abridge the freedom of speech."

[kentonio]

Weekly Standard? Oh that's beautiful.