In Case You Had Forgotten, Bill Moyers And Two Legal Scholars Explain How Citizens United Allows Corp's To Buy Elections

The video below appears originally as the first video on this page. Please watch Bill Moyers interviewing Monica Youn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice, and Zephyr Teachout, a professor at Fordham School of Law, on the direct and indirect consequences of Citizens United:

If we want to preserve any semblance of democracy in America, we must find a way to rid ourselves of that execrable Supreme Court ruling. Otherwise the Golden Rule applies ("those who have the gold make the rules"), and we the people (except for the very wealthy) will have no participatory role in our government, and our flag may as well look like this:

I understand Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has a good campaign underway to rid us of Citizens United; perhaps you can join his effort. If that doesn't suit you, please find something, or prepare to lose your democracy.

Found At A Hobby Lobby Store

(H/T Hunter at Kos.)

AFTERTHOUGHT: While you're at Kos, read Dante Atkins's "Hobby Lobby: SCOTUS reserves right to establish state religion of its choice."

The Title Of Robert Reich's Article...

... is also a good summary: The Way to Stop Corporate Lawbreaking is to Prosecute the People Who Break the Law. Yep. That would help! The other problem with "corporate personhood" is that a corporation has no body (despite its name) which can be confined to a jail cell. Any effective restraint of a corporation's malfeasance must begin with restraint of its all-too-human leaders.

New CEO Office

New Corporate HQ

Will Supreme Court Create A 'Citizens United' Allowing Corporations To Circumvent Obamacare Birth Control Mandate, Claiming Religious Freedom?

Does a corporation resemble an individual human being in having protected freedom of speech, including freedom to make effectively unlimited campaign contributions? In Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court ruled in effect that yes, corporations do have free-speech rights.

How far does this concept go? Does a corporation have freedom of religion, the religion of course being that of the owner, including the freedom to refuse to comply with the birth control mandate in the Affordable Care Act? A divided D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier in this month that corporations do have such a right (The Hill's Regwatch blog has a good summary; Kaiser Health News has links to many articles about the ruling).

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Which one has a religion?

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Today, the Supreme Court hears the case. I don't mean to sound cynical, but I think I know how that will come out.

Back in the Saint Ronald Reagan era, before federal courts including the Supreme Court became so thoroughly dominated by men (sic) nominated by Republican presidents, conservative friends and colleagues (I actually had a couple of conservative friends back then) complained about something they called "agenda‑based adjudication," a process by which courts ruled in ways that allegedly favored a particular (Democratic) political agenda. It was never clear that that actually took place, but that was the allegation.

Today, there is no room for doubt that agenda‑based adjudication is as real as any other basis on which controversial issues are decided in the Supreme Court. At some point, by the look of it, not only will corporations have the rights of individuals, but only corporations will have such rights. It's a truly sorry trend.

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UPDATE: according to Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog, "The Court did not expedite the briefing schedules for the new cases, so presumably they will be heard in March."

AFTERTHOUGHT: Shouldn't the six (6) Catholics on the nine‑member Supreme Court all recuse themselves, as every one of them has presumably the same religious aversion to contraception as the plaintiff?