A Test Case for Roberts

Washington Post ^ | September 7, 2009 | E. J. Dionne Jr.

[Lorianne]

President Obama's health-care speech on Wednesday will be only the second most consequential political moment of the week.

Judged by the standard of an event's potential long-term impact on our public life, the most important will be the argument before the Supreme Court (on the same day, as it happens) about a case that, if decided wrongly, could surrender control of our democracy to corporate interests.

This sounds melodramatic. It's not. The court is considering eviscerating laws that have been on the books since 1907 and 1947 -- in two separate cases -- banning direct contributions and spending by corporations in federal election campaigns. Doing so would obliterate precedents that go back two and three decades.

The full impact of what the court could do in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has only begun to receive the attention it deserves. Even the word "radical" does not capture the extent to which the justices could turn our political system upside down. Will it use a case originally brought on a narrow issue to bring our politics back to the corruption of the Gilded Age?

Citizens United, a conservative group, brought suit arguing that it should be exempt from the restrictions of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law for a movie it made that was sharply critical of Hillary Clinton. The organization said it should not have to disclose who financed the film.

[sourcery]

Doing so would obliterate precedents that go back two and three decades.

Those "precedents" themselves obliterated much older precedents—and stand in clear, undeniable, unarguable contradiction to the absolute Constitutional prohibition against any Federal law abridging (limiting, curtailing) the freedom of speech. The First Amendment makes no exceptions to that prohibition. None. Not for obscenity, national security, "compelling state interests," political correctness or any other thing whatsoever.

[bronxville]

Another one due in Dec 31 - will have horrific consequences:

WTO and Codex Alimentarius (Health/Food control= people control = population control).. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5266884912495233634

[EDINVA]

I thought the SCOTUS didn’t reconvene until the first Monday in October? Why would they be having a hearing this Wednesday ?

[Lancey Howard]

Well, this is easy - - Roberts needs to rule exactly the opposite of the way this America-hating, socialist p.o.s. Dionne wants him to rule.

Anyway...

Congress's power to prohibit direct corporate and union contributions "has been firmly embedded in our law." That's what you call "settled expectations."

Union contributions are prohibited?

"I did not know that."

[ApplegateRanch]

Strange; I thought a newspaper was usually a corporation; and that editorials and “recommendations” could be construed as political contributions of a sort.

If films and (as admitted by a governement lawyer under SCOTUS questioning) books, then why not editorial comment, also?

Some journalists just don’t know when to zip it.