Terrified by SCOTUS

Coming up on this weekend's show:

• A new Cologne
• You say you want a revolution?
• God retires
• Much Much More!

I'm beginning to be frightened by the Supreme Court of The United States. This week while many were on vacation, especially in the broadcast media, they passed some really heavy decisions including two on free speech, an issue near and dear to my heart.

The first ruling was about Campaign Finance Reform. They struck down a portion of McCain Feingold that barred private groups from airing attack ads past a certain point in the campaign.

If you need a little back story on this: Campaign Finance laws are in effect because we don't want candidates to be beholden to particular rich backers. One way around the limits on how much an individual can contribute to a political campaign is through PACs which are private issue oriented groups that can't support a particular candidate but can attack one. So rather than donate to your candidate you simply pay to attack his or her opponent and this circumnavigates the restrictions placed on donations. Many people feel that this sort of thing corrodes the political debate in this country.

However the Supreme Court decided that the Free Speech of the Political Action Committees was more important than the potential harm it would do to society. I might argue that paying for political ads is actually expensive speech and McCain Feingold doesn't stop anyone from expressing their view on the street corner or in a blog or even in an ad on YouTube but when you tell me Free Speech trumps all, I have to back down.

The second Free Speech case was about the Bong Hits 4 Jesus kid. In this case SCOTUS ruled that it isn't impinging the kids free speech for him to be expelled from school even though he wasn't in school when he displayed his banner.

The reasoning on why Bong Hits 4 Jesus doesn't get afforded the same kind of Free Speech protection as... EVERYTHING ELSE is because it's speech that they disagree with. They feel that it advocated marijuana use which is bad and therefore it's not covered under Free Speech. I know, it sounds like I'm making that up but that's really the crux of their argument.

If in both cases they had argued that the public good was harmed by this kind of Free Speech and would be better served by limiting rights, they would've been consistent. If they had argued that in both cases the right to Free Speech trumps all other concerns, they would've been constitutionally correct. Saying Free Speech that helps their cronies is good but Free Speech they dislike doesn't deserve protection is frankly terrifying.

Of course this is the same court that said that whistle blowers in the federal government aren't allowed freedom of speech either.

Another ruling just today was that Price Fixing is now legal again. For many years decades even, it has been the prevailing thought that a free market was more fair than an unfair market. The Supreme Court feels that is limiting the rights of corporations.

The reason all of this scares me is that with all of the recent abuses of Executive Privilege where the presidents and Vice President are refusing to turn over documents about potential crimes and refusing to submit to subpoenas, and Dick Cheney's asserting that he's not in the Executive Branch but the Legislative Branch and therefore isn't subject to the same laws as the Executive; are all things that if pushed will wind up in the Supreme Court. I am shaken to the core of my being as I think about this packed Court okaying blatant constitutional violations, violations that rock the very fabric of this nation, all out of a sense of party loyalty.

This really does keep me up nights.