“Congress Shall Make No Law”

But it did,abridging the freedom of speech  of corporate entities, other than the press.

Campaign finance reform, and its attendant logic, became a euphemism for the censorship of political speech. Intended (and justified) to prevent seeming and supposed corruptions of our political process, it has reduced our liberties without restoring our confidence in the system.

If you are “big oil, Wall Street, insurance companies”, among others you might be too big to fail but not too big to be selectively silenced.

Some might think that unusual, most would think it un-American

Last weeks Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 5- to – 4 in favor of freedom, restored a foundational liberty to its preeminent and pre-adulterated self.

Our President and live in constitutional scholar commented with professorial detachment; “this ruling strikes at our democracy itself”… “I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest”…. “a major victory for powerful interests”.

Coincidently those ‘powerful interests’ have recently been vilified by the President.

Populists need designated enemies of the people.

The NYT editorialized the day after the ruling; “The majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights”… “The Constitution mentions many things and assigns them rights and protections – the people, militias, the press, religions. But it does not mention corporations”

Nor does it mention abortions.

The Times faults the majority for its “broad interpretation of free speech rights” yet has  applauded the application of the First Amendment to ‘virtual child pornography on the internet’ , the printing of classified national security information, on its own front pages, and to topless pole dancing (soon to be, I hope, an Olympic sport).

Good law, sound logic and Constitutional fidelity notwithstanding perhaps the most convincing case  to be made for the Courts decision are those who oppose it.

A failing grade

The non-racist, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is also non-ideological, so argues a recent White House memo. She “voted with the GOP appointees on the District Court of Appeals 95% of the time”. Impressive!

Yet, decisively inconsequential, according to no less an authority than our non-ideological President Obama.

In a 2005 floor statement the then Senator Obama explained his opposition to Judge Roberts confirmation. Although conceding the nominee fit to serve on the highest court in the land by virtue of intellect, scholarship, experience and temperament then Judge Roberts lacked the correct values, appropriate concerns, necessary world view and capaciousness of empathy.

In other words a Justice Roberts was unlikely to agree with Senator Obama on those 5% of cases (the difficult ones) that really matter.

Writs and Wrongs

I have it on good authority, from my progressive friends, that the Constitution is a “living document”. Its interpretation currently influenced by foreign law, evolving standards of decency, penumbras and adumbrations, an activism born of social awareness and a doctrinaire left liberal agenda.

That these nine (lawyers) are unelected and unaccountable makes their potential for mischief undeniable.

In Boumediene v. Bush five liberal jurors became literalists.

The prevailing opinion cited the Suspension Clause having been violated. In the absence of rebellion or invasion, the public’s safety doesn’t require (or permit) the suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

One would have thought such creative interpreters of the constitution could have divined, in a time of war without precedent, other threats to the public safety. Perhaps someone might reintroduce 9/11 by way of evidence or argument.