3. U.S. courts that further
the legal fiction that corporations and other "entities" are people with rights. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the attempt by Congress to eliminate corporate and union-funded "issue ads" was unconstitutional.
The chief justice said these ads involve "core political speech", which is protected by the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.
"We give the benefit of the doubt to speech, not censorship," Roberts said. He was joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Anthony M. Kennedy. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas agreed, although they would have gone further and struck down entirely the broadcast ban set in the McCain-Feingold Act.
Some justices disagreed:
Reading the dissent in open court, Justice David H. Souter...noted that 100 years ago, Congress prohibited corporations from funding candidates and that the broadcast ban was a means of preventing corporate money from influencing elections.
Do you have enough money to outspend Exxon Mobil in 2008?
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