Sooner Blue

Jeffrey Toobin has an interesting piece about how Chief Justice John Roberts orchestrated the Citizens United decision to remove campaign finance limits so that rich corporations could have the same "free speech" as a person.

" When the Court announced its final ruling on Citizens United, on January 21, 2010, the vote was five to four and the majority opinion was written by Anthony Kennedy. ...the result represented a triumph for Chief Justice [John] Roberts... As American politics assumes its new form in the post-Citizens United era, the credit or the blame goes mostly to him. ... The Roberts Court, it appears, will guarantee moneyed interests the freedom to raise and spend any amount, from any source, at any time, in order to win elections."

Sure didn't take John Roberts long to secure his place in history as the one of the crappiest Supreme Court Justices Ever .. the Citizens United decision will go down in history as weakening our democracy.

If you accept two premises, that money is speech .. so, if you have more money than me, you have more speech than I do .. and that corporations are people, having the same rights as a person, then Citizens United makes sense.

To me, it only makes sense in a state owned by corporations.

The five Republican-appointed Supremes (Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas) knew exactly what they were doing when they saddled America with their Citizens United ruling.

One thing they didn't figure on was how the long drawn-out 2012 Republican primaries would expose just how dang corrupt unlimited corporate, and individual billionaire, campaign donations would be. They probably didn't dream how much obscenely wealthy Republicans would use their wealth to trash and smear other Republicans.

But, don't hold your breath waiting for the five right-wing Supremes to reverse their corrupting decision .. all those state and local races, and the ones for Capitol Hill seats, are going to need boatloads of Citizens United cash for unlimited smear ads against any Democrats (or Independents) daring to get in the way.

The only way SCOTUS will kill Citizens United -- when Democrats start outraising the Republicans in SuperPac fundraising.

If only ...