[pic morethings.com, from Hee Haw tv show]A bit of history: There once was a Scottish theologian of the High Middle Ages, JOHN DUNS, who became known as Duns Scotus, being that he was Scottish. His 'theologerising' left behind some important ideas on bits of paper. Unfortunately for him, the long-term effect was that his enemies made a mockery of him by equating:
So, I had to laugh when I discovered that the Supreme Court of the United States is widely referred to with this hillarious acronym,
the case that will forever be known as Citizens United, has given the extreme-right-wing side of the US Supreme Court the chance^ to open the doors for corporations to fund political campaigns as much as they want. So, every reasonable person sees this as legally wrong (based on the corporation=person myth), but also something which will allow corporations to take complete control of government in the US (which they have almost completed anyway). And, if it happens there, it can happen anywhere. They'll even find a way to use the WTO to enforce this worldwide.
Obama44 chose one Justice (a SCOTUS judge) last year, but since GWBush43 was the president who stacked the balance (out of 10 Justices) of things in favour of the loony-conservative-globalising-screw their human rights Justices, then, ultimately, the last and biggest dunce cap goes to him.**
[pic topplebush.com]The US government has three branches:
the Executive (President), the Legislative (Congress)
-Costick67 (8^P
* paraphrasing 'Hee-Haw' tv show
^ look what SCOTUS did with the year-2000 federal elections. 'and the Winner...loses'
Daddy Bush stacked the Court for that one.
** He may indeed be functionally illiterate, or just a bad alcoholic.
*** 'Blues Brothers' movie
-checkitout on Wikipedia: 'John Duns Scotus', 'ACLU' 'corporate personhood debate' 'federal government of the United States' (sic)
-checkitout Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, on Alternet
"Why the ACLU Supported the Supreme Court's Shocking Assault on Free Speech"
[some quotations]
-Keith Olberman (MSNBC) called him (Floyd Abrams of ACLU) a "Quisling" for aiding and abetting this catastrophic confirmation of corporate 'personhood.'
-The ACLU has also defended the right of such loathsome haters as the Ku Klux Klan to gather and speak. In these and other such cases, the ACLU has been right, and has courageously paid a price.-But perhaps the organization has confused those valid First Amendment cases with a Citizen's United decision perpetrated by the most virulent judicial opponents of individual speech in the history of the Court. In reference to this case the ACLU says it "has consistently taken the position that section 203 is facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment because it permits the suppression of core political speech, and our amicus brief takes that position again."
We respectfully -- but vehemently -- disagree. Simply put:
money is not speech, corporations are not people.
-Given the immense sums of cash these corporations have to spend, the Citizen's United decision is the equivalent not of guaranteeing individual Nazis the freedom to march, but instead of granting the Party itself the right to drive tanks down the street, guns ablazing.
It's not the same as giving individual Klan members the right to hold a rally, but rather for the organization to do public lynchings as part of a terror campaign aimed at taking tangible power.
-Nowhere in the Constitution do the Founders mention the word corporation. There were six of them (corporations) at the time of ratification, all strictly limited by state charter to where and what kind of business they could do. They bear scant resemblance to the multi-national behemoths we confront today.
-The moneyed power of these corporations and their access to the First Amendment through the myth of "personhood" has been the ultimate pox on American politics since the 1880s.
---end of text
what about 'the right to bear arms'? That's a good one, too.
also see my other stories on this: 'The Right Hireable...'
