In a 5-4 ruling relased today, the Supreme Court effectively gutted the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation, with the majority arguing that government attempts to ban certain election season ads financed by soft money not regulated by federal laws represents an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of speech. In essence, the Court's ruling means that corporations and unions can fund "issue ads" through conduit groups like Wisconsin Right to Life (the group that was involved in the Court case) without the public having to know who paid for the ads as long as the ads never directly say to vote for or against a candidate. This means that during election seasons we are going to see a resurgence of the "call Senator Smith and tell him you think he needs to start listening to the people" garbage ads.
Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Sam Alito, both part of the majority to kill McCain-Feingold, made the incredible argument that the garbage ads mentioned above "are not the equivalent of explicit campaign ads" and thus not covered by the Court's 2003 upholding of McCain -Feingold.
In his dissent, Justice David Souter argued that the Court majority effectively overruled the 2003 decision.
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1 comment:
Well, that is good news.
If common sense cannot prevail then perhaps non-sense will provide a solution. Perhaps now that the brakes are completely off things will spiral to such insane levels (ya, maybe) that maybe, just maybe, large numbers of people will be force to realize that there is no effective or behavioral difference between The Moral Majority or The Progressive Majority. That the madness is in the method and NOT (just) the message. And that welcoming one Group of A-Holes while villifying other Groups of A-Holes who are doing the exact same thing is crazy. Maybe.
Or, maybe a whole lot of A-Holes are going to make a whole lotta money.
But seriously folks,
Moral Majority/Progressive Majority.
Could people meditate on those four words for five damn minutes? Just say it over and over in your head a few times, anything start to happen???? No?
Okay well have a good one....
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