Chupacabra Report

Been away for a while, got to sit in at Lucy Hill’s songwriter showcase at San Antonio’s old Olmos Pharmacy, and made it home to recuperate and catch up on the news..

This week the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FCC that McCain-Feingold prohibitions against corporate-funded attack ads in the 60 days before elections was contrary to First Amendment protection of free speech. This is a major advance of the concept of Corporate Personhood, the idea established (some say accidentally) by the 1886 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific railroad decision, the idea that a corporation has the same civil rights as an actual person. After this decision, which may eliminate legal limits on corporate campaign spending, corporate “persons” may be more equal than natural persons, whose campaign contributions are currently limited to $2,300 per year.

Eight-nine-year –old Justice John Paul Stevens, author of the 90-page dissenting opinion, questioned afterwards whether the majority was “serious about judicial restraint,” reminding me of a line from newsman John Stewart about advocates of limited government who in reality are advocates of government “limited to Republicans.”