10-26-2011, 06:01 AM
(10-26-2011, 12:02 AM)FireIceTalon Wrote:(10-25-2011, 08:38 AM)Jester Wrote:(10-25-2011, 02:45 AM)FireIceTalon Wrote: The people representing and involved in those newspapers or churches can go to the voting booth like the rest of us, same with the corporations and unions. Money shouldn't be free speech in my opinion.
The right to vote and the right to free speech are two separate rights. Having one does not negate the other...
-Jester
But by equating money to free speech, is essentially giving such individuals or parties TWO votes. No democracy there. There are LIMITS on free speech as I said before, and conflating money and politics is one of them because it infringes, even if indirectly, on other groups, or individuals, rights by rendering their vote meaningless. Corruption, especially when hidden or protected behind constitutional rights, undermines democracy.
In an interview in Time magazine that I read tonight, Justice Stevens said (and I am paraphrasing since I do not have the text in front of me) that equating money to free speech, logically extended to the exteme, would justify the Watergate breakin since the burglers were paid from campaign contributions.
Not having a fine legal mind I can see no justification for a connection between money and free speech, and the protection thereof.
It's scary to think that Stevens was a Supreme Court clerk before I was born. (But just by a few months.)
"I may be old, but I'm not dead."