Ruling by the Supremes

[John Kowalski]

The Supreme Court hasn't changed much in the last 225 odd years: "Those who own the country ought to govern it." - John Jay, 1st Chief Justice U.S., 1787 hot:

Interesting that you mention 1787, the year that the constitution was created. At that time, the problem was government. The convention participants wrestled with the problem of how to contain the power of government so that it would not dominate the people.

Something was missing then, that exists today, that was never dealt with
in 1787. That is the power that the wealthy have. In 1787, America had wealthy people, but the amount of power they wield today, and their ability to affect the outcome of elections through the control of the media and the financing of elections is today much greater than it was in 1787. While Washington did not lead Americans in the fight for independence just to give the country over to all of the people, and that the country was to be run by the wealthy and educated people, I do not think that he and the other delegates foresaw the amount of control that the wealthy would have today. Had the situation that exists today been present during that convention, I think (or would like to think) that the delegates would have had to find ways to check the power of wealthy, to ensure that they did not dominate the government, the same way they put checks on the power of the government.

Does anyone think it is time for another constitutional convention?

[Peter Lemkin]

The Supreme Court hasn't changed much in the last 225 odd years: "Those who own the country ought to govern it." - John Jay, 1st Chief Justice U.S., 1787 hot:

Interesting that you mention 1787, the year that the constitution was created. At that time, the problem was government. The convention participants wrestled with the problem of how to contain the power of government so that it would not dominate the people.

Something was missing then, that exists today, that was never dealt with
in 1787. That is the power that the wealthy have. In 1787, America had wealthy people, but the amount of power they wield today, and their ability to affect the outcome of elections through the control of the media and the financing of elections is today much greater than it was in 1787. While Washington did not lead Americans in the fight for independence just to give the country over to all of the people, and that the country was to be run by the wealthy and educated people, I do not think that he and the other delegates foresaw the amount of control that the wealthy would have today. Had the situation that exists today been present during that convention, I think (or would like to think) that the delegates would have had to find ways to check the power of wealthy, to ensure that they did not dominate the government, the same way they put checks on the power of the government.

Does anyone think it is time for another constitutional convention?

(minus the racist **** about the Native Americans): When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:


For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

[Ed Jewett]

Is there no end to the relentless pursuit of power that Corporate America seeks?

[Ed Jewett]

[quote=Peter Lemkin]

Does anyone think it is time for another constitutional convention?

Absolutely. See the previously noted web sites promoting an amendment. But here's the possible outcome...

First, the massive surveillance program already in existence, which can record, link, comprehend and analyze all communications in real time, will know when we are planning it and who's coming and what the agenda will be shortly after we hit "enter" on the PC ...

Second, because that establishment is closely allied with the corporatocacy, the corporations and media will be mitigating against it almost immediately, and it will be cognitively infiltrated [yes indeed, COINTELPRO'ed] and otherwise driven to obliteration, subsumed or broken into tiny pieces and scattered to the wind.

The discussion about what to do about it all was hinted at elsewhere. Personally, the idea that resonates for me, subject to further learning, experience and input, is withdrawal -- coitus interruptus -- and the establishment of some kind of discreet, small, parallel resilience at a local level, perhaps integrated in some way with staves and musick.

[ http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q...30ce98f7da ]

[Ed Jewett]

Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/demo..._20100124/

Posted on Jan 24, 2010

By Chris Hedges
Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d’état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place.
The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest.
Much of the outrage expressed about the court’s ruling is the outrage of those who prefer this choreographed charade. As long as the charade is played, they do not have to consider how to combat what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of “inverted totalitarianism.”
Inverted totalitarianism represents “the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry,” Wolin writes in “Democracy Incorporated.” Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, and finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, boast of replacing decaying structures with a new, revolutionary structure. They purport to honor electoral politics, freedom and the Constitution. But they so corrupt and manipulate the levers of power as to make democracy impossible.
Inverted totalitarianism is not conceptualized as an ideology or objectified in public policy. It is furthered by “power-holders and citizens who often seem unaware of the deeper consequences of their actions or inactions,” Wolin writes. But it is as dangerous as classical forms of totalitarianism. In a system of inverted totalitarianism, as this court ruling illustrates, it is not necessary to rewrite the Constitution, as fascist and communist regimes do. It is enough to exploit legitimate power by means of judicial and legislative interpretation. This exploitation ensures that huge corporate campaign contributions are protected speech under the First Amendment. It ensures that heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations is interpreted as an application of the people’s right to petition the government. The court again ratified the concept that corporations are persons, except in those cases where the “persons” agree to a “settlement.” Those within corporations who commit crimes can avoid going to prison by paying large sums of money to the government while, according to this twisted judicial reasoning, not “admitting any wrongdoing.” There is a word for this. It is called corruption.
Corporations have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation. They use their political action committees to solicit employees and shareholders for donations to fund pliable candidates. The financial sector, for example, spent more than $5 billion on political campaigns, influence peddling and lobbying during the past decade, which resulted in sweeping deregulation, the gouging of consumers, our global financial meltdown and the subsequent looting of the U.S. Treasury. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America spent $26 million last year and drug companies such as Pfizer, Amgen and Eli Lilly kicked in tens of millions more to buy off the two parties. These corporations have made sure our so-called health reform bill will force us to buy their predatory and defective products. The oil and gas industry, the coal industry, defense contractors and telecommunications companies have thwarted the drive for sustainable energy and orchestrated the steady erosion of civil liberties. Politicians do corporate bidding and stage hollow acts of political theater to keep the fiction of the democratic state alive.
There is no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are allowed to have virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism as meaningless as voting on “American Idol.” Mass emotions are directed toward the raging culture wars. This allows us to take emotional stands on issues that are inconsequential to the power elite.
Our transformation into an empire, as happened in ancient Athens and Rome, has seen the tyranny we practice abroad become the tyranny we practice at home. We, like all empires, have been eviscerated by our own expansionism. We utilize weapons of horrific destructive power, subsidize their development with billions in taxpayer dollars, and are the world’s largest arms dealer. And the Constitution, as Wolin notes, is “conscripted to serve as power’s apprentice rather than its conscience.”
“Inverted totalitarianism reverses things,” Wolin writes. “It is politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.”
Hollywood, the news industry and television, all corporate controlled, have become instruments of inverted totalitarianism. They censor or ridicule those who critique or challenge corporate structures and assumptions. They saturate the airwaves with manufactured controversy, whether it is Tiger Woods or the dispute between Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien. They manipulate images to make us confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge, which is how Barack Obama became president. And the draconian internal control employed by the Department of Homeland Security, the military and the police over any form of popular dissent, coupled with the corporate media’s censorship, does for inverted totalitarianism what thugs and bonfires of books do in classical totalitarian regimes.
“It seems a replay of historical experience that the bias displayed by today’s media should be aimed consistently at the shredded remains of liberalism,” Wolin writes. “Recall that an element common to most 20th century totalitarianism, whether Fascist or Stalinist, was hostility towards the left. In the United States, the left is assumed to consist solely of liberals, occasionally of ‘the left wing of the Democratic Party,’ never of democrats.”
Liberals, socialists, trade unionists, independent journalists and intellectuals, many of whom were once important voices in our society, have been silenced or targeted for elimination within corporate-controlled academia, the media and government. Wolin, who taught at Berkeley and later at Princeton, is arguably the country’s foremost political philosopher. And yet his book was virtually ignored. This is also why Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney, along with intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, are not given a part in our national discourse.
The uniformity of opinion is reinforced by the skillfully orchestrated mass emotions of nationalism and patriotism, which paints all dissidents as “soft” or “unpatriotic.” The “patriotic” citizen, plagued by fear of job losses and possible terrorist attacks, unfailingly supports widespread surveillance and the militarized state. This means no questioning of the $1 trillion in defense-related spending. It means that the military and intelligence agencies are held above government, as if somehow they are not part of government. The most powerful instruments of state power and control are effectively removed from public discussion. We, as imperial citizens, are taught to be contemptuous of government bureaucracy, yet we stand like sheep before Homeland Security agents in airports and are mute when Congress permits our private correspondence and conversations to be monitored and archived. We endure more state control than at any time in American history.
The civic, patriotic and political language we use to describe ourselves remains unchanged. We pay fealty to the same national symbols and iconography. We find our collective identity in the same national myths. We continue to deify the Founding Fathers. But the America we celebrate is an illusion. It does not exist. Our government and judiciary have no real sovereignty. Our press provides diversion, not information. Our organs of security and power keep us as domesticated and as fearful as most Iraqis. Capitalism, as Karl Marx understood, when it emasculates government, becomes a revolutionary force. And this revolutionary force, best described as inverted totalitarianism, is plunging us into a state of neo-feudalism, perpetual war and severe repression. The Supreme Court decision is part of our transformation by the corporate state from citizens to prisoners.
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent, writes a column published every Monday on Truthdig. His latest book is “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.”
Original: AP / Charles Dharapak

A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.

[Peter Lemkin]

Response to Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC.

CONTACT: Susan Greenhalgh, (917) 796-8782
DATE: January 21, 2009
FOR RELEASE: Immediate
Free Speech for People

PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS CONDEMN SUPREME COURT'S RULING ON CORPORATE MONEY IN ELECTIONS

CALL FOR CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO OVERTURN COURT DECISION

"Free Speech Rights Are For People, Not Corporations"

WASHINGTON, DC – A coalition of public interest organizations strongly condemned today's ruling by the US Supreme Court allowing unlimited corporate money in US elections and announced that it is launching a campaign to amend the United States Constitution to overturn the ruling. The groups, Voter Action, Public Citizen, the Center for Corporate Policy, and the American Independent Business Alliance, say the Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC poses a serious and direct threat to democracy. They aim, through their constitutional amendment campaign, to correct the judiciary's creation of corporate rights under the First Amendment over the past three decades. Immediately following the Court's ruling, the groups unveiled a new website devoted to this campaign.

See Free Speech for People.

"Free speech rights are for people, not corporations," says John Bonifaz, Voter Action's legal director. "In wrongly assigning First Amendment protections to corporations, the Supreme Court has now unleashed a torrent of corporate money in our political process unmatched by any campaign expenditure totals in US history. This campaign to amend the Constitution will seek to restore the First Amendment to its original purpose."

The public interest groups say that, since the late 1970s, a divided Supreme Court has transformed the First Amendment into a powerful tool for corporations seeking to evade democratic control and sidestep sound public welfare measures. For the first two centuries of the American republic, the groups argue, corporations did not have First Amendment rights to limit the reach of democratically-enacted regulations.

"The corporate rights movement has reached its extreme conclusion in today's Supreme Court ruling," says Jeffrey Clements, general counsel to http://www.freespeechforpeople.org and a consultant to Voter Action. "In recent years, corporations have misused the First Amendment to evade and invalidate democratically-enacted reforms, from elections to healthcare, from financial reform to climate change and environmental protection, and more. Today's ruling, reversing longstanding precedent which prohibits corporate expenditures in elections, now requires a constitutional amendment response to protect our democracy."

In support of their new campaign, the groups point to prior amendments to the US Constitution which were enacted to correct egregiously wrong decisions of the US Supreme Court directly impacting the democratic process, including the 15th Amendment prohibiting discrimination in voting based on race and the 19th Amendment, prohibiting discrimination in voting based on gender.

"The Court has invented the idea that corporations have First Amendment rights to influence election outcomes out of whole cloth," says Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. "There is surely no originalist interpretation to support this outcome, since the Court created the rights only in recent decades. Nor can the outcome be justified in light of the underlying purpose and spirit of the First Amendment. Corporations are state-created entities, not real people. They do not have expressive interests like humans; and, unlike humans, they are uniquely motivated by a singular focus on their economic bottom line. Corporate spending on elections defeats rather than advances the democratic thrust of the First Amendment."

"With this decision, the Court has abandoned its usual practice of adjudicating non-constitutional claims before constitutional ones, a radical departure that indicates how far the Roberts Court may be willing to go in order to serve the powerful 'business civil liberties' agenda," says Charlie Cray, director of the Center for Corporate Policy. "While the immediate effect is likely to be a surge in corporate cash in election campaigns, this could also signal the beginning of a sustained attack on the rights and ability of everyday people to govern the behavior of corporations, which, if successful, could effectively eviscerate what's left of American democracy."

“American citizens have repeatedly amended the Constitution to defend democracy when the Supreme Court acts in collusion with democracy's enemies, whether they are slavemasters, states imposing poll taxes on voters, or the opponents of woman suffrage,” says Jamin Raskin, professor of constitutional law and the First Amendment at American University’s Washington College of Law. “Today, the Court has enthroned corporations, permitting them not only all kinds of special economic rights but now, amazingly, moving to grant them the same political rights as the people. This is a moment of high danger for democracy so we must act quickly to spell out in the Constitution what the people have always understood: that corporations do not enjoy the political and free speech rights that belong to the people of the United States."

For more information on the constitutional amendment campaign, see
http://www.freespeechforpeople.org

[Peter Lemkin]

An Amendment to Preclude Corporations from Claiming Bill of Rights Protections

SECTION 1. The U.S. Constitution protects only the rights of living human beings.

SECTION 2. Corporations and other institutions granted the privilege to exist shall be subordinate to any and all laws enacted by citizens and their elected governments.

SECTION 3. Corporations and other for-profit institutions are prohibited from attempting to influence the outcome of elections, legislation or government policy through the use of aggregate resources or by rewarding or repaying employees or directors to exert such influence.

SECTION 4. Congress shall have power to implement this article by appropriate legislation.

More on why we need to revoke corporate constitutional privileges
(a.k.a., corporate personhood)
An Amendment to Reverse Buckley v. Valeo and Dominance of Wealth in Electoral Politics

SECTION 1. For the purposes of providing all citizens, regardless of wealth, a more equal opportunity to influence elections, public policy and run for public office; of furthering the principle of “one person, one vote” and preserving a participatory and democratic republic; as well as the purpose of limiting corruption and the appearance of corruption, we the people declare the unlimited use of money to influence elections incompatible with the principle of equal protection established under the Fourteenth Amendment.

SECTION 2. The Congress shall have the power to set limits on contributions and expenditures made to influence the outcome of any federal election.

SECTION 3. Each state shall have the power to set limits on contributions and expenditures made to influence the outcome of elections in that state.

SECTION 4. The power of each state to set limits on contributions and expenditures shall extend to all elections in that state, including initiative and referendum elections, as well as the power to lower any federal limits for the election of members of Congress to represent the people of that state.

SECTION 5. Congress shall have power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Possible additions/strengthening of Section 1:
Equal protection under the law shall not be abridged or denied on account of wealth, religion, sex, or race.
Include ban on corporate spending within this Amendment, rather than in separate one (see below).
Thanks to Derek Cressman for drafting this Amendment

We've published many article addressing the need to overturn or negate Buckley v. Valeo (see It's Time to Overrule the Supreme Court) and on the need to reverse First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti.
An Amendment to Create a Constitutional Right to Vote

If it seems strange to you that we are calling for an amendment to establish something you thought we already had, you may want to read this article first.
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 28

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States regarding the right to vote.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States:
SECTION 1. All citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, shall have the right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides. The right to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, any State, or any other public or private person or entity, except that the United States or any State may establish regulations narrowly tailored to produce efficient and honest elections.
SECTION 2. Each State shall administer public elections in the State in accordance with election performance standards established by the Congress. The Congress shall reconsider such election performance standards at least once every four years to determine if higher standards should be established to reflect improvements in methods and practices regarding the administration of elections.
SECTION 3. Each State shall provide any eligible voter the opportunity to register and vote on the day of any public election.
SECTION 4. Each State and the District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall establish and abide by rules for appointing its respective number of Electors. Such rules shall provide for the appointment of Electors on the day designated by the Congress for holding an election for President and Vice President and shall ensure that each Elector votes for the candidate for President and Vice President who received a majority of the popular vote in the State or District.

SECTION 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The above resolution was introduced by U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Illinois).

[Peter Presland]

This thread seems appropriate for the following piece by By David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru

It doesn't address the recent 'Citizens United' decision on election funding in depth but it does cover a lot of ground on a gaggle of similar 'representative government destroying' decisions of the present Supremes. I found it posted here

They despise America’s democracy and its fundamental freedoms more than any terrorist group in the world.

They have destroyed American democracy and its fundamental freedoms more ruthlessly and effectively than any terrorist group in the world.

They have sanctioned the murders of more Americans than any terrorist group in the world.

They loathe people of different races and/or religions.

They punish the innocent, but take extraordinary measures to protect the guilty.

They operate in shadowy black disguises.

They are known to the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security, yet none of these agencies have made the slightest effort to stop them.

They are Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, the four white racists and one self-loathing African-American who currently comprise the “conservative” majority on the United States Supreme Court.

Before readers dismiss these opening paragraphs as mere hyperbole, they should examine some of the Supreme Court’s more egregious rulings.

This court endorsed the random drug testing of public school students who are not even suspected of abusing drugs, which means that thousands of innocent children across America are dragged from their classrooms everyday, ordered to reveal personal medical information, and forced to urinate as strangers listen to them doing so—intrusions into personal dignity and privacy that Scalia has described as “minimal.”

In addition, people arrested for certain crimes can be compelled to provide a sample of their DNA to government authorities, even though they have not been tried or convicted. Yet, in the case of District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne, the Supreme Court ruled that persons convicted of crimes have “no constitutional right to obtain postconviction access to the State’s evidence for DNA testing,” even though that testing could establish their innocence.

In other words, a system that claims people are “innocent until proven guilty” now requires people to provide DNA and/or other bodily fluids to prove their innocence, yet does not require the government to provide DNA evidence that could exonerate a wrongfully convicted person, even though a wrongful conviction means that the real perpetrator is free and potentially committing more crimes.

This judicial hypocrisy is sickening beyond belief, and it’s tragic that karma isn’t more rapid and righteous, because nothing would be more satisfying than seeing Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Alito and Thomas entombed in the worst of America’s prisons, subjected to gang violence and forcibly sodomized on a daily basis, begging their attorneys to obtain the DNA evidence that could free them, only to be told that the “State” has refused to provide it.

The racism of the Supreme Court has been apparent throughout its history, from the now infamous Dred Scott decision, which threatened to expand slavery throughout the United States, to Plessy v. Ferguson, which gave constitutional blessing to the segregationist doctrine of “separate but equal.” And Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Alito and Thomas have continued this shameful tradition, in the cases of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, by endorsing the racial resegregation of public schools. And, in an act of judicial callousness that insulted the memory of those who struggled and died during America’s civil rights movement, some of these so-called “justices” even defended their racist “opinion” by citing Brown v. Topeka, the landmark 1954 case that endorsed the desegregation of public schools.

Also, by upholding racial segregation in Plessy, the court essentially declared that African-Americans were second-class citizens. What followed from 1896, when Plessy was decided, until the civil rights era of the 1960s was a sordid history of lynchings, beatings and other injustices directed primarily against African-Americans, as well as the denial of their most fundamental rights, including the right to vote, which supposedly had been guaranteed with the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870.

In Employment Division v. Smith freedom of religion came under attack when the court ruled that the government no longer had to prove it had a “compelling reason” to interfere with one’s religious practices. When the United States Congress attempted to restore this “compelling reason” requirement via the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the court voided much of it on the grounds that Congress had exceeded its authority.

Three current members of the court - Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas - and two former members - O’Conner and Rehnquist - bloodied their hands, and (if there is such a thing as justice) damned themselves for all time, when they supported the coup of 2000 in the case of Bush v. Gore. Thanks to this corrupt decision, which illegally placed a sadistic, inept, venal and mendacious cabal of war criminals into the White House, thousands of Americans, and tens of thousands of Iraqis, have died in a war that was based upon nothing but lies.

But Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas were not satisfied with the partial destruction of democracy wrought by Bush v. Gore, particularly since democracy appeared to be restored during the 2008 presidential election. So, joining with Alito and Roberts, they decided to destroy it completely, along with most of the Bill of Rights, in the recent case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission by striking down laws that once limited the amount of money corporations could contribute to political campaigns.

Now corporations are free to buy and sell politicians like trading cards, and, since they control the bulk of the “mainstream” media, they can also ensure that any political messages contrary to theirs are unheard.

In other words, freedom now only belongs to those wealthy enough to afford it.

Although the Citizens United ruling is deplorable and deserving of contempt, it is not surprising. The unified Republican opposition to health care reform has already demonstrated how the bulk of America’s politicians are controlled by special interest groups. The fact that many Democrats refused to endorse any health care reform proposal that included a “public option” for people unable to purchase health insurance in the private sector further illustrates how corporate influence has already transcended party lines.

What Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Alito and Thomas undoubtedly hope to accomplish by Citizens United is to purge the few politicians actually devoted to serving the public interest. Now these politicians will either succumb to the whims of their corporate masters, or find limitless amounts of money being provided to their political opponents.

In a nation of millions, it seems almost obscene that five biased, bigoted, corrupt, unethical and agenda driven idiots in black robes can destroy an entire system of government. And it is certainly contrary to what the Supreme Court was supposed to be.

When the federal court system was created, a debate ensued over whether federal judges should be elected or appointed. It was ultimately decided that they would be appointed to lifetime tenures, removable only through death, retirement or impeachment. The hope was that federal judges would be immune from political party influences, act in accordance with the law, and protect the rights of racial, religious and political minorities, since they did not have to raise money in election campaigns or appease the majority in order to win the popular vote.

Unfortunately this hope was quixotic. The five so-called “justices” who weakened democracy in Bush v. Gore, and the five who destroyed it in Citizens United were all appointed by Republican presidents. In fact, Bush’s vice-president Dick Cheney was even Scalia’s “hunting buddy.” So it was not surprising when they ignored legal precedent and common sense to ensure that corporate rights and profits supplanted individual rights and needs.

Even conservative columnist David Broder acknowledged that the Citizens United ruling “extended itself far beyond what was necessary” and “may well be the best news Republicans have received since the 2000 ruling in Bush v. Gore.”

In law schools throughout America, Supreme Court opinions are dissected and analyzed as though they were commandments from Mount Sinai. But during my journey through the legal profession, I came to realize that there was nothing logical, analytical or esoteric about these opinions, and that many of them were inspired by pure evil.

Being legally trained, I have often been reluctant to acknowledge this reality. Attorneys, after all, are supposed to deal in facts, not in suppositions. But, given the cases I have cited in this article, the harm they have caused, and the harm they will cause, I believe there is enough evidence to conclude that Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Alito and Thomas are perhaps the most despicable, conscienceless and evil individuals to ever disgrace the United States Supreme Court, and the biggest threat to democracy and the Bill of Rights in the history of the United States.

James Madison, one of America’s founding fathers, once said, “We are free today substantially, but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility . . . because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. And when the day comes, when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of the few, then we must rely on the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.”

Some of the best elements in America did try to readjust the laws to minimize the potential for corporations to use their vast financial resources to purchase political influence. Unfortunately five of the worst elements in America - Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Alito and Thomas—have ensured (with apologies to Abraham Lincoln) that the government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations will cause the government of the people, by the people and for the people to perish from the earth.

[Myra Bronstein]

An Amendment to Preclude Corporations from Claiming Bill of Rights Protections

SECTION 1. The U.S. Constitution protects only the rights of living human beings.
...

Great summary Peter. Thanks.

And Barack Bush's "solution" proposed in the SOTU is insufficient. It's not enough to keep "foreign" corporations from buying candidates. We need to keep all corporations from buying candidates. We need nothing less than an amendment to the consitution IMO. Not the watered down faux remedy Barack is talking about.

[David Guyatt]

Now that Ed, is truly very funny.... :rock: