Straight from the Horse's Heart

Margaret says:

Something my cousin sent me. Wonder if this means the pro slaughter folks can have unlimited funds to “buy” votes?
June 25, 2012, 3:14 PM57 Comments
As You Were
By DAVID FIRESTONE
The justices of the Supreme Court follow the news, and must be aware of the transformation of American politics that followed their Citizens United decision in 2010. They have watched as hundreds of millions of special-interest dollars flowed into super PACs, and into secretive advocacy groups that violate the court’s own preference for disclosure.

But this morning, when the court had an opportunity to reconsider its application of Citizens United, the majority chose not to bother. Instead the court’s five conservative justices struck down—without oral argument—a Montana law that prohibited corporate spending in elections. By doing so, they upheld the principle that corporations and unions can give unlimited amounts in support of or opposition to candidates, despite the obvious damage that principle is doing to American elections.

It’s hard not to conclude that the conservative justices are untroubled by that damage, and are quite content with the domination that big money is giving to business interests in this year’s races.

The Montana law was enacted in 1912 as a reaction to a long history of copper interests in the state buying influence. Earlier this year, urging the full court to take the case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that Montana’s historical experience — and the country’s over the last two years — undermined the assertion in the Citizens United ruling that corporate expenditures do not give rise to corruption or its appearance.

The court’s majority practically laughed off that suggestion in a terse, dismissive paragraph, refusing even to hold a hearing on an issue this important. “There can be no serious doubt” that Citizens United applies to Montana, the court said, and the state’s arguments were already rejected in that case.

The majority saw no need to hear arguments to the contrary, or to have them aired in public. It ignored friend-of-the-court briefs urging the justices to restrain the calamity it caused in 2010 and allow individual states to impose their own limits on corporate spending.

That left Justice Stephen Breyer, speaking for Ms. Ginsburg as well as Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, clearly deflated. In their dissent, he said grave doubt had been cast on the majority’s belief that independent expenditures cannot corrupt. But he made it clear the majority hasn’t the slightest interest in reconsidering or altering its decision.