I'm with Alex. Haven't seen details, but from what I've been hearing from the people who are happy about this decision, I disagree that it's a free speech issue. The Constitution protects individuals, not collective entities. Is the fact that corporations and unions don't have a vote in elections restricting their constitutional rights? I doubt anyone would say so, but restricting their speech is?

No law prevents individuals that are part of the entities from exercising their right to free speech. If the CEO of Enron wants to spend their money to run ads for a write in campaign for Cheney in 2012, they are free too and rightly should not be restricted. But I do not believe the same rights extend beyond the individual to collective entities like unions and corporations. Totally different ball of wax.

But either way, I look forward to the outcries from conservative Republicans about this sweeping, irresponsible abuse of power by a bunch of activist judges.

You won't hear it.

Somehow when a collective is called a corporation its no longer communist

You won't find me ever saying overturning a law as unconstitutional is outside the purview of the SCOTUS. I think legislation from the bench comes in forms of a judge saying "yuou must rewrite the property tax distribution for schools in AZ because I don't think it's fair". That kind of crap.

Based on your interpratation of the first amendment, then GD, I suppose the government could ban churches. As long as people can worship within their own homes their rights aren't being infringed upon. As I read the first amendment, it says "Congress shall make NO law".

In all seriousness, though, would you view groups such as the NRA as different than a corporation?

I'll start to buy into that when corporations give up the legal benefits they have that individual people do not have (corporations exist solely to protect individuals from the possible negative consequences of their actions. They don't get to be a "person" only when it benefits would be my view.

Yes, corporations are essentially a collective of people (the shareholders) but the speech of a corporation is only secondarily a form of expression by those people as there is no requirement that the people speaking for the corporation be owners nor that they make any attempt to consult with the owners before making such expressions.

Heck, part of this suit (unsuccessful) was that corporations wanted to not have to report their involvement in the political process which would allow them to mask their speech from their owners.

Another consideration is that for most publicly traded corporations a significant portion of the "free speech" interest is held by non-Americans. Since when do they have a right to participation in our political process?

Mostly my objection (and I won't claim at this point it is based in constitutional reality, though the constitution has nothing to say about corporations, they are entirely legislative entities) is that when it comes to the "personhood" of corporations they seem to get to pick and choose how real that metaphor will be from situation to situation making for a form of "heads I win, tails you lose."

I do recognize that this creates a conflict. Why, for example, does the Tribune Company, a corporation, get to say whatever it wants about the political process at any time in the political process but Microsoft would not? It's a very valid point, but my gut feeling here is that this resolution to the question was in the wrong direction.

As for the NRA, since they are an incorporated organization I would say no, they're no different.

Also... this ruling allows companies to contribute as much as they wish on an election, while you and I are still limited to $2400. How fair is that?

Corporations are considered "persons" for purposes of the due process clause. I don't recall the specifics, but I believe that there was a fair amount of discussion of that very point when the 14th Amendment was ratified.

The First Amendment does not speak of whom it is protecting. It speaks of what may not be done. It is inconceivable that a content-based restriction on speech could be enforced against speech that comes from an organization but not against speech that comes from an individual.

I haven't read the decision. I assume it discusses whether or not the legislation was justified by a compelling state interest. One can conceive of such an interest. The antitrust laws bespeak the view that there can be a point where concentrations of power and wealth effectively freeze the game and, therefore, become anti-democratic. One can see the same potential with well-funded corporate speech.

No, that's not right. Corporations are still limited like everybody else on direct contributions to candidates.

This just means they can spend as much of their corporate money as they want on their own political advocacy during certain periods before an election. You and I could already do that, if I had a billion dollars no law would prevent me from running my own commercials saying "Vote for Bob" so long as they were produced independently of Bob.

Olbermann's comments on the issue were interesting -- of course, he takes it to his usual nth degree of histrionics but his heart is in the right place.

There's something fundamentally wrong (and this is my understanding, correct me if I am wrong) when the CEO of Walmart can donate a limited amount of $$ to a candidate, but Walmart itself can donate an unlimited amount to a candidate. In my book, that means that the candidate is thereby bought and beholden to Walmart. Walmart wants a piece of legislation passed? Walmart has bought that piece of legislation. Walmart doesn't want to pay for domestic partner benefits because they cost too dang much? Walmart starts paying for "those" politicians. Hallelujah, profits go up.

I've definitely read enough scifi where the corporation and the state are one and the same ("Snow Crash," anyone?). This seems to be one of those decisions which pushes things closer to that "fiction."

Edit: After reading Alex's post, , maybe one of my assertions isn't correct.. but still, let's face it, Walmart has a lot more money to run those commercials and "indirectly" donate to a candidate than even the CEO of Walmart.

What was prevented was something like the NRA saying "Senator Whozit has voted to take your gun rights away" within 60 days (maybe 30) of an election.

The NRA could run ads saying "support gun rights" but could not mention Senator Whozit.