Tags: Roberts' Supreme Court, Slate's Dahlia Dahlia Lithwick, Chris Hayes, Citizens United Ruling Not the Worst Decision
Rachel Maddow’s favorite guest is Dahlia Lithwick of www.slate.com when matters of law are concerned. www.slate.com/authors/dahlia_lithwick.html Today, as a guest on the superb news program Up With Chris Hayes had a very stimulating and well argued show with a bright and open minded approach except for the one Republican on the panel. This was the first Republican on Up with Chris Hayes who spouted ideology as David Brooks did on Meet the Press in his smooth talking manner without answering the question honestly. In contrast in his more honest book, The Social Animal, he had to admit in his book that logic is not so logical at all, since we use logic to support our beliefs.
Our first instinct no matter the situation is to survive. We do what is necessary to keep our jobs even though it means sacrificing some of our core principles and beliefs. Congress persons and executives do the same thing by doing what they would not even consider doing to their family, friends, or neighbors. Even serial psychopathic killers behave as good neighbors to provide a cover as we have found repeatedly.
The same can be said for House and Senate members who do not agree with the more radical elements of their party, but they do vote in high numbers in the primaries, so they vote with the minority views. That is how the radical Christian Right hijacked the Republican party.
Corporate supported Think Tanks such as the Heritage Foundation which came up from Gingrich supporting a view in the past that does not coincide with the radical right now.
In 2,000, I tried to tell everyone I could talk to even before I started using the Internet at home, that it was obvious to me that electing Bush would be a disaster because he would put corporate conservatives into the Supreme Court. As a Republican, I voted for McCain of old in the primary. When Bush won, I immediately supported Democrats and worked hard to get rid of one of the managers in the House who led the Impeachment of President Clinton by campaigning for a conservative Democrat, a former state Senator, Adam Schiff. He has been reelected and is still a House member with a more Pelosi liberal point of view now.
Dahlia Lithwick discusses what the Supreme Court did to our country with their decision. Yes, it is well worth reading the whole column.
The Supreme Court run by Roberts and Scalia previously not only illegally installed Bush as President by stopping the Florida recount which the newspapers determined went to Gore easily, still hold to the corporate view that Bush won because they only saw the headlines in the New York Times by a corporate editor who has since been fired. The current executive editor, Jill Abramson often clashed with Raines, the former editor, somehow survived due to those above Raines.
Jim Kawakami, October 23, 2011, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com
From OWS to OSCOTUS
As Occupy Wall Street protesters look to the Supreme Court, they’ll find more to be outraged about than the Citizens United case.
By Dahlia Lithwick|Posted Monday, Oct. 17, 2011, at 7:12 PM ET
The protesters at Occupy Wall Street and all the mini-occupations that have sprung up around the country in recent days have started to connect two important dots. Blaming Congress for the corporate takeover of American democracy is only half the fun; blaming the Supreme Court is almost better. So when Cornel West was arrested Sunday at an impromptu protest on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, his message was a simple one that may be starting to resonate: If you don’t like big corporations buying and selling your government, you may want to go talk to the five-justice majority who gave us the Citizens United decision.
There is only one small problem with this argument. The corporate takeover of government predates the Citizens United ruling, issued in 2010, by many, many years. Moreover, while the ruling certainly opened up the possibility that future elections will be affected by the flood of corporate money into political campaigns, most empirical studies of the 2010 elections still show that the actual impact of Citizens United was actually quite limited.
Many of the worst aspects of our money-saturated campaigns (like the role of 501(c)4’s) were already legal before Citizens United, and the holding in the case didn’t change them. The stuff you want to really worry about with big money and elections, such as the failure to disclose who you’re buying, is unaffected by Citizens United. Things may well get much uglier in future elections. But they’d have been ugly with or without the court’s intercession. So if you want to get mad at the Supreme Court for the role it has played in insulating and empowering American corporations, realize that Citizens United is largely a symbolic target. It is not the most important aspect of the Roberts court and its affinity for big business. ... Link above.
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