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Subscribe to RSSHanding out the final decisions of the current term, the Supreme Court issued two -- one of which is related to politics.
It invalidated, by a 5-4 vote, a 1998 Arizona law that gave a financial boost to publicly funded candidates if their privately funded opponents spent more money.
Under the law, candidates who declined to accept campaign contributions could participate in the public financing system, which gave them a lump-sum grant for the campaign. But if an opponent, who was not publicly funded outspent the amount of the state grant, the publicly funded candidate received more money from the state to bring the candidates into rough spending parity.
The system was challenged on First Amendment grounds by several privately funded candidates, who claimed that they reined in their spending to avoid triggering the matching funds for their publicly funded opponents. The law, they argued, acted as a restraint on their campaigns and thus violated their free-speech rights.
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It is patently dishonest and a complete misconstruction of the Constitution to say that anything that could SERVE to give EQUAL ACCESS to contenders is somehow unconstitutional, as if the SPIRIT of our Constitution was to ensure that MONEY RULES AND OPPRESSES ALL THOSE WHO DO NOT HAVE THEIR OWN. There has been a GROSS REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH in America, somehow it is ONLY "SOCIALISM!!!" when the wealth gets taken from the haves, when money is ROBBED from others to GIVE to the RICH, THAT IS WHAT AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT APPARENTLY.
Even EISENHOWER warned of THESE times and his own party would be very wise to start listening, before they create a class war that will make Soweto look like a scuffle. We are NOT going to continue to TOLERATE a system of RETHUGLIKKKANS imposing CORPORATE LAW AND DICTATORSHIP and ENGINEERING the REDISTRIBUTION OF AMERICA'S WEALTH INTO THE UGLY GREEDY GRIP OF THE FEW. We need to GET the CORRUPT BUSH ERA INJUSTICES OFF THE BENCH.