A little more on Citizens United

My esteemed coblogger Mr. Adesnik takes issue with my description of opposition to the ruling as “unfathomable.” I have to say, the quotes he pulls from Kevin Drum, along with his own thoughts, do little to make the complaints any more fathomable:

Kevin doesn’t raise the issue of labor unions, but I think it’s important, because the example of unions reminds us that the question here isn’t whether profit-seeking organizations deserve unrestricted rights to political speech. The question is whether any powerful collective body should have those rights.

I don’t have any answers to the questions I’ve raised. But that’s my point. I don’t think it’s entirely obvious that the court should’ve struck down the precedents its did.

Again, I’m not sure I comprehend the argument here. David’s right, the compelling question has little to do with corporations and everything to do with whether collections of people — the NRA, say, or the AFL-CIO — should have the right to make political speech or not. It’s a question of whether or not the government has the right to outlaw political speech when said political speech comes from a collection of people instead of one person (or, say, a collection of people who are deemed to be “the press”).

I stand by my previous post: The idea that the federal government can say “Yeah, sure, you can engage in all the political speech you want until 30/60 days before an election. And after that’s a criminal offense” is just mindboggling. As Glenn Greenwald — certainly no friend of corporations — points out, the secondary issues (like those surrounding the granting of corporations personhood) are largely red herrings.