We speak, of course, of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court of The United States. [And to start off with the right mood, isn't "Supreme Court" rather Star-Trekian in its blandness? Shouldn't there be a more evocative title for our constitutional bulwark? I mean, Congress isn't the "Supreme Legislature" nor is the Executive the "Supreme Bunch-of-White-Guys. [[I kid]] ].
The point under consideration follows anon from the Best-of-the-Web for the day. The discussion in re: the Supreme Court's allowance (thanks-be-to-god) of some, specific, isolated, delineated political speech within a specified amount of bodily rotations of the earthly planet.
Note the following from the minority - which argues that "Free Speech" (that is, whatever the Court deems to be "speech" which is "free") is a magnanimous grant of the robed class:
I agree with the Court that the principal should not beheld liable for pulling down Frederick's banner. . . . I would hold, however, that the school's interest in protecting its students from exposure to speech "reasonably regarded as promoting illegal drug use," . . . cannot justify disciplining Frederick for his attempt to make an ambiguous statement to a television audience simply because it contained an oblique reference to drugs. The First Amendment demands more, indeed, much more.
"more, indeed, much more" - they're only missing the cue for Hitchock's voice-over to take the microphone. Not only are they right, indeed, they are really right. This is just pampered self-back-slapping writing. Indeed!
Now to the next dissent from the (basically) same crowd:
Campaign finance reform has been a series of reactions to documented threats to electoral integrity obvious to any voter, posed by large sums of money from corporate or union treasuries, with no redolence of "grassroots" about them. Neither Congress's decisions nor our own have understood the corrupting influence of money in politics as being limited to outright bribery or discrete quid pro quo; campaign finance reform has instead consistently focused on the more pervasive distortion of electoral institutions by concentrated wealth, on the special access and guaranteed favor that sap the representative integrity of American government and defy public confidence in its institutions.
There are two sentences/three clauses here. Each with serious issues.
The first: the court bases its claims (and these are law-school graduates I assume) on what is "obvious to any voter". Note to the court - if you want to know what's obvious, have a beer at the local bar and chat about the disasterous National's infield. You'll soon find out what's obvious to voters.
The next clause requires several Playstation-3 grid computers to parse the multiple negative "Neither...nor...limited...discrete..." prose. However, the last clause clears things up!
The dissenters (that is the free-speech censors) say that they engage in this crusade because there is a pervasive distortion of electoral institutions (ok, that means the gov't) by rich people, who "sap" democracy and "defy" publicj confidence in the gov't. "defy"?? That doesn't scan, does it? To parallel with "sap" it should, simply, be "erode". The bad rich people can't "defy" public confidence; they could undermine it, or exploit it, or something else. But "defy" just makes last sentence seem wierd.
Ah well. that's the level of SCOTUS dissents.
To conclude, we finish the evening cocktail and weep afresh to Best-of-the-Web's conclusion:
In other words, Congress has to restrict political speech because it's so important. Funny, but we thought that the exact reason the Founding Fathers said Congress couldn't restrict it.
