Take away the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over campaign finance reform.

[Lyric]

Congress can do that. They WON'T do that because they're mostly a bunch of spineless tools, but they COULD do that. Don't let them give you, in one hand, a cock-and-bull story about how they're "powerless" against the SCOTUS and can't be blamed/held responsible, while raking in corporate campaign cash with the other. I assure you, the Constitution specifically grants Congress the power to decide what the jurisdiction of the SCOTUS shall be, and they CAN choose to prohibit the SCOTUS from ruling on laws pertaining to campaign finance reform.

Another route: impeach one of the conservative justices that so RICHLY deserves it (Clarence Thomas comes to mind first) and replace him with a liberal justice, then let the SCOTUS revisit the case and reverse itself.

Another route: increase the size of the SCOTUS to 13 justices, and start appointing some liberals (and maybe even an old-school responsible conservative), then let them revisit the case.

Call them and give them hell. I'm as cynical as anyone else about Congress, but the LEAST we can do is to let them know that we KNOW they could stop this, and therefore ARE responsible. There are steps that could be taken. I just listed three possibilities, and I'm just some chump college student from a West Virginia trailer park. Don't tell me that the Harry Reids and the Nancy Pelosis of Congress can't deduce the same things. There ARE steps to be taken. We are NOT prisoners of the SCOTUS. Give Congress hell and let THEM know that WE know.

In the meantime, we need to become a hell of a lot louder than we've ever been before. Instead of DU, we need to be out in the streets. We need to turn the names "Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia, and Kennedy" into synonyms for greed and shame. We need to refuse to accept "No" and "Later" as answers from our elected leaders when we demand that they DO something and do it NOW to stop the impending coup d'tat by the corporations. We're angry, but so long as our lives are still stable enough that we can sit here in front of our computers and complain without doing much else, then we aren't nearly angry ENOUGH. Donations are nice, but nothing makes the Powers That Be more nervous than actual physical bodies marching in the streets in outrage and anger.

The DU of my dreams right now would be a place where we plan and discuss before we go out and take ACTION--a meeting hall, a "situation room" for those of us who don't want to see this nation turn into a global tyrant of horrendous proportions. And no, we are not "already there." I assure you--it can get MUCH worse, and it WILL. "This war brought to you by McDonalds, Winchester, and Gatorade." Oaths of corporate fealty, where you don't just "prefer" a brand, you legally COMMIT to it--or else. Oh yes, it can definitely get worse. Think it can't happen, that it's too extreme? Just remember--if *I* thought of it, then someone in a corporate boardroom CERTAINLY has.

So what are we going to do? We all know the cynical arguments that action is pointless, yadda yadda. Let's do it anyway, because at this point, what do we have left to lose?

[Igel]

1. The Congress recently tried that with a different matter.

You know what SCOTUS did?

They found a non-Constitutional basis for their ruling and ignoring Congress' claim because their argument allowed them to ignore the claim. The entire argument was unstated. The effort put into substantiating the basis for their argument however, grounding it thoroughly in precedent and in English Common Law going back to the Magna Carta, suggests what the argument would have been had it been uttered.

If the Constitution grants or defines a right then it's a right derived from the Constitution, right? Then if the Constitution grants Congress the authority to overrule SCOTUS' ability to review implementation or fulfillment of those rights, then that's a right derived from the Constitution, right? Surely the Constitution can override itself; if the Constitution gives a right and says that Congress can limit that right, so be it.

If you then try to argue that a civil liberty must be preserved because of Constitutional authority, the Constitution's delegation of authority to Congress can be used, jujitsu like. To assert your right to review a law is to substantiate the basis for Congress' right to strip you of the authority to review the law. The only way out is to argue outside the box: if you argue in a closed system you'll lose, so open the system.

If the right derives not from the Constitution but from common law, the authority of which predates the Constitution and any delegation of authority to Congress over the Constitution; if the right isn't derived or upheld by the Constitution so much merely affirmed by the Constitution, redundantly and incompletely; if the right is commonly held and ordained by Nature; then you don't need to shore up the basis for Congress' claim that they strip jurisdictional authority from you. The Constitution didn't grant you the authority in the first place, specific Congressional authority over that point isn't mentioned in the Constitution, so Congress can't do squat about it. Only SCOTUS can. You've imposed a Constutional limit on Congress' right--only things covered by the Constitution can be limited by the Constitution, while SCOTUS can review anything that restricts things beyond the scope of the Constitution.

I understand this. Part of me likes it. Part of me thinks it's a script for unmitigated disaster, SCOTUS unleashed and non-leashable.

The thing is, nobody in their right mind is going to advance that argument because the entire thrust of the Constitution is that *all* the rights in it predate the Constitution. Our civil rights don't find their authority in the Constitution, the Constitution doesn't grant civil liberties--it's just a handy authority to cite, putting us all on the same page. It merely acknowledges those rights and names *some* of them. To advance this argument gives a chunk of the Constitution--the chunk that you specifically want to avoid, if you're SCOTUS--a completely untenable, absurd interpretation, and you can jut bet that that interpretation is unlikely to be intended. To even utter the argument is to watch it implode. So they didn't make the argument; they assumed the argument, they argued around justifying the reasoning behind their reasoning.

In fact, having looked around for months, I can't find anybody else voicing the argument. They all seem to accept that if SCOTUS says the basis for their ruling on a civil liberty is based on extra-Constitutional tradition, even if the civil liberty is mentioned in the Constitution, that works and serves to delimit Congressional authority over SCOTUS' review of laws affecting that right. I find the silence on this point more disturbing, in fact, than the point itself. *Everybody* was hung on on the pros and cons of the point itself; on the implications, real or imagined, of either SCOTUS' decision or what would happen had SCOTUS' accepted the restriction on its jurisdiction.

So, in your case all they'd have to do is find some collective of people who were, under common law, granted the right to free speech and wham--the right to free speech is a feature of common law, and while Congress may be able to remove jurisdiction over the First Amendment from SCOTUS it can't limit SCOTUS' jurisdiction over matters involving common law. You don't even have to find old precedents predating the Constitution, just precedents that ground the ascribed right in common law.

Welcome to dispensationalism in constitutional law.