One thing for me ...

markonseaWed 11/01/12 17:18

Interesting story on http://www.economist.com/blogs today:

AMERICA'S Supreme Court heard a case about obscenity on broadcast television today. The New York Times notes that while the hearing was unusually lively, the judges don't look likely to overturn the authority past courts have given the government to fine a broadcaster - up to hundreds of thousands of dollars - for a brief obscenity.

What amazes me is the plastic definition of free speech invoked by one justice in particular.

Justice Antonin Scalia, who in other settings has been hostile to government regulation of speech, said there was value in holding the line here.

'This has a symbolic value,' he said, 'just as we require a certain modicum of dress for the people that attend this court.'

'These are public airwaves,' Justice Scalia went on, adding: 'I'm not sure it even has to relate to juveniles, to tell you the truth.'

By "in other settings...hostile to government regulation of speech", the reporter means that Justice Scalia believes it to be an unconstitutional restriction of free speech for governments to limit vast spending by corporations and unions to influence elections. The Citizens United decision is rightly a controversial one. But if a jurist is going to be a free-speech purist, I'd prefer that he see it through. By what logic is Bono's "fucking brilliant" (5:44 in the video, one of the cases that has engaged the Supreme Court) a threat to the republic, while a SuperPAC is not?

* end of quote *

SuperPAC = a super-rich Political Action Committee, protected by the Constutution so it can spend as many gadzillions supporting a candidate as it likes.

A commenter remarks: "Now if Bono founds a SuperPAC that touts a candidate as fucking brilliant, we can hope to hear Scalia's brilliant reasoning as to why that speech is not protected."

Gets a tick from me!

markonseaWed 11/01/12 17:24

Whoops! http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson

But you've seen it all except the comments anyway.

laresWed 11/01/12 20:27

quoting > "SuperPAC = a super-rich Political Action Committee, protected by the Constutution so it can spend as many gadzillions supporting a candidate as it likes."

I think it's deeply troubling that the Supreme Court has effectively abolished all campaign financing limits :-s

markonseaWed 11/01/12 22:17

Our Supreme Court??

laresWed 11/01/12 22:22

quoting > "Our Supreme Court??"

That's not really the subject of your thread... is it now? Tut.

markonseaWed 11/01/12 22:25

Only, I thought their Supreme Court effectively abolished all campaign financing limits sometime roundabout 1776?

laresWed 11/01/12 22:31

quoting > "Only, I thought their Supreme Court effectively abolished all campaign financing limits sometime roundabout 1776?"

"Their Congress" didn't though. The whole quoting > "the reporter means that Justice Scalia believes it to be an unconstitutional restriction of free speech for governments to limit vast spending by corporations and unions to influence elections."

I don't think Scalia was around in 1776...

markonseaWed 11/01/12 22:51

The whole quickfind:markonsea thing tells me nothing about whether governments can limit vast spending by corporations and unions to influence elections or not, or whether it may or may not be proposed to reverse whichever the current situation is.

It must have told you something else ...

laresWed 11/01/12 23:02

quoting > "It must have told you something else ..."

I assumed you knew about the 2010 Supreme Court case which found that the so called

SuperPAC = a super-rich Political Action Committee, protected by the Constutution so it can spend as many gadzillions supporting a candidate as it likes.

were legal and could not be blocked by law.

"WASHINGTON — Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections."

"The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment's most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy.

The ruling represented a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision to reshape the way elections were conducted. Though the decision does not directly address them, its logic also applies to the labor unions that are often at political odds with big business."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22scotus.html

Until then, it was legal to block such funding.

markonseaWed 11/01/12 23:19

Muchas gracias! (I'd say that in American if I knew how to.)

So America will get the government their corporations vote for. That is, it may well depend on whose pop tarts people buy more of.

It's amazing how difficult some people find it to understand democracy!