No, but you mocked the idea that someone could have morals that tell them that bribery is wrong.
You did ultimately say it was a good policy idea, meaning you do condone what the OP considers bribery, even if it’s not what the law calls it. And the OP did explicitly say this wasn’t about the legalities.
And, anyways, your main objection to the OP comes from the article he referenced, a mistake any lay person could have made, rather than one you apparently particularly dislike.
That may be true but it may also be irrelevant, depending on the ruling and how it’s rationalized, because this court is not above using apparently straightforward cases as pretexts to enact sweeping changes in law that suits their ideology, which is exactly what they did in Citizens United. Roberts conspired to have the case re-argued on much broader grounds than the simple question of whether the Hillary documentary or its promotion constituted electioneering, and to use the opportunity to eviscerate the nation’s campaign finance laws. And it’s not just Toobin’s analysis that reaches that conclusion, Justice Stevens was explicit about it in his critical dissent:
Justice Stevens also argued that the Court addressed a question not raised by the litigants when it found BCRA §203 to be facially unconstitutional, and that the majority “changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law”. He argued that the majority had expanded the scope beyond the questions presented by the appellant …
That’s beyond absurd. There’s a reason that the “money is speech” meme arose after that case. Regardless of whether or not the phrase appears verbatim in the ruling, it was a case in which the speech protections of the First Amendment were used to justify the unlimited use of money for political speech. Specifically that the BCRA §203 prohibition of all independent expenditures by corporations and unions violated the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. Which is why you find the following right in the article cited in the OP:
At the core of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s 2010 opinion for the five-to-four majority in Citizens United was a simple idea: money is speech. In Citizens United, the Court, on First Amendment grounds, struck down a rule that banned corporations from sponsoring political advertisements in the period before elections. Such a “prohibition on corporate independent expenditures” was “a ban on speech,” Kennedy wrote.
Or in this analysis:
[Citizens United ruled that] spending is speech, and is therefore protected by the Constitution — even if the speaker is a corporation.
Roberts was, if anything, even more explicit in his views on the matter when he ruled on McCutcheon v FEC:
So although “money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some,” it, along with other forms of unpopular speech like “flag burning, funeral protests and Nazi parades”, is entitled to “vigorous” protection. It is unconstitutional, Mr Roberts wrote, to “restrict the political participation of some in order to enhance the relative influence of others.”
You’re correct.
But that means your words are unwelcome.
I mocked the idea that consulting one’s notions of morality to determine that bribery is wrong has anything to do with the issue being analyzed by the Supreme Court.
So as we transition seamless into a spirited defense of the goodness of being wrong, I will just point out that it’s not true that any lay person could make that error. It’s an error that arises when an article confirms your own biases. A person reading that article with any sort of skeptical outlook at heart would not have been so easily misled.
I admit to not being immune. Several years ago, I credulously re-posted a news story about hurricane cleanup electrical crew workers being sent packing because they were non-union. It resonated with all the complaints I harbor about unions, so I posted it.
And was forced to eat crow, after it became clear that the story was slanted to give a very false impression. Others who read the story reacted with skepticism, because it ran counter to their beliefs, investigated, and discovered the facts.
So I’ve fallen prey to this error, sure.
But I was also roundly mocked when I did.
And I acknowledged my foolish error, publicly, clearly, and unambiguously.
Guess what isn’t going to happen here?
You are a beacon to us all.
So… your new defense is that this case is like Citizens United because the Court might make a sweeping decision instead of a narrow one, just like they did in Citizens United?
Um… yeah. Yeah. OK. That’s just brilliant, really. I swear. A more brilliant incisive analysis the world has never seen.
“Really.”
The part you bolded was outside the quote tags. Did you NOT notice that? Roberts didn’t say that part. Here’s the actual quote:
Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects. If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades—despite the profound offense such spectacles cause—it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition
Now, consider this passage, just a little further along in that decision:
*The statute at issue in this case imposes two types of limits on campaign contributions. The first, called base limits, restricts how much money a donor may contribute to a particular candidate or committee. 2 U. S. C. §441a(a)(1). The second, called aggregate limits, restricts how much money a donor may contribute in total to all candidates or committees. §441a(a)(3).
This case does not involve any challenge to the base limits, which ***we have previously upheld **as serving the permissible objective of combatting corruption.
Now, if “money = speech”, then there could be no reason to limit donations to particular candidates. This is about drawing the line where a restriction of the use of money becomes a restriction on speech, as protected by the First Amendment.
This is disingenuous and you know it.
You are suggesting that a $1 bill does not equal speech since there are restrictions on how many $1 bills a person can give to a candidate so therefore money does not equal speech.
That ignores all the other things I can do with that $1 which, for all intents and purposes, is the same as handing the candidate that same $1.
Hillary Clinton is currently being taken to task for her “creative” skirting of exactly this sort of thing. Can’t give her $1 directly…well no problem…lots of other ways to achieve the same result (e.g. PAC money and the DNC).
No, that is not what I am suggesting. I am stating that the decision in Citizen United does not make money equivalent to speech, which is what others have claimed. If you want to cite the part of the SCOTUS decision you think does that, please do so.
Perhaps you are looking for an explicit statement of $1 = speech which they did not do but the upshot of their decision is exactly that.
First of all, I was looking for an actual quote from the decision. Not a quote about the decision from an advocacy group. Surely you know the difference, I hope. Was there something ambiguous about “cite the part of the SCOTUS decision”?
Stop this bullshit. This has absolutely nothing to do with the CU decision. Not everything involving a politician and money is bribery. Use your brain and think it through instead of the kneejerk reaction.
By that logic, when you buy a $5 bumper sticker supporting a candidate - not buying it from the campaign, just a third party - that’s the same as giving the candidate $5 and should be subject to donation limits.
That’s nonsense.
CU didn’t say money is speech. It didn’t discuss the issue because that was settled 40 years ago in Buckley v. Valeo. That decision also didn’t say money is speech. It said a restriction on spending on speech is, like any other restriction designed to limit speech, unconstitutional.
If it weren’t, then a limit on spending on other rights could be constitutional too. The government could ban the sale of Bibles, as long as it allows possession of them. Or it could ban women from paying for abortions - they’d only have a right to an abortion when a doctor provides it for free. And other such absurd conclusions.
You can’t limit money spent on speech. Anyone can have as much speech as they want, including speech obtained by spending money. Get over it.
Nice straw man.
It most certainly is not.
Money isn’t speech. It’s money. A court can’t change that. It’s complete nonsense. People like you go around saying it because it’s complete nonsense, and you accuse courts of ruling such nonsense. But it didn’t, because it’s nonsense.
Saying the government can’t limit spending on speech is not even remotely the same thing as saying “money is speech.”
Wow.
Which President appointed Justice Aclu to the bench again?
You are either hard of comprehension or pathologically dishonest, although I can’t rule out both.
If you’re going to argue that this case is really about a narrow technical matter of jury instruction, then I can argue that Citizens United was – as indeed it really was – about a narrow technical matter of whether or not the Hillary movie was “electioneering”, which it probably was not and therefore the FEC was in the wrong. A ruling on this basis would have been a minor and uncontentious matter. No one had any great interest in this case originally and no one expected that Roberts would turn it into an opportunity to exercise one of the most incredible examples of judicial activism in living memory.
So it seems that even if your awesome analysis is correct, those who fear where the Roberts court might go with this have considerable justification for their fears. I note you provided this awesome prediction of the outcome:
But in fact exactly such a narrow ruling could have been predicted for CU, and should have happened, but didn’t.
I’m not saying the court is going to make another audacious ruling that further undermines whatever is left of integrity in politics, I’m just saying their track record is such that concerns are justified.
That’s one point. The other point is that it’s far from clear that the court will rule solely on the merits that you claim. From what I’ve heard about the oral arguments, the usual suspects on the court seemed to have a good deal of ideological sympathy with McDonnell. Moreover, Toobin’s analysis is diametrically opposite to yours. Perhaps another reason to consider that there is a parallel between CU and this case on the basic ideological premises is because, well, because maybe there is. From Toobin’s article:
The same concept is at the heart of both the Citizens United and McDonnell cases. In the campaign case, Kennedy said Congress could only prohibit quid-pro-quo corruption in regulating campaign contributions. Outside of a direct exchange of a contribution in return for a government action, the First Amendment protected the right to contribute money to campaigns. Likewise, McDonnell’s argument is that Congress can only prohibit bribery when there is an explicit quid pro quo—a payment or gift in return for a specific official act. In both cases, though, the Court seems determined to define quid pro quo so narrowly that it’s practically impossible to find.
The “drawing the line” argument is nonsense, no matter how many times you repeat it. Lines are drawn in matters of conventional speech, too. That’s why there are laws against libel and slander, threats, and inciting violence. Trying to argue that the court didn’t equate money and speech because they didn’t deem it absolute is a groundless argument, because no form of speech is absolutely protected in all circumstances. The court ruled that money is speech because they overturned laws on spending money to achieve political ends on the basis of First Amendment speech protections. Simple as that.
OK. Instead of dancing around and citing commentary about the decision, please cite the specific part of the decision that you claim is “money = speech”. Since you seem to think it’s so obvious, this should be easy for your to do.
Ok, I get it now. Money is speech, except when it isn’t.
Because, if money is speech, then I should be able to give Bernie $1M. And yet I can’t. That must be one of those occasion when money is not speech. Or something.
Alternatively, a limitation on spending money can be a limitation on speech, which can be a violation of the 1st amendment. Prior to CU, I could spend as much money as I wanted advocating for abortion rights. That must mean that money was speech prior to CU, or that this whole business about money=speech is bullshit. I’m going with bullshit.