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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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 Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 11:31 am Post subject: Justice Thomas Ups the Ante |
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Thomas: Some questioning of Court 'irresponsible'
GAINESVILLE, Fla. � Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says some questioning of the court and government is getting out of hand.
Thomas told an audience Thursday at the University of Florida law school that some of the comments "border on being irresponsible" and "run the risk in our society of undermining institutions that we need to preserve our liberties."
Thomas did not speak specifically about the court's recent decision on campaign financing or mention President Barack Obama.
But his comments come a week after Obama took the rare step of openly criticizing the decision during his State of the Union speech...
[From an earlier story:]
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) � U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told Florida law students that corporations and unions have a First Amendment right to spend money on political candidates.
Thomas spoke Tuesday at Stetson University and defended the Supreme Court's recent decision that corporations and unions can spend freely from their treasuries to run political ads for or against specific candidates.
"I found it fascinating that the people who were editorializing against it were The New York Times Company and The Washington Post Company," Thomas said, according to a report in The New York Times. "These are corporations."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100204/ap_on_re_us/us_supreme_court_thomas
I do agree with Thomas on one point. Much of the criticism around today is aimed at undermining institutions, however, it is coming from people who have misinterpreted the concept of skepticism by twisting it to mean fear and hatred of all government.
Thomas' comment that 'the people who were editorializing against it were the New York Times Company and The Washington Post Company' is interesting. A large part of the disagreement is that corporations are not people. Did he mean to be deliberately provocative? Or was he just sloppy in his choice of words?
Anyway, back in 1805 Justice Samuel Chase was impeached on 8 counts which were basically charging him with allowing his (Federalist) politics to bias his treatment of defendants. He was acquited in the end, but his trial was key in establishing the concept that Justices stay out of politics. Perhaps after 205 years the Court, specifically Thomas, needs a refresher lesson in the importance of following precedent. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 8:27 pm Post subject: Re: Justice Thomas Ups the Ante |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| Thomas' comment that 'the people who were editorializing against it were the New York Times Company and The Washington Post Company' is interesting. A large part of the disagreement is that corporations are not people. Did he mean to be deliberately provocative? Or was he just sloppy in his choice of words? |
Can you explain this a bit more?
| Quote: |
| Anyway, back in 1805 Justice Samuel Chase was impeached on 8 counts which were basically charging him with allowing his (Federalist) politics to bias his treatment of defendants. He was acquited in the end, but his trial was key in establishing the concept that Justices stay out of politics. Perhaps after 205 years the Court, specifically Thomas, needs a refresher lesson in the importance of following precedent. |
Yes, I think it significant that Thomas said anything at all on the topic. Apparently, he feels defensive about his vote on the issue. |
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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| It's interesting that "Long Dong" Clarence (Uncle) Thomas fully supports granting free speech to impersonal entities. Pornographic sex is also impersonal. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 5:47 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
Ya-ta Boy wrote:
Thomas' comment that 'the people who were editorializing against it were the New York Times Company and The Washington Post Company' is interesting. A large part of the disagreement is that corporations are not people. Did he mean to be deliberately provocative? Or was he just sloppy in his choice of words?
Can you explain this a bit more?
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I'm not sure what isn't clear. People who objected to the Court's decision mainly focused on the idea that they don't consider a corporation a person in the legal sense and therefore doesn't qualify for free speech rights (which is not to say the individual people in the corporation don't). Thomas' quote seems to equate the employees writing in the NYT with the corporation itself.
In my humble opinion, since the next two most likely justices to retire are both liberals, it's time for the Dems to encourage both to resign while we have a Dem majority in the Senate, then impeach Thomas and scare up all the money in Hollywood or wherever and buy off as many Republicans in the Senate (hey, unlimited corporate funding is A-OK, right?) for a conviction of Thomas and replacement for Stevens/Ginsberg and end up with a liberal majority on the Court. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 8:37 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| Quote: |
Ya-ta Boy wrote:
Thomas' comment that 'the people who were editorializing against it were the New York Times Company and The Washington Post Company' is interesting. A large part of the disagreement is that corporations are not people. Did he mean to be deliberately provocative? Or was he just sloppy in his choice of words?
Can you explain this a bit more?
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I'm not sure what isn't clear. People who objected to the Court's decision mainly focused on the idea that they don't consider a corporation a person in the legal sense and therefore doesn't qualify for free speech rights (which is not to say the individual people in the corporation don't). Thomas' quote seems to equate the employees writing in the NYT with the corporation itself. |
The NYT is a corporation. It has employees who write an opinion piece. The corporation then pays to disseminate that opinion to the public.
This is the same as any other corporation which may choose to have one or more of its employees write an opinion piece and pay to have it disseminated to the public.
Thomas' logic is correct on this one Yata.
Of course, a corporation is not a person. It is a voluntary group of individuals, and as such, each of these individuals retains his or her free speech rights. It is therefore a guaranteed first amendment right for these individuals to express their free speech through their chosen group membership. This is no different than a political party, a political campaign, a newspaper, TV station, magazine, the Red Cross, Girl Scouts or any other organization.
However, maybe it should be illegal for politicians and government employees to use taxpayer money to disseminate their opinions. The politicians and government employees currently use tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to spread their lies annually in the US. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 8:42 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Of course, a corporation is not a person. |
So you disagree with the Supreme Court. Right? |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 8:51 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Of course, a corporation is not a person. |
So you disagree with the Supreme Court. Right? |
Can you read? Do you have even a speck of logical reasoning ability?
| Quote: |
| Of course, a corporation is not a person. It is a voluntary group of individuals, and as such, each of these individuals retains his or her free speech rights. It is therefore a guaranteed first amendment right for these individuals to express their free speech through their chosen group membership. This is no different than a political party, a political campaign, a newspaper, TV station, magazine, the Red Cross, Girl Scouts or any other organization. |
Individuals have free speech rights.
Individuals have the right to form groups.
The individuals in groups maintain their free speech rights.
The individuals in groups have the right to pool their resources and exercies their individual rights to free speech.
No individual may have his or her free speech rights curtailed, whether they choose to exercies them alone or in or through a group.
Freedom of Speech is absolute.
When governments attempt to curtail the free speech rights of any group, including a corporation, they curtail the rights of the individual members of that group to freedom of speech. This makes the government a criminal. Of course, it is the individual in government making the decision to attack the group who is the criminal. Such an individual, even acting as an official or employee of the government, should be tried and imprisoned for civil liberties violations. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:45 am Post subject: |
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| Ira Glasser wrote: |
Ira Glasser Executive Director, ACLU (1978-2001, Retired)
Posted: February 3, 2010 09:28 AM
... what about the ACLU and the NAACP and Planned Parenthood and The Sierra Club, etc., etc., all of which are corporations that engage in the sort of speech prohibited by the statute struck down in Citizens United?
And what about The New York Times, and CBS and other media corporations, which also are corporate (NBC is owned by General Electric) and which by their coverage and their editorials endorsing and opposing candidates spend money all the time for purposes that were generally prohibited by the statute? Consider: The Times endorses Candidate A in an editorial, or Fox News devotes its entire coverage to promoting or tearing down a candidate, and that is constitutionally protected, but if Citizens United or the Sierra Club or the NAACP or Planned Parenthood wants to buy time for an ad to reply, supporting a different candidate or even just mentioning a candidate by name in an ad that doesn't expressly support or oppose the candidate, they commit a crime? Where in the First Amendment does it say that such corporations have fewer speech rights than a "media corporation?" And what exactly is a "media corporation?" General Electric or Westinghouse are barred from political speech, but if they buy NBC or ABC (which they both did), they become a "media corporation" that escapes the ban? Why should we be allowing the government to decide who may speak by making such distinctions? Yet the Times, a corporate entity that spends money all the time to criticize or praise candidates, and to support or oppose them, blathers on hypocritically about how if other corporations have exactly the same right as they do, it means the end of democracy. Do we want the government--the government??!!-- to be deciding which corporations can speak and which not? The Times? Yes. The ACLU or Citizens United? Sorry, no. Wasn't this precisely the power denied to Congress under the First Amendment? One of the great features of the Court's decision is that it cleared away all of these unsupportable distinctions, and took away the government's power to decide whose speech it would permit and whose it would not. |
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ira-glasser/understanding-the-emcitiz_b_447342.html
Last edited by ontheway on Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:47 am; edited 1 time in total |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:46 am Post subject: |
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More for FOX, on elections and unlimited donations:
| Ira Glasser wrote: |
Campaign finance reforms have from the beginning been designed to protect incumbents. For example, research shows that what matters in campaign speech is more the floor of spending than the ceiling. That is, if $2 million is an adequate amount to get your message out, and if an insurgent candidate for Congress has $2 million to spend and the incumbent spends $4 million, then that doesn't normally affect the outcome, assuming $2 million is enough. But if the insurgent only has $400,000, the incumbent virtually always wins. The incumbent has name recognition, which the insurgent usually doesn't; the incumbent has the franking privilege with which to reach voters, while the insurgent has to raise money in amounts limited by law to do equal mailings; the incumbent can call a press conference or hold a hearing and generate publicity that is regarded as news, while the insurgent has to spend money raised in small amounts to generate equal coverage.
The requirement to raise campaign dollars in small amounts discriminates against insurgent candidates and favors incumbents. Raising lots of contributions in small amounts requires name recognition and the support of many people, which insurgents usually don't have.
In 1968, Gene McCarthy began his anti-war campaign against incumbent President Lyndon Johnson with only about 2% name recognition in New Hampshire. He had three major donors who gave him seven figures each--huge gifts in 1968-- when he challenged LBJ in the New Hampshire primary; those gifts would have constituted a crime today, and pretty much since the early seventies. Without that handful of large gifts, McCarthy would have had little chance to get his message out effectively against an incumbent. With those gifts, he came so close to beating Johnson that Johnson quit the race for re-election.
Legislators know all this research; that is why they pass the "reforms" they do, which limit large contributions, require challengers to raise money in small amounts from large numbers of people, and to the extent that they provide public financing, do so in insufficiently low amounts and then bar candidates who take such inadequate public financing from raising any additional money. Campaign finance laws passed by incumbents assure the insufficiency of insurgent candidacies. Incumbency has greatly increased for several reasons, but its rise since these campaign finance "reforms" became popular about 40 years ago is a substantial one.
So aside from the profound First Amendment problems created by all these laws, they have generally suppressed insurgent candidates, advantaged incumbents and increased inequity in election campaigns.
Liberals and Democrats have been the chief offenders in this scenario, favoring equity in the abstract but never seeing how the particular reforms they advocated made the problems they wished to remedy worse ... |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:55 am Post subject: |
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| Ira Glasser wrote: |
The issue at stake in the case was whether, consistent with the First Amendment, the government could criminalize speech that criticized a public official who was also a candidate for elective office, 60 days before a general election and 30 days before a primary. One would think that it was precisely during an election campaign that the right to criticize or defend an elected official was most important. But not according to the campaign finance "reformers." They have actually been trying to stop such speech for four decades, and not just speech by the sort of big, bad corporations you may have in mind.
In a similar case involving a similar issue back in 1972, the ACLU, which by the way is also a corporation, was prevented from taking out an ad in The New York Times criticizing then-President Nixon for his opposition to school busing for integration, and had to go to court to vindicate its right to free speech. The campaign finance "reformers" wanted to prohibit such speech because Nixon was also a candidate for re-election, and the ACLU's speech criticizing him might affect the election in ways the reformers thought was unfair! (I am not making this up.) The law was struck down when the ACLU sued, but it came back again in other forms. In 1984, the ACLU was cited and investigated by the Federal Election Commission for public statements it made criticizing President Reagan for what it considered his violations of civil liberties. That of course was what the ACLU existed to do. But because this criticism occurred during the 1984 re-election campaign, the FEC moved to bar it because, it claimed, such criticism was the functional equivalent of supporting a candidate!! And that was prohibited by campaign finance law. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:57 am Post subject: |
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| Ira Glasser wrote: |
In these and many other cases over decades, not-for-profit cause groups of all kinds were repeatedly subjected to curbs on precisely the kind of speech the First Amendment was designed to protect. In the current case that has caused all the commotion, the victim was a not-for-profit group called Citizens United that wanted to distribute a film it had made criticizing Hillary Clinton and questioning her fitness for office. No good, said the law, you can't criticize her while she's running for office. Why? Because Citizens United was incorporated. So is the ACLU and so is pretty much every other cause organization. Should Planned Parenthood, for example, or NARAL Pro-Choice America be banned from criticizing Sarah Palin during a future campaign for office? That was precisely the question raised by the Citizens United case. Should the fact that such activist citizens' organizations are incorporated allow the government to bar their speech, especially when it matters most?
That is the question the Court was asked to answer, and it answered correctly: such organizations' freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment. Why liberals should be unhappy about that, or willing to tolerate the censorship of their own speech that would have resulted from a contrary decision is a mystery. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 6:30 pm Post subject: |
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Freedom of Speech is absolute.
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This is just silly. Haven't you ever heard of libel and slander? |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:49 pm Post subject: |
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Thomas' logic is correct on this one Yata.
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This thread was not supposed to be about rehashing the thread on the Court's decision. This thread is supposed to be about Thomas' foray into politics while a sitting justice of the Supreme Court. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2010 8:31 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
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Freedom of Speech is absolute.
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This is just silly. Haven't you ever heard of libel and slander? |
Libel and slander laws which allow for damages after the fact do not restrict freedom of speech. Free Speech means that you can print or say whatever you want. The free speech is allowed and not prohibited in advance.
If you manage to injure someone through spoken or written comments, the allegedly injured party can sue for damages after the fact. He has to prove that he was damaged. For a public figure, the standard for what is allowable and consitutes damage is very high. It is nearly impossible for any public figure to claim he has been damaged under liable and slander laws. He cannot prevent the speaking or printing of the damaging comments in advance. |
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