Government by the people, RIP (Detroit Free Press)

[struggle4progress]

Posted: Jan. 22, 2010
EDITORIALS

Who among sentient Americans believes that corporate political expenditures have not had a corrosive influence on the political process? Who imagines that such expenditures have done nothing to erode the public's confidence in its elected leaders?

Astonishingly, five U.S. Supreme Court justices do -- and now their delusional premise has become the basis for a radical and dangerous reversal of judicial precedent ...

Reformers attempting to curb corporate political spending had been worried for months that the mercurial Justice Anthony Kennedy would join with four conservative Supreme Court colleagues to emasculate the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, in which a bipartisan congressional majority sought to limit the broadcast of so-called third-party attack ads in the period just before an election.

But in the decision announced Thursday, a bitterly divided court went much further, overruling two previous Supreme Court decisions that had distinguished between the free speech rights of private citizens and those of corporations and recognized a legitimate public interest in regulating the latter ...

http://www.freep.com/article/20100122/OPINION01/1220331/1322/Government-by-the-people-RIP

[Vidar]

1. K&R.