Supreme Court strikes down some McCain-Feingold provisions

[darrels joy]

Supreme Court strikes down some McCain-Feingold provisions
posted at 10:35 am on January 21, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
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In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court abruptly called a halt to encroachments on political speech in the name of campaign finance reform. It ruled that spending limits imposed on corporations and unions infringed on constitutional rights, ending decades of attempts to limit advertising on their behalf. It also overturned McCain-Feingold provisions barring some kinds of advertising in the weeks before an election :

The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on their participation in federal campaigns.

By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

No word yet on language from the opinion, but the ruling shows both an impatience with a utilitarian argument for violating the First Amendment and the fault lines on the current court. I doubt anyone will fail to guess the concurs and the dissents in the 5-4 vote. Anthony Kennedy almost undoubtedly wound up as the swing vote.

In the first challenges to the BCRA (McCain-Feingold), the earlier court appeared to accept the notion that one has to break a few First Amendment eggs to get a clean-elections omelette. This court has apparently decided that Congress should amend the First Amendment if it has grown tired of it, rather than pass laws that contradict it. The fact that only five of the nine justices could reach that rather obvious conclusion shows how much judicial activism and Congressional overreach have in common — especially the sense that they can manipulate clear boundaries of power for whatever end they seek.

Will this open the floodgates to corporate and union money in elections?

Well, it never really left. The restrictions in the BCRA and other campaign-finance “reforms” just forced the money into less-transparent channels, creating mini-industries of money laundering in politics. This ruling will just allow the money to be seen for what it is, rather than hiding behind PR-spin PAC names and shadowy contribution trails.

The best campaign finance reform is still transparency. If burning a flag in the street is free speech, then so are political contributions, especially when made in the open. If the reformers in Congress want to clean up elections, then force immediate reporting on the Internet of all contributions to all presidential, Senate, and Congressional races, and full weekly financial reports on expenditures. That will do more than all of the speech-restricting, unconstitutional efforts made since Watergate, and make the entire system a lot more honest.

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/2...ld-provisions/

[darrels joy]

Court strikes down campaign finance rules

[SuperScout]

Hooray! At least a temporary return to sanity and the sanctity of the 1st Amendment. What amazes me is the whining from the left, bemoaning that the SCOTUS is being "activist," when they really don't even know what the term means. The SCOTUS actually returned to the basics of the Constitution in this ruling, rather trying to create new law out of thin air - that judical activism.

And these same whiners are granting constitutional rights to terrorists, while bemoaning the rights restored to corporations. Go figure.

[jriley1349]

Sure, Superscout. We can always rely on corporations to put the interests of the country over profits.

[Keith_Hixson]

The problem is: When you start limiting freedom of speech, where do you stop. I don't like the idea of Corporations dominating campaigns with their financing but I also believe in free speech. A better defined law might have helped.
Obama did lie in his speech: They allowed the proposals on restricting foreign giving to campaigns.

Keith