Obama to Declare War on Corporate Enemy in SOTU

Update II: Alito disparages Obama's Supreme Court criticism of Citizens United

Update: See Dave Lindorff's The Supreme Court's Right-Wing Clique has Given Us a Great Opportunity.

If he has the brains I think he has, President Obama will make a hard political charge against the titanic moneyed interests that dominate our country as the bubble-shaped storm clouds gather again.

Consider the political Supreme Court case of the last 15 years, its hypocrisy and its catering to big money.

''Ballots serve primarily to elect candidates, not as fora for political expression.''
- Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist in Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party (951608) (1997), joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas.

"Because the FEC’s 'business is to censor, there inheres the danger that [it] may well be less responsive than a court ... to the constitutionally protected interests in free expression.'" ...

"The First Amendment underwrites the freedom to experiment and to create in the realm of thought and speech. Citizens must be free to use new forms, and new forums, for the expression of ideas. The civic discourse belongs to the people, and the Government may not prescribe the means used to conduct it." McConnell, supra, at 341 (opinion of KENNEDY, J.)."
- Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and two Bush appointees in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (08-205).

One step is to announce legislative initiatives to mitigate the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (08-205), that effectively vitiated [without striking down] the specific campaign finance reforms (Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA)) championed for years by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), joined by an ethically challenged Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) out to rehabilitate his name.

The exercise in hypocrisy and partisan favoritism in Citizens United is revealed by examining another landmark election law case animated by First Amendment claims used in the fight against colossal wealth dominating the political process, Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party (95-1608) (1997).

The stakes are high. President Obama's populist initiatives outlined tonight will define his presidency and our country for decades to come because the American people will be watching.

In Citizens United the GOP has now been caught, finally, on the wrong side of financial reform; look for much more of this branding of Republicans in the weeks to come.

- via mal contends

Republican High Hypocrisy on the Supreme Court

Putting aside the truism that the contemporary Democratic Party and President Obama rival the Republican Party in feeding at the trough of Big Business, the GOP-composed opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (08-205) is revealed as an exercise in hypocrisy and partisan favoritism by examining another landmark election law case animated by First Amendment claims used in the fight against colossal wealth dominating the political process, Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party (95-1608) (1997).

In Timmons, a political party, the now-defunct New Party, sought to fuse its nominated candidates with other political parties' nominated candidates [that is nominating the same people] in an effort to expand the New Party under the protection of the First Amendment's guarantees of free expression and association.

For instance, progressive Democratic Party nominees like Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Madison) and Rep Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) might also be the nominees of the New Party under the political strategy of electoral fusion.

The goal ultimately was to remove the domination huge money has over the political process and specifically the two major political parties, a la the Gilded Age in the late 19th century when concentrated wealth led to the domination by hyper-concentrated money over the political system, also known as the time of the robber barons.

The New Party lost the Timmons case and its claim of First Amendment rights was rejected in the 6-3 opinion written by the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist (R) who wrote that the legislatures' right to regulate elections and insure "stability" outweighed First Amendment guarantees of free expression and association. [Let's put a R or D by Supreme Court Justices and dispense with the absurd notion that our Justices are neutral umpires applying the law and U.S. Constitution.]

Rehnquist was joined in his opinion by fellow Republicans sitting on the Court today, Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas.

Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas worte/joined the GOP opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (08-205), along with two Bush-nominated justices, Alito and Roberts. [The corporate Democrat Justice Stephen G. Breyer agreed with the result in Timmons but dissented in Citizens United.]

What is both amusing and repulsive in reading Kennedy's Citizens United opinion is the Court's claim to be championing the liberty interests of the First Amendment interpreted expansively, the opinion's author would have us believe. Writes Kennedy, "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."

Never mind that Kennedy misstates the issue in the Citizens United case concerning how citizens can engage in political speech in the electoral process, where is this libertarian fervor of Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas in the Timmons case? It is absent. Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas joined Justice Rehnquist (infamously hostile to the liberties in the Bill of Rights) in Timmons in which Rehnquist writes: ''Ballots serve primarily to elect candidates, not as fora for political expression.''

But now these Republican jurists are the champions of free expression and free association, asserting the unmentioned imperative by Citizens United's litigants that for-profit corporations must be protected vehicles of free speech and the hell with precedent and law, much less the stability of the electoral system.


- via mal contends