SCOTUS Scrotus: Is Speech Only Free When It's Free?

Hey, fags and fagesses, remember me?

No?

Fuck you!

So what's made me come slinking out of my urine-soaked hole in the ground? Romneybot 2.0's surprising victory in Massachusetts? Nope! [Though I will say: Martha Coakley would probably have made a fine Senator, but my general impulse is to weep at the Democratic Party attempting to replace Ted Kennedy with a woman who used high profile criminal cases with shaky (at best) evidence and a great deal of prosecutorial overzealousness, to build her career.]

The incredibly weird "crisis" the Democratic Party faces over losing one little Senate seat? Nope! [Though I will say: fucking pussies!]

My deep and perverse glee at watching Obama flounder his way to utter political irrelevancy while all the progessive cocksucking pantyboys who called me an idiot for even suggesting that Obama a) wasn't very liberal and b) wasn't up to the task now gnash their teeth and curse Obama's "betrayal"? Nope! [Though I will say: the only person who betrayed all you pantyboys is your own damn deluded self!]

No no, it's the SCOTUS of course!

They Court just released their opinion in the Citizens United/"Hillary: The Movie" [can't wait for the Squeakuel!] case. And this provides me a perfect opportunity to wax all bombastic and nasty and triumphant on one of my more controversial legal stances.

Slate, as one would expect, fires off not one but two articles denouncing the Court as "activist" Satan-worshippers sacrificing great mounds of babies (plus a bunch of red hot corporate cash!) to Ba'al and Mammon.

Well, I ain't buyin' it!

Although it's hardly one of the topics I used to blog about constantly, I'm sure a good number of my sexy and astute readers will remember that I have never been a fan of campaign finance reform in general and McCain-Feingold in particular.

Here's the thing. Liberals are supposed to like campaign finance reform. It's just, well, liberal! Right? [The fact that corporate money tends, on aggregate, to flow in only one rightward direction has absolutely nothing to do with our incredibly principled stand for democracy!]

But, is it?

On the question of whether or not campaign finance reforms are good policy there is room for disagreement. Surely some reforms are good. But a very cursory examination of the history of such efforts proves only one thing: it's a losing game. PACs are widely reviled as engines of "soft money" and backdoor corporate financing. But guess what? PACs were invented as a campaign finance reform! I'd argue that the overall impact of such reforms has been to make elections worse by forcing out almost any truly interesting candidate while simultaneously doing nothing to stem the total amount of corporate cash flooding the election system. Having failed so profoundly in the previous half dozen or so attempts at "cleaning up" the electoral system, we remain faithful to the idea that the next time we're gonna get it right! Uh-huh. And hiring Pete Carroll's gonna win the Seahawks the Super Bowl next year!

But that's a policy standpoint and not one our Nasty Nine have any business considering. In regards to whether or not John Roberts is the judicial equivalent of a child rapist, the only question is whether or not McCain-Feingold is unconstitutional.

And the answer is a complete and absolute yes.

A lot of ink and outrage will be spilled over the Court's conflation of corporations and "people", and I can't say I'm entirely on board with the Court's various corporate personhood precedents. But on this issue, I'm not sure how the Court could avoid such a stance. It strikes me as borderline insane to suggest that rights any individual possesses cease to exist when that person joins a group -- whether that group is a book club, a riot, a union or a corporation. When it comes to determining whether or not corporations have a right to free speech it's impossible not to remember that a corporation is simply a group of people coming together for a common purpose.

Sure, I'm not surprised that the same people who argue with a straight face (and not nearly enough endemic diarrhea) that the Second Amendment applies only to "groups" would also argue that the First Amendment applies only to individuals (unless the group in question is an anti-Bush protest!) but it still bothers me.

But the thing that should give even the most hard-hearted foes of Corporate Imperialism pause is the motherfucking devastating scope of McCain-Feingold. We aren't just talking about corporations. Unions get swept up in the net too. And on top of that, the law is explicitly designed for one purpose: to limit political speech during an election. You know I ain't no Originalist, so the "political speech as especially protected" argument doesn't go too far with me, but nonetheless this scheme seems like exactly the kind of thing that should scare us shitless.

Liberals actually want to argue that Congress has the power to shut-down the exercise of political opinions at the very moment those opinions are most vital?

"Well, no!" Cries the censor-in-progressive's clothing. "We just don't think you should be able to spend money to express your opinion!"

So, speech is only free when it's free?

Don't make me punch your nuts. Because you know I will!

There is almost no way to spread a political opinion widely in our culture without spending money. And the line here is way, way too slippery for any lover of liberty to accept.

What, after all, even is corporate money? In the "Hillary: The Movie" case, the producers of the film paid a cable provider to make the film available on demand. This, those who have already argued that we should spend the 60 days before an election with no access to any political information say, is the crux of the issue, distinguishing it from, say, HBO paying for a documentary and then airing it. But the cycle of the money (from corporations to producers to TV or corporations to TV to producers) is a pretty flimsy basis.

This is especially true when the government itself argued, openly and brazenly, that McCain-Feingold gave them the power to stop the publication of books and even websites! Do you trust the government enough to give them that kind of power? Almost all major blogs are funded by corporate money, one way or another. Newspapers are all funded by corporate money. What about political Hollywood films? Radio shows?

McCain-Feingold asserts that the government has the power, even the duty, to stop certain forms of political speech for our own good. That assertion is so deeply repugnant to the principle, spirit and letter of the First Amendment and to the entire project of American liberty that it cannot be supported. Certainly not by any real liberal. What's the greater evil? Corporately financed documentaries or the evisceration of the First Amendment's most vital function?

I know where I stand.

Now, back to my stinking cave.