Further Review Of Yesterday’s SCOTUS Decision Supporting Free Political Speech

Today in Washington, D.C. - April 3, 2014
The Senate reconvened at 9:30 AM today and resumed consideration of H.R. 3979, the vehicle for an extension of unemployment insurance.

Votes are likely today on the unemployment insurance bill and on nominations the Majority Leader has not announced yet.

Senate Democrats continue to blockade Republicans from offering any amendments to the unemployment insurance bill. Today, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) has collected a number of GOP job creating ideas into a single amendment which would authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, postpone the individual mandate and repeal Obamacare’s limit on hourly work, allow small business tax relief, and pass the House-passed SKILLS Act. Will Democrats allow a vote on these basic, commonsense ideas?

Yesterday, Senate Republicans tried to break the Democrat blockade on amendments, but majority Democrats nearly all voted with with thei leadership to continue blocking all amendments. One of those Senators was Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas who is know as the "A Liberal when no one is looking".

Pryor: Obama Comes First!
The House convened at 10 AM and will continue their debate on H.R. 2575 — "To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the 30-hour threshold for classification as a full-time employee for purposes of the employer mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and replace it with 40 hours."

It was classic case of liberal re-engineering in the infamous "you must pass the bill before you can know what is in it" Affordable Care Act, aka, Obamacare. The Democrats even lowered the traditional classification of a full-time worker from 40 hours a week to 30 hours a week. When the vote is taken on H.R. 2575, it can be expected that Democrats will vote lock step against this bill even though their constituents understand that the Democrats have interfered not only with their healthcare but have interfered in numerous other areas of their life including their actual employment hours and the basic economy.

Examining the result of yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, The Wall Street Journal editors write today, “One of the Supreme Court's worst mistakes was its willingness to tolerate limits on political free speech in the name of campaign-finance reform. The current Justices have slowly been walking back this historic blunder, and on Wednesday they took another step by killing the overall limit on how much money an individual can contribute to politics. The 5-4 decision in McCutcheon v. FEC builds on the Court's 2010 defense of free speech in Citizen s United, which overturned limits on what corporations and unions can spend on politics. Wednesday's ruling will let Americans give to as many political candidates or party groups as they want. Donors must still abide by the dollar limits to any single candidate, but the overall limits of $48,600 to federal candidates and $74,600 for other political committees violate the Constitution.

‘The First Amendment safeguards an individual's right to participate in the public debate through political expression and political association,’ Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. ‘When an individual contributes money to a candidate, he exercises both of those rights.’ Restricting how many candidates an individual can support infringes on those rights. . . .

‘If there is no corruption concern in giving nine candidates up to $5,200 each, it is difficult to understand how a tenth candidate can be regarded as corruptible if given $1,801, and all others corruptible if given a dime,’ Chief Justice Roberts wrote. ‘The Government may no more restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse.’ Well said, and we especially like the dig at newspapers that think it's fine for Congress to limit everyone else's speech but theirs.”

In a must-read piece for National Review Online, Charles C.W. Cooke chronicled Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s contributions to this case and others successfully rolling back unconstitutional restrictions of political speech. He writes that McConnell is “a tireless crusader against laws that would restrict what citizens may do with their property and energy come election time. . . . Since he was first elected . . . McConnell has participated in 20 filibusters against campaign-finance limitations. Most famous, perhaps, was his effort in September 1994 to block a bill that would have effectively facilitated a federal takeover of the election system. ‘The Congress, then controlled by the Democrats, with President Clinton in the White House, tried to push through public funding and spending limits for congressional campaigns,’ McConnell recalls. ‘That was just twenty years ago. I led the all-night filibuster against that, which succeeded. But that’s how close we were to a total government takeover of congressional races.’”

Now, though, Cooke writes, “[T]he tables have been turned. Now, [McCain-Feingold] is in tatters, as are others that complemented it. What has changed? ‘The big breakthrough at the Supreme Court on this particular issue was when Sam Alito replaced Sandra Day O’Connor,’ McConnell explains. ‘Now we’ve had a series of decisions that I think are consistent with what the Founders surely would have meant when they were talking about freedom of speech. You’ve got five pretty solid defenders of robust political speech: You saw it in Citizens United, you saw it again today. What the court said this morning was that the Congress can’t micromanage how many candidates or parties you choose to support. This is very sound thinking in my view. We’ve now got a Court that fully respects the possibility of everybody participating in the political discourse.’”

“Since Alito and Roberts were added to the Court,” Cooke writes, “McConnell has been involved in six attempts to dismantle campaign regulations. Six times he has prevailed. He filed amicus briefs in the cases of Randall v. Sorrell, Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC, Citizens United v. FEC, McComish v. Bennett, and American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock — all of which limited the state’s role in regulating campaign finances. In the McCutcheon case, he went one stage further, not only submitting a brief but also persuading the justices to allow his lawyer, Bobby Burchfield, to participate in oral arguments — an unusual request for the Court to grant, and a concession that demonstrates how interested in this subject the justices have been. Congress, too, has changed its tune. ‘Just the other day,’ McConnell tells me, ‘something I’ve wanted to do for 25 years was finally accomplished. We eliminated public funding for the national conventions. And President Obama signed it! We’re now moving in the opposite direction than before. The government doesn’t need to be micromanaging political speech; it doesn’t need to be funding political campaigns; and it certainly doesn’t need to be funding conventions.’”

“Nevertheless, McConnell remains wary. ‘They haven’t given up,’ - ‘The Treasury is seeking to shut down (c)4s and make it essentially impossible for them to engage in the sort of political speech that they’ve engaged in for over half a century. The administration is trying to use the power of the bureaucracy to shut people up as much as they can.’ People have noticed, too. ‘These regulations generated 140,000 comments. There’s been nothing in the history of the IRS that has come anywhere close to the outrage.’ ‘Interestingly,’ McConnell notes, ‘a number of the comments opposing the Treasury regulation have come from the political Left.’ ...”

Unfortunately, 1) the current decision in favor of political free speech was only 5-4 and not 9-0.  And, 2) Senate democrats are currently packing the lower court with liberal judges and have denied the Republicans the ability to stop the confirmation of radial judges by implementation of the nuclear option. In the future, when Democrats eventually loose control of the U.S. Senate, they will cry out for fairness and for the Republicans to return to the 60 vote rule for confirmations and the Democrat's ability to block good conservative judges from the bench.

There are a lot of liberal non-constitutionist judges being placed in Federal judicial positions.  .  Eventually, some these liberal judges will advance to the Appellate court or to the Supreme Court where they can advance their progressive liberal bias against individual liberty, States rights and the Constitution. The only viable option in future years to rectify this situation may be for conservatives once in control of Congress to exercise their Constitutional rights to 1) disband various lower courts (those below the Supreme Court) and thus removing judges on those courts from their positions and to impeach judges on remaining courts who are failing to support the Constitution. As an editorial comment, it also time for American voters to elect less lawyers to Congress.

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Tags: SCOTUS, free political speech, future action, liberal judges, US House, Definition of Full Work Week, Obamacare, Mitch McConnell, Mark Pryor To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!