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Dear Fellow Liberals, Citizens United Is Right

Michael Kinsley: Accept the free-speech principle, even if you hate the ruling

By John Johnson,  Newser Staff

Posted Jul 5, 2012 1:53 PM CDT

(Newser) – John Roberts is suddenly a darling of liberals because he upheld ObamaCare even though it's clear he personally hates the idea of it. It's time for liberals to apply the same kind of "intellectual honesty" to a court decision they abhor, writes Michael Kinsley at Bloomberg. That would be Citizens United, the ruling that made it possible for corporations to flood this year's campaign with money. It was "correctly decided," Kinsley argues, and "liberals ought to show the chief justice that we too can acknowledge a principle even when we don’t agree with the result."

Limits on spending restrict free speech—even if the money comes from corporations—and the court was therefore right to back up the First Amendment, writes Kinsley. What to do? Stop complaining and "make money a voting issue," he suggests. "All it would take would be the defeat of a few representatives (and maybe a senator or two) precisely because they or others spent an offensive amount of money on the effort to get re-elected." Read his full column here.

A view of the Supreme Court in Washington.
A view of the Supreme Court in Washington.   (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 76 comments
Endangeredwhiteguy
Jul 6, 2012 8:48 AM CDT
What happened to McCain-Feingold and getting all that dirty money out of politics?
GaryGuss
Jul 5, 2012 10:47 PM CDT
This is great except that advertising works pretty well to sell ideas as well as products, if you control the media through ad buys you can easily get your message out and if you tell a lie long enough people will believe its true. This is why Citizens United is a bad ruling.
trailmix
Jul 5, 2012 8:36 PM CDT
Bullshit, How many U.S. Corporations have foreign owners?  So that would make it OK for foreign corporations to influence our elections.
 

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