{"id":7909,"date":"2012-06-02T10:56:46","date_gmt":"2012-06-02T17:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=7909"},"modified":"2012-06-02T10:58:44","modified_gmt":"2012-06-02T17:58:44","slug":"citizens-united-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/02\/citizens-united-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Citizens United Revisited?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><em>Citizens United<\/em> has to be the worst Supreme Court decision since <em>Dred Scott<\/em>, because it is making our electoral process a cesspit of lies in which the liars have zero accountability for their deception.&#160; Thanks to the courage of Montana\u2019s state Supreme Court, Citizens United may be revisited.<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"SCOTUS4\" border=\"0\" alt=\"SCOTUS4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/SCOTUS4.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"311\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Supreme Court is set to decide whether it should reconsider its controversial decision in the 2010 Citizens United decision that freed corporations and unions to make independent election expenditures. Whatever the court does, it should not back down from the core principle in the decision upholding the First Amendment.<\/p>\n<p>The issue has come back to the court following a ruling by the Montana Supreme Court that the Citizens United decision does not apply to Montana\u2019s state law regulating the campaign speech of corporations. <strong>The U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to strike down the Montana ruling because it runs counter to the federal interpretation of the First Amendment<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Attorneys general for the District of Columbia and 22 states \u2014 including Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller \u2014 take the opposite view. They argue that while the Citizens United ruling applies to federal election law, the states should be free to enforce state laws regulating corporate spending on state and local elections.<\/p>\n<p>That would, in effect, mean two tiers of First Amendment protections, with less protection at the state level. The Supreme Court should not go there in this case, or in any case: Since the ratification of constitutional amendments following the Civil War, the court has extended the protections in the Bill of Rights to the states, and it should not reverse that now\u2026 [<em>emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Inserted from &lt;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmoinesregister.com\/article\/20120602\/OPINION03\/306020014\/0\/SPORTS020406\/?odyssey=nav%7Chead\" target=\"_blank\">DesMoines Register<\/a>&gt;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I agree with the author, because the representatives belong to their states, even though their offices are federal.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Rachel Maddow discussed the case with Montana AG, Steve Bullock.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><object width=\"592\" height=\"346\" id=\"msnbc3d5e99\" classid=\"clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000\" target=\"_blank\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=10,0,0,0\"><param name=\"movie\" target=\"_blank\" value=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/32545640\" \/><param name=\"FlashVars\" value=\"launch=47654599^0^606006&amp;width=592&amp;height=346\" \/><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\" \/><embed name=\"msnbc3d5e99\" src=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/32545640\" width=\"592\" height=\"346\" FlashVars=\"launch=47654599^0^606006&amp;width=592&amp;height=346\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" wmode=\"transparent\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" pluginspage=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/shockwave\/download\/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash\"><\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; margin-top: 5px; width: 592px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; color: #999; font-size: 11px\">Visit msnbc.com for <a style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\" target=\"_blank\">breaking news<\/a>, <a style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032507\" target=\"_blank\">world news<\/a>, and <a style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032072\" target=\"_blank\">news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Needless to millionaires, billionaires, and corporate criminals, along with their Republican sycophants, are all over this.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">In my opinion, Citizens United stifles free speech. Just about the only defense regular people have against corporate political abuse is our right to choose not to patronize such companies. That&#8217;s our &#8216;speech&#8217;. Allowing corporations do drown the media in dishonest ads and to do so in secret, deprives us of our right to hold them accountable in the market place.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">We can only hope that SCROTUS will have sufficient concern to preserve their legacy, since it is obvious to all but the most brainwashed Republicans that Citizens United is fatally flawed.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Citizens United has to be the worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott, because it is making our electoral process a cesspit of lies in which the liars have zero accountability for their deception.&#160; Thanks to the courage of Montana\u2019s state Supreme Court, Citizens United may be revisited. The U.S. Supreme Court is set to <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/02\/citizens-united-revisited\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}