22 January 2010

a gethsemane kiss

W's legacy lives on . . .




Thank you, Supreme Court Justices Alioto, Roberts, Thomas and Scalia, for selling out the living, breathing people of America. May you hang as high as Judas.

Obama's take:
"The Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics," Obama said in a statement. "It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans."

Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold weighs in over at Counterpunch. Here's an excerpt:

"In its ruling, the Court ignored several time-honored principles that have served for the past two centuries to preserve the public’s respect for and acceptance of its decisions. This decision runs contrary to the concept of “judicial restraint,” the idea that a court should decide a case on constitutional grounds only if absolutely necessary, and should rule as narrowly as possible. Here, the Court did just the opposite -- it decided the constitutionality of all restrictions on corporate spending in connection with elections in an obscure case in which many far more narrow rulings were possible.

The Court also ignored stare decisis, the historic respect for precedent, which Chief Justice John Roberts termed “judicial modesty” during his 2005 confirmation hearing. It’s hard to imagine a bigger blow to stare decisis than to strike down laws in over 20 states and a federal law that has been the cornerstone of the nation’s campaign finance system for 100 years."


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"The Supreme Court justices promoting this decision knew exactly what they were doing, and why. Behind the display of magisterial solemnity and jurisprudential weight, these justices know -- deep down -- they are just elements of a much larger machine, they are only where they are because of who they really serve."
-Manuel Garcia, Jr. from his article @ Counterpunch.

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Please go read or re-read the excellent essay on Corporate Personhood by Jan Edwards and Molly Morgan here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

good editorial in today's NY Times:

The Court’s Blow to Democracy