Activist Courts-Then and Now

Remember when SCOTUS decided that the people incarcerated at Guantanamo couldn't be prevented from speaking to a lawyer? Remember how the Republicans yelled "Activist judges!"? And just generally went bonkers about how the court was legislating rather than interpreting? Remember that?

Well, last week the SCOTUS decided to throw out 100 years of precedent and declare that corporations, that's right, corporations are "persons" within the meaning of the 1st amendment to the Constitution and therefore entitled to free speech rights, and therefore entitled to shovel as much money as they want into political campaigns. Welcome to the Corporate States of America. Has there ever been a more activist court decision than this one? As a lawyer, I can't think of one.

I know, I know, it's not as if corporations didn't already use their money to buy friends and influence lawmakers, but if you thought it was bad before, you ain't seen nothin' yet. And the Repubs think it's just fine. At least they did until somebody pointed out that the ruling is not limited U.S. corporations. Venezuela owns CITI. They do business in the U.S. Isn't it nice that Hugo Chavez will now have the ability to purchase his very own congressmen and senators? And China. They own shares, in some cases controlling shares, in several U.S. corporations. They don't want any competition in developing alternative power sources? The solution is simple, purchase several congresscritters who will always vote against developing such sources. Is anyone noticing a slight problem here?

The President has talked to Chuck Schumer about getting some legislation to mitigate the damage this ruling is going to do. Let's hope they can get it done quickly.

Here we go!

Well, this is interesting. I've been reading blogs for years now, mostly lurking, commenting only when something particularly catches my interest. Now I'm going to see if I can really do this myself. Maybe. Could be a total debacle. I guess we'll see. Anyway, welcome aboard.