Pat Williams: "Corporations are not People" Helena Independent Record

[Land Shark]

A minority of first graders, but a majority of the justices of our U.S. Supreme Court insist that Mr. Peanut is a real person.

In a splintered 5-4 decision, the court has ruled that private corporations are people in the exercise of the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment of the Constitution. Although those guarantees were surely meant by our founders to assure the rights of free speech to real live people and not bloodless, inanimate business ventures — not huge multinational corporations — the court has ruled otherwise.

The court’s latest decision determined that corporations may finance political television ads and they may do so in the days just prior to an election, a practice that had been denied by the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. The high court’s reasoning is that campaign dollars and speech are indivisible and to prohibit corporate campaign spending truncates a “person’s” right to expression. Really? A corporation and money have the same right as a person? Holy snap, crackle and pop!

much more at
http://www.helenair.com/articles/2007/07/10/opinions/a04071007_3.txt