Supreme Court, give me a fucking break
Given today's ruling in Ricci I'm already a bit peeved with the (help, help, I'm being reverse discriminated against!) Supreme Court.
And then I read this. Apparently, there's one case left from the current term that the Supreme Court hasn't decided which involves campaign spending. Instead of ruling, the Supreme Court has asked for more briefs and a re-hearing in September (a month before the start of their next term. Seriously? They get 3 months off?) Anyway, they're basically inviting briefs that will tell them to invalidate current campaign finance restrictions that regulate corporate spending.
“The notion that the government has a legitimate interest in restricting the quantity of speech to equalize the relative influence of speakers on elections,” Justice Kennedy wrote in the passage cited by Justice Alito, is “antithetical to the First Amendment.”*
Seriously, what kind of a rock do Alito and Kennedy live under? It's like, "SURE! Let's unleash the lobbyists that currently manipulate Congress onto the general public!" Really, though, how can I, as a private citizen, have ANY hope of competing with the vast sums of money available to corporations? I mean, I guess my First Amendment rights don't really matter, either? If I don't have corporate donors to back me or slam my opponents, I'm just SOL. Clearly it would be my own fault too, especially since there's really no question about which party's candidates corporations are more likely to support.
Once again, the Roberts court seems poised to rule in favor of the powerful. Wouldn't want to mar the Chief Justice's record:
In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.**
I guess Alito's "empathy" only extends to corporations (and white people!) who are being oppressed.
*That's Alito quoting Kennedy's dissenting opinion from Austin v Michigan Chamber of Commerce in Alito's majority opinion from Federal Elections Commission v. Davis . Austin is one of the controlling precedents in campaign finance restrictions, at least for now.
**I don't know Alito's record on these cases, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were nearly identical.
And then I read this. Apparently, there's one case left from the current term that the Supreme Court hasn't decided which involves campaign spending. Instead of ruling, the Supreme Court has asked for more briefs and a re-hearing in September (a month before the start of their next term. Seriously? They get 3 months off?) Anyway, they're basically inviting briefs that will tell them to invalidate current campaign finance restrictions that regulate corporate spending.
“The notion that the government has a legitimate interest in restricting the quantity of speech to equalize the relative influence of speakers on elections,” Justice Kennedy wrote in the passage cited by Justice Alito, is “antithetical to the First Amendment.”*
Seriously, what kind of a rock do Alito and Kennedy live under? It's like, "SURE! Let's unleash the lobbyists that currently manipulate Congress onto the general public!" Really, though, how can I, as a private citizen, have ANY hope of competing with the vast sums of money available to corporations? I mean, I guess my First Amendment rights don't really matter, either? If I don't have corporate donors to back me or slam my opponents, I'm just SOL. Clearly it would be my own fault too, especially since there's really no question about which party's candidates corporations are more likely to support.
Once again, the Roberts court seems poised to rule in favor of the powerful. Wouldn't want to mar the Chief Justice's record:
In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.**
I guess Alito's "empathy" only extends to corporations (and white people!) who are being oppressed.
*That's Alito quoting Kennedy's dissenting opinion from Austin v Michigan Chamber of Commerce in Alito's majority opinion from Federal Elections Commission v. Davis . Austin is one of the controlling precedents in campaign finance restrictions, at least for now.
**I don't know Alito's record on these cases, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were nearly identical.