UPDATED: And the Loser IS . . .

UPDATED: And the Loser IS . . .

Supreme Court Upholds Political Money Law

FREE SPEECH! Yeah! (And the crowd goes wild . . . .)

Seriously though, we should all bow our heads for a moment in recognition of the passing of yet another portion of our rights. Rights *snort* guaranteed by the Constitution. Remember the Constitution? That old piece of paper no one seems to give a damn about anymore?

You might also note the incredible slant of this particular article. The views of supporters and reasons why this decision is a good idea are mentioned over and over again throughout the piece. The opponents views are not mentioned.

AT ALL.

NOT ONCE.

EVEN A LIITLE BIT.

Ok, ok. They are mentioned. Here is the entirety of the opponents take as presented in this article:

" The Supreme Court's 300-page ruling on the 2002 campaign finance overhaul settles legal and constitutional challenges from both the political right and the left. Although the reform effort was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush, many politicians and others in the business of politics were leery of it."

This is what happens when you sign a patently bad law for politically expedient reasons and hope that the courts will strike it down.

Here's the original ruling in PDF form: McConnell v. FEC (warning - 2.17 Mb file)

Excerpt from Justice Kennedy's dissent in McConnell v. FEC, pp. 213-215.

JUSTICE KENNEDY, concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part with respect to BCRA Titles I and The First Amendment guarantees our citizens the right to judge for themselves the most effective means for the expression of political views and to decide for themselves which entities to trust as reliable speakers. Significant portions of Titles I and II of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA or Act) constrain that freedom. These new laws force speakers to abandon their own preference for speaking through parties and organizations. And they provide safe harbor to the mainstream press, suggesting that the corporate media alone suffice to alleviate the burdens the Act places on the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.

Today’s decision upholding these laws purports simply to follow Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976) (per curiam), and to abide by stare decisis, see ante, at 27 (joint opinion of STEVENS and O’CONNOR, JJ. (hereinafter Court or majority)); but the majority, to make its decision work, must abridge free speech where Buckley did not. Buckley did not authorize Congress to decide what shapes and forms the national political dialogue is to take. To reach today’s decision, the Court surpasses Buckley’s limits and expands Congress’ regulatory power. In so doing, it replaces discrete and respected First Amendment principles with new, amorphous, and unsound rules, rules which dismantle basic protections for speech.

A few examples show how BCRA reorders speech rights and codifies the Government’s own preferences for certain speakers. BCRA would have imposed felony punishment on Ross Perot’s 1996 efforts to build the Reform Party. Compare Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA) §§309(d)(1)(A), 315(a)(1)(B), and 323(a)(1) (prohibiting, by up to five years’ imprisonment, any individual from giving over $25,000 annually to a national party), with Spending By Perot, The Houston Chronicle, Dec. 13, 1996, p. 43 (reporting Perot’s $8 million founding contribution to the Reform Party). BCRA makes it a felony for an environmental group to broadcast an ad, within 60 days of an election, exhorting the public to protest a Congressman’s impending vote to permit logging in national forests. See BCRA §203. BCRA escalates Congress’ discrimination in favor of the speech rights of giant media corporations and against the speech rights of other corporations, both profit and nonprofit. Compare BCRA §203, with Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U. S. 652, 659-660 (1990) (first sanctioning this type of discrimination).

To the majority, all this is not only valid under the First Amendment but also is part of Congress’ steady improvement of the national election laws. Ante, at 6. We should make no mistake. It is neither. It is the codification of an assumption that the mainstream media alone can protect freedom of speech. It is an effort by Congress to ensure that civic discourse takes place only through the modes of its choosing. And BCRA is only the beginning, as its congressional proponents freely admit:

This is a modest step, it is a first step, it is an essential step, but it does not even begin to address, in some ways, the fundamental problems that exist with the hard money aspect of the system. 148 Cong. Rec. S2101 (Mar. 20, 2002) (statement of Sen. Feingold).

Id., at S2097 (statement of Sen. Wellstone) ([P]assing this legislation . . . will whet people’s appetite for more); id., at S2101 (statement of Sen. Boxer) ([T]his bill is not the be-all or the end-all, but it is a strong start); id., at S2152 (statement of Sen. Corzine) ([T]his should not and will not be the last time campaign finance reform is debated on the Senate floor. We have many more important campaign finance issues to explore); id., at S2157 (statement of Sen. Torricelli) (Make [BCRA] the beginning of a reform, not the end of reform); id., at H442 (Feb. 13, 2002) (statement of Rep. Doggett) (Mr. Chairman, if [BCRA] has any defect, it is that it does too little, not too much).