If anything good comes out of this NSA thing, I think it's the fact that liberals will be forced to concede that Citizens United was, in fact, the right decision. Do you really want the government arbitrarily banning speech by corporations that it deems to be impermissible? There is a reason the ACLU came out in favor of the ruling in Citizens United...
For as much as I'm familiar with the CU vs. FEC case, the reasons don't stack up all that well for corportation's 'right of speech' in this context. Trevor Potter I think very reasonably explains why here: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09042009/watch2.html
Mainly, that it's essentially overstepping the speech of the less powerful. It results in the poor having unequal, lesser freedom of speech.
I would have expected you to be on my side on this issue, as you seemed to be more of a 'spirit of the law' guy rather a 'letter of the law' kind of guy.
If the difference in power of one class vs. another were the overriding concern when deciding to limit speech, then that logic would also apply to two individuals in different classes. Would you also say that a white teenage son of a rich businessman should have their speech curtailed in comparison to the poor Hispanic daughter of a single mom?
I've got a bit of a textualist streak. I'm more amenable to looking at the spirit of the law and the motivating justifications in something like the 4th amendment, where you can hang your hat on the word "unreasonable" than with something like the 1st amendment, which is written in terms of "Congress shall make no law."
Anyway, I'm curious to know more on why you think CU was the right decision. I advise watching all 31 minutes of the Trevor Potter vs. Floyd Abram debate if you have time and if you haven't watched/read it already.
I was very sad that ACLU came out in support of CU, I think they were wrong on this one.
What does that mean? Reaching an audience today takes money so a individual who wishes to be heard will need to raise money from her like minded citizens. Are you suggesting the the EFF should not be allowed to buy issue-oriented advertising during an election season?
