SCOTUS has ruled that spending money to buy a congressman is just expressing your right to freedom of speech. Given that, how can bribery possibly be illegal? After all, trying to talk someone into doing something is illegal and now money = speech.
Your first sentence and last sentence are each doing weird things with my brain.
Could you explicate them a bit less … concisely?
(Sorry I’m the only one who has replied so far. I may possibly be invisible.)
Personally, I think the court got it wrong back in 1976 with Buckley v. Valeo. I don’t think money should be regarded as a form of speech and be protected by the First Amendment.
The court said that there should be no limit for campaign contributions. That isn’t money that goes into the candidates personal account. There are rules and regulations on how it may be spent.
Okay, I can see what the first sentence is referring to now. How about what this is pointing to? :
I’m thinking the word “not” got left out of this sentence: “trying to talk someone into doing something is not illegal”.
I am guessing you have not actually read the decision?
The decision specifically leaves individual limits in place – you still can’t give unlimited money to a single candidate. The limits on the number of different candidates you can support with the maximum donation of ~ $2K have been removed.
And the reason the individual limits were left in place was that the Court agreed that the kind of quid-pro-quo that bribery represents is properly the subject of government regulation.
That directly answers your question, doesn’t it?
Word left out. Word left out! Smacks forehead!
“Money = speech” is a strawman, pure and simple.
To me it still boils down to, the more money you have the more influence you can buy.
But how is that justified? If campaign donations are a form of speech, why allow any limits at all? It’s like the argument that the Second Amendment allows people to own handguns but not assault rifles.
So I guess the next question is how much do I have to spend to make bribery legal?
Because they haven’t gotten around yet to striking down older laws that forbid it.
You can’t shout fire in a crowded theater; you can’t exceed contribution limits to a single candidate. It’s very straightforward.
Quite right–sorry. The court has ruled that money = speech. And I see no reason you cannot just put the money in his pocket. The meme is now that power is used to get money and money is used to get power and it sounds like bribery to me, pure and simple.
“Let’s make an agreement to work together to kill your spouse and spit the insurance proceeds; we’ll make it look like an accident.”
That’s speech. But it’s also illegal.
I notice you did not respond to my post.
When did they do that? Cite the Supreme Court opinion that you think says “money = speech”.