US POLITICS: AMERICANS, PLEASE WELCOME YOUR NEW PRESIDENT... SCOTT BROWN!

John Paul Stevens: “Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech.”

Stone Cold John Paul Stevens

The NYT Magazine's profile of Stevens from a couple of years ago is worth a read if you're bored. He still considers himself a conservative.

reich idea seems pretty crafty...would it just lead to another sc case?

this has got to be a perfect wedge issue to divide tea-party assholes from old school republican assholes, right? please?

tea party assholes are a mob controlled by old school republican assholes

dunno. partisans of the "right" seem to me slightly less attuned to how the gop fails to truly represent their purported interests.(small business in particular). those on the left seem to do nothing but complain how their party fails to represent them (and i would largely go with that).

ha xpost what iatee said

seem to do nothing but complain

hyperbole bruv

I really don't see a GOP-issues-wedge happening anytime soon, just a continued expulsion of 'moderates' - which is to say that scott brown might be a wedge pretty soon, cause he's gonna REALLY disappoint tea party assholes if he has any interest in getting re-elected in MA

"I cannot support the Senate bill for the same reasons I could not before," he said. "It is a collection of unfair elements, including last-minute deal-making with certain individual senators in exchange for their votes, that has incensed voters across the country. It does not add up to an improvement in our health care system."

" The bill forces people to buy insurance they could not afford. It places the burden on middle-income families it is supposed to protect. It does nothing to change insurance company behavior. In total, it is a recipe for disaster down the line. There are too many elements of this bill that make no sense for me to cast my vote in favor."

up or down vote my ass

up or down, vote my ass

took down that thing hardcore

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/1/20/1263986678474

crown his ass

oh well fail img

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/77479-filibuster-reform-headed-for-senate-floor-faces-uphill-battle

quite a headline there

the fact that the lede is there twice is a typo im sure but it makes it seem like the reporter is repeating it in disbelief

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8476075.stm Not gonna stick with the detention without trial, I hope...

Yemenis account for approximately half of the inmates at Guantanamo.

whoah wtf had no idea the percentage was that large.

sad that the bbc is on this and the American news media... is not

this is prob obvious to us all, but if they are so bad and (deservedly) hated could this not be proven via a trial?

Oh, heavens, no, because if we exhibit the evidence we have against them it would endanger national security. That's some catch, that Catch-22.

plus it would require entering into evidence in a court of law that the US tortures prisoners, which has a whole host of ramifications

the evidence against them would be corrupted because they were coerced. one reason why torture suuuuucks. not really obama's fault, but it is his headache.

I asked whether Stevens thought the right to abortion recognized in Roe v. Wade would survive in his lifetime. “Well, it’s up to Justice Kennedy,” he replied. “I don’t know about the two new justices” — Roberts and Alito — “but I kind of assume it may well be up to him. There's some crank named Morbius on Ilxor who says it will never be overturned for some reason. Because of him I've lately just been reading the Excelsior threads."

Greenwald, as usual, gives a contrarian take on the SCOTUS ruling. Def. worth reading in full, but here's a salient excerpt, and it makes me feel better about my First Amendment stand a couple of days ago:

To the contrary, the entire dissent -- while arguing that corporations have fewer First Amendment protections than individuals -- is grounded in the premise that corporations do have First Amendment free speech rights and that restrictions on the expenditure of money do burden those rights, but those free speech rights can be restricted when there's a "compelling state interest." In this case, the dissenters argued, such restrictions are justified by the "compelling state interest" the Government has in preventing the corrupting influence of corporate money. That's why the extent of one's belief in the First Amendment is outcome-determinative here. Those who want to restrict free speech always argue that there's a compelling reason to do so ("we must ban the Communist Party because they pose a danger to the country"; "we must ban hate speech because it sparks violence and causes a climate of intimidation"; "we must ban radical Muslim websites because they provoke Terrorism"). One can have reasonable debates over the "compelling interest" question as a constitutional matter -- and, as I said yesterday, I'm deeply ambivalent about the Citizens United case because that's a hard question and I do think corporate influence is one of the greatest threats we face -- but, ultimately, it's because I don't believe that restrictions on political speech and opinions (as opposed to other kinds of statements) can ever be justified that I agree with the majority's ruling. There are reasonable arguments on all sides of that question.

yeah greenwalds take made me reconsider my kneejerk reaction

interesting but i disagree just bc i am not an absolutist about the first amendment and also because the restriction in this case is not content- or viewpoint-based like a restriction on radical muslim websites or banning the communist party.

i have read the linked greenwald piece, but not all of his comments on this. im a big fan of greenwald, but i think this is some jedi mind fuck bs. i get what he's saying- once you find that corps have a fundamental free speech right, limiting those corps is like limiting you or me. if one corporation is shackled, none of us are free. ok. in that case pay attention to the proper question, and worry about how we get to the correct answer for it.

it is entirely proper to focus first upon the question of whether corporations even have this fundamental constitutional right. if you find it does not exist you remove the entire element of "compelling state interests" for the purposes of defining limits upon that speech. that is, if this fakeass nonperson has no speech rights, you need not worry about what interests permit abridging those rights from a constitutional standpoint. that does NOT mean that the state would not permit the corporations by statute to enjoy some free speech protections. i think there are good policy and economic reasons for them to have those, but they are not absolute. and that's totally different from making them equal in rights to the people.

personally, if justices and greenwald or whoever want to broaden free speech rights to include totally unlimited personal election spending with disclosure, i am at least philosophically more in favor of that than allowing even limited corporate spending. corps arent in fact natural persons. what rights they have are those granted by the statutes creating them.

what rights they should have obv

i am at least philosophically more in favor of that than allowing even limited corporate spending

also, i need to think more on that statement. because i think well-regulated corporate spending might be better than unlimited personal spending.

And if they want to have those rights they should pay like everyone else when they screw up/steal money/kill people/etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ7XFvniWWE

Doesn't the language "free speech" imply that money/contractual bondage is out of the question?

MONEY IS SPEECH ONLY IN AMERICA

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/43/Moneytalkssinglecover.jpg

ok, so i get what greenwald is saying. if we, as all 9 justices did, agree that corps DO have 1st amendment rights and that money IS speech, then this ruling follows. i could've done without the condescension, however:

When a court invalidates Law X or Government Action Y on constitutional grounds, it's always so striking how one's views about the validity of the court's ruling track one's beliefs about the desirability of Law X/Action Y on policy grounds (e.g., "I like Law X and disagree with the Court's ruling declaring Law X unconstitutional" or "I dislike Law X and agree with the Court's striking down Law X"). Campaign finance laws are popular with readers here, and thus a court decision striking down those laws inevitably will be unpopular (though the public at large -- including 2/3 of Democrats -- overwhelmingly agrees with the Court's ruling). It's critical always to note that these are two entirely distinct questions: (1) is Law X/Government Action Y a good thing?, and (2) is Law X/Government Action Y Constitutional? If you find yourself virtually always providing the same answer to both questions -- or, conversely, almost never providing opposite answers -- that's a very compelling sign that your opinions about court rulings are outcome-based (i.e., driven by your policy preferences) rather than based in law or the Constitution.

yes, thank you, i understand that constitutionality and "being a good thing" are not always in agreement.

that being said, i did not realize that the dissenters had taken as a given the fact that corps enjoy first amendment protections. my opposition to the ruling was, and is, grounded in my opposition to corporate personhood, which is what i assumed was up for debate in this case.

also, this:

I'm deeply ambivalent about the Citizens United case because that's a hard question and I do think corporate influence is one of the greatest threats we face -- but, ultimately, it's because I don't believe that restrictions on political speech and opinions (as opposed to other kinds of statements) can ever be justified that I agree with the majority's ruling. There are reasonable arguments on all sides of that question.

doesn't wash with me. i'm similarly hardline about political speech, but this statement still assumes that limiting the political speech of a for-profit "legal person" is in some way equally obnoxious to civil liberty as gagging actual citizens. if a corporation is ~by law~ beholden to the economic interests of its shareholders, any political speech it makes (ie pays for) should only be made for the purposes of maximizing profit or market share or whatever. in this sense, the political speech of a corporation is "automatic," and not the product of a free and rational actor. if Shell campaigns for a candidate that is friendly to Big Oil, it's not because the board believes in that candidate's political philosophy, it's because that candidate will likely support policy that serves Shell's economic interests. if they are going to spend shareholder money ~at all~ then it MUST be in a way that can be shown to be beneficial to shareholder's economic interests.

i did not realize that the dissenters had taken as a given the fact that corps enjoy first amendment protections. my opposition to the ruling was, and is, grounded in my opposition to corporate personhood, which is what i assumed was up for debate in this case.

otm

q: is corporate speech being protected in this instance because the court is considering a corporation as merely an assembly of citizens? like, indistinct from a local teabagging org or union or say the sierra club?

yes, to the best of my understanding

i am gonna read the opinion now

one thing I think we can all agree on is that the next election is gonna be a laff riot

when aren't they?!

yeah but what if the Republican candidate gets a full sponsorship from Microsoft and has to present all his stump speeches via SongSmith

yes, to the best of my understanding

― max, Saturday, January 23, 2010 3:16 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ah ok. i guess if you consider them all to be equivalent, then it follows. but i really don't see how a for-profit entity can be thought of as being equivalent to non-profit, explicitly political orgs.

also, still trying to think of a sinister situation where limiting corporate speech would be bad. like, say, a small closely held corp (not traded) wants to build say a wind-farm that would be beneficial to the community (cheap clean energy yay) but they're running up against political resistance from a group that doesn't want its view ruined by turbines. i guess in this case if you had a law that totally gagged corporations, they wouldn't be able to appeal directly to voters w/r/t this enterprise which could be mutually beneficial. but no one's advocating that corps be disallowed all political speech---just that it's OK to impose strictures on corporate political speech that temper their abilities to use money to swing elections. i guess where there's room for debate, imo, is if you think that ANY kind of limitation of corporate speech could somehow be leveraged in the future to unfairly quash political speech of ALL kinds. but man, seeing how corps are so strictly defined, i don't see how that's possible.

seems like greenwald is being as reflexive in his desire to protect all political speech as the ppl he accuses of disliking this decision because they just hate corporations

'free speech no exceptions' is a fine thing to believe, but given that we already have many, many exceptions, how is this one somehow more corrosive than, say, telling people they can't say "fuck" on TV shows or display pornography in their front yard

tho i guess neither of those are explicitly political

this fiction must die yall. its ridiculous. corporations must serve man.

Also am wondering if corporations become full 'persons' under the law, how do they retain limited liability? People are liable.

this opinion is way boring. but i guess i get what greenwald is saying (i was being dumb earlier) because it *is* a content-based restriction in one way (it only applies to speech mentioning a candidate, which is always political speech). i still disagree because the more important issue is the discrimination against corporations, which is obviously not content-based and doesn't bring up a slippery slope like "if they ban the communist party they might someday ban my party." it's procedural and i'm totally ok with finding a compelling interest here. because the corp has special privileges under law that allow it to amass money and power, it shouldn't get to use its money to make commercials for a candidate who it hopes will help it get even more money. and even before this case it could still do it outside 30 days before an election!

xpost i believe he tried to point out in his post that constitutional rights are *not* limited to persons. you do not need to be a person to have first amendment rights.