Posts Tagged ‘Citizens United v. FEC’
Monday Links
* This weeks’s denunciation of the dissertation, yours at the Chronicle.
* The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden… Is Screwed. Esquire has been publishing some really interesting journalism lately.
“No one who fights for this country overseas should ever have to fight for a job,” Barack Obama said last Veterans’ Day, “or a roof over their head, or the care that they have earned when they come home.”
But the Shooter will discover soon enough that when he leaves after sixteen years in the Navy, his body filled with scar tissue, arthritis, tendonitis, eye damage, and blown disks, here is what he gets from his employer and a grateful nation:
Nothing. No pension, no health care, and no protection for himself or his family.
* marquette.edu is your source for Danny Pudi news.
* Rick Nolan, Minnesota Democrat, Unveils Constitutional Amendment To Overturn Citizens United. Sold.
* Artist claims to create 3D facial renderings based on discarded cigarette butts. I am extremely skeptical!
* DuckTales invented a new animated wonderland—that quickly disappeared.
* Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle is coming to Syfy.
* An Occurrence at the O.C. Bridge: “Arrested Development” is George Sr.’s death row fantasy.
* Couple engrossed in their wireless devices ignore each other (1906).
* And Slate asks the unthinkable: what if not every show premise can sustain itself forever?
Friday Night!
* Swordfighting: Not What You Think It Is.
* Laurence H. Tribe on how to undo Citizen’s United.
* A new poetic form: Scrabble Tile Poems.
* Meet China’s first female taikonaut.
* And just because it’s Friday: Jack McBrayer Visits Chicago’s famous insult-restaurant Weiner’s Circle.
Calling Balls and Strikes
So, as the Chief Justice chose how broadly to change the law in this area, the real question for him, it seems, was how much he wanted to help the Republican Party. Roberts’s choice was: a lot.
The New Yorker on John Roberts and how we got Citizen’s United.
Saturday Links!
* “A lifetime achievement award is a little alarming,” said Jameson, who came to Duke in 1985. “But on the other hand, it’s very nice to have the recognition.”
* Your democracy at work: Barack Obama Has, on Average, Attended a Fundraiser Every 5 Days in 2011.
* Matt Stoller: When a switch in the party in power does not result in policy changes, there’s little point in electoral politics.
* And just to counter that cynicism a bit: arguably one of the more important (and more progressive) components of the ACA took effect yesterday, the requirement that health insurance companies spend at least 80% of premiums on actual health care. UPDATE: Countering the counter-cynicism, Tim Worstall says this probably isn’t a big deal after all.
* Some North Carolina poverty facts.
* As is standard journalistic practice, the New York Times has allocated space for an accused child molester to tell his side of the story.
* If Duke is one of eleven campuses with “major Occupy movements,” I fear for the movement. Occupy Duke was genuinely tiny, and the #occupyduke hashtag is comprised almost exclusively of mockery and contempt.
* Occupy Commencement: UNC students are petitioning against Michael Bloomberg as commencement speaker.
* And Reuters selects the best 100 photos of 2011. Here’s #72:
‘Citizens United’ Continuing to Unite Citizens
Yesterday, six Democratic senators — Tom Udall (NM), Michael Bennett (CO), Tom Harkin (IA), Dick Durbin (IL), Chuck Schumer (NY), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), and Jeff Merkeley (OR) — introduced a constitutional amendment that would effectively overturn the Citizens United case and restore the ability of Congress to properly regulate the campaign finance system.
‘In a Very Real Sense, Democrats Running for Office in North Carolina Are Running Against Art Pope’
Phillips argues that the Court’s decision, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, has been a “game changer,” especially in the realm of state politics. In swing states like North Carolina—which the Democrats consider so important that they have scheduled their 2012 National Convention there—an individual donor, particularly one with access to corporate funds, can play a significant, and sometimes decisive, role. “We didn’t have that before 2010,” Phillips says. “Citizens United opened up the door. Now a candidate can literally be outspent by independent groups. We saw it in North Carolina, and a lot of the money was traced back to Art Pope.”
Wisconsin, Unions, and Citizens United
School closings continue in Wisconsin. Governor says he won’t be “bullied.” Stay tuned: the next step is “recall everyone.”
Because the recall statute allows elected officials to serve for a full year before they are subject to recall, Walker himself is immune until January of 2012. Eight of Walker’s Republican allies in the state senate have served at least one year of their current term, however, and thus are eligible for a recall petition right now. If just three of these Republicans were to be replaced with Democrats, the state senate would flip to a Democratic-majority body.
Constitution 2.0
John Nichols in The Nation on the possibility of a Constitutional convention.
Fear the Court?
TPM’s long “Is Health Care Reform Constitutional” post today says that Bush v. Gore and Citizens United aside the Roberts majority is unlikely to strike down any part of the health care bill.
Several respected conservative legal experts essentially agree that the court would have to radically break with past rulings to strike down the law. John McGinnis, a former Bush 41 administration Justice Department official and a past winner of an award from the Federalist Society, told TPMmuckraker that the court could rule in favor of the AGs only by taking a radical Originalist view of jurisprudence — one that all but ignores precedent. “I think the only person who shares [that view] is Justice Thomas.” said McGinnis, now a constitutional law scholar at Northwestern Law School. “It’s a very difficult argument to make under current precedent.”
Doug Kmiec, a former Reagan administration Justice Department official, and conservative legal scholar, echoes that view. “The idea that a regulatory requirement (whether to purchase insurance or to purchase a smoke alarm) violates the Constitution by exceeding the scope of the commerce power was rejected in the age when Robert Fulton’s steam ships were at the center of case controversy and the proposition has not gained validity with the passage into the 21st century,” Kmiec, now the Obama administration’s ambassador to Malta, told TPMmuckraker.
And Orin Kerr, a professor at George Washington Law School, who has served as a special counsel to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy, likewise believes the bill is almost certain to pass muster. “I think it’s very very unlikely that the mandate would be struck down as unconstitutional,” Kerr told TPMmuckraker.
There’s another problem with the lawsuit. Many judges are often reluctant to hear a challenge to a law until it has actually gone into effect — what legal types call a “ripeness” issue. The individual mandate won’t go into effect until 2014 — by which time factors like the composition of the Supreme Court, and the underlying politics driving the lawsuit, may well have changed.
Gerry Canavan 
