420. Expanding the Forbidden City
Anyone out there think it's coincidence that the Supreme Court should choose this moment in our political history to declare that insurance companies have a constitutional right to spend unlimited amounts of cash to defeat members of Congress who vote in favor of health care reform?
My Examiner.com column, written for a general audience, explains with as temperate language as I could muster the basic point of yesterday's ruling: some things are too important to be left to democracy. They must instead be entrusted to our tribal elders, the Council of Wise People.
The Forbidden City in the middle of our public square is engaged in annexing surrounding territory with all the aggressive zeal of a Sun Belt city of the 1970s. The Supreme Court has now declared that democratic elections, being essential to our democracy, cannot be allowed to slip into the control of the people acting democratically through their elected representatives.
Instead, elections, being essential to our democracy of more than 300 million people, may only be regulated by any five of a select group of nine federal government workers.
But while you'd have to be exceptionally naive to believe it's coincidence that five Reagan and Bush appointees should have issued such an opinion during the Obama Administration, I also don't think it's necessarily true they were primarily concerned with the political well-being of anti-reform candidates of their own party.
I think it more likely they were primarily concerned about themselves. They wanted to make sure their political views carry the day. Justice Kennedy tipped his hand when he wrote that a prior, marginally more rational opinion of Court
Because restrictions are ineffectual (not least because enforcement efforts are paralyzed by the Supreme Court's random interventions) therefore they're unconstitutional. Because corruption and dishonesty are widespread, therefore it's unconstitutional to attempt to make them less widespread.
This pretty explicitly equates "unconstitutional" with "not a good way of approaching the problem, in my opinion." For Kennedy, ol' number 3, granted massive power over our government solely on account of his blandness, I think those terms have become interchangeable.
Friday, January 22, 2010 at 09:50AM in "The government", Courtroom unreality, De-democratization, Distribution of powers, Individual justices, Intellectual dishonesty watch, Judicial independence/autonomy, Judicial self-interest, Maxims of judging, Supreme Court's role
Reader Comments (3)
The same is true of corporations that publish newspapers (also known as the institutional press), of religious or charitable organizations that are set up as corporations, and of the Democratic and Republican Parties. So would you think the First Amendment allows the government to ban any of those organizations from circulating their opinions, on the ground that, as nonpersons, they don't have FIrst-Amendment rights? Since the ACLU isn't a person, is it constitutional to make it a crime for the ACLU to spend any of its money to make posters claiming that the Bush Administration unduly sacrificed civil liberties?
Or is it only *for-profit* corporations that you think have no right to the freedom of speech--given that your column rather interestingly compared for-profit corporations to psychopaths?
Money isn't religion, either. So on your logic, wouldn't it be consistent with the Free Exercise Clause to prohibit spending money on a cross? After all, that doesn't infringe on the free exercise of religion. *Buying* a cross isn't part of Christianity per se.
What about a billion-dollar tax on every condom ever sold, every abortion ever performed? Rubbers aren't money, and neither is an abortion. On your argument, then, the constitutional right to reproductive freedom (assuming our Constitution does grant such a right), wouldn't implicate a constitutional right to spend money to procure contraceptives or abortions.
Does that make any sense at all?