Back in 1963, one Ernesto Arturo Miranda was arrested for robbery in Arizona. While in custody he confessed to raping an 18-year-old woman two days before his arrest. He was convicted on the more serious charge. <\/p>\n
But in 1966 the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, threw out the confession — and with it the conviction — holding that Miranda\u2019s questioning had been coercive, and that he had not been specifically advised that he had a right to remain silent until he had talked to a lawyer. <\/p>\n
Miranda was later convicted in a new trial, anyway. But police all across America were left puzzled and amazed by a newly discovered \u201cright\u201d that no one had known about for the first 177 years of the republic\u2019s history — the right of newly arrested suspects to have their confessions thrown out unless they had been \u201cread their Miranda rights\u201d before being asked \u201cDid you do it?\u201d <\/p>\n
Did the cops noisily demand new legislation, \u201cnarrowing\u201d and seeking to do end-runs around the high court\u2019s ruling? <\/p>\n
Not so much. Scratching their heads, America\u2019s police chiefs printed up little \u201cMiranda rights\u201d warning cards, handed them out to their officers, and everybody got back to work, whether they thought it was dumb or not. <\/p>\n
Fast forward 44 years. In a 5-to-4 decision — after hearing government attorneys agree that the McCain-Feingold federal campaign finance law meant even political books could be banned from publication during the 90 days before an election — the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 21 ruled the words \u201cCongress shall make no law\u201d mean what they say, holding in the \u201cCitizens United\u201d case that corporations have a right to political speech, that they can spend money supporting or opposing individual candidates. <\/p>\n
Domestic corporations remain barred from using corporate treasuries to make direct donations to candidates — they have to contribute to \u201cPACs.\u201d Foreign corporations remain barred from contributing to American campaigns, at all. <\/p>\n
So the majority Democrats in Congress scratched their heads in puzzlement, but agreed \u201cOh well, the law\u2019s the law; there\u2019s nothing we can do.\u201d Right? <\/p>\n
Um … no. <\/p>\n
Democrats have been braying like wounded hounds, actually. During his State of the Union address, President Obama said the ruling would \u201copen the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.\u201d Even though that\u2019s not true. <\/p>\n
Now, Democratic congressional leaders have unveiled proposals intended to \u201climit the impact of a Supreme Court decision allowing unfettered corporate spending on political campaigns,\u201d The Washington Post reports. <\/p>\n
And shockingly, these measures seem to be wining support from major American (left-wing, if that\u2019s not redundant) newspapers — even though the exemption which allows newspaper corporations to violate McCain-Feingold by endorsing candidates in the 90 days before an election could be swept aside by the Congress in an hour by a simple majority vote. <\/p>\n
Sen. Charles Schumer of New York and Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland called Thursday for a ban on participation in U.S. elections by companies with more than 20 percent foreign ownership, government contractors and bank bailout recipients. <\/p>\n
Which means they\u2019d be barred from \u201cuttering a word during election campaigns,\u201d apparently. <\/p>\n
(They didn\u2019t include every company that deducts business lunches on their taxes, though they\u2019ll think of it eventually. And why 20 percent? Why not 2 percent?) <\/p>\n
The Democratic scofflaws also want to require companies to inform shareholders about political spending, and to mandate that corporate chief executives must appear in any political advertising funded by their companies. <\/p>\n
No word yet on whether the CEOs would be required to wear clown shoes, funny noses, and red fright wigs. <\/p>\n
Democratic lawmakers said Thursday they\u2019re still considering whether to demand specific shareholder approval for each campaign spending allocation. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf we don\u2019t act quickly, the court\u2019s ruling will have an immediate and disastrous impact on the 2010 elections,\u201d said Sen. Schumer, explaining why he has no intention of simply advising people to respect the First Amendment and its right to free speech, in compliance with the high court\u2019s ruling. <\/p>\n
Now, maybe a single vote of the U.S. Supreme Court shouldn\u2019t be the final word on what\u2019s constitutional. Alternatives can always be discussed. But imagine, for a moment, the Democratic response should a Republican majority ever declare they were planning to enact laws to \u201climit the impact\u201d of the Miranda ruling, the Roe v. Wade abortion decision, or any number of other court edicts whose results are held in reverence by liberal Democrats … whether or not they could ever have won majority popular support. <\/p>\n
If the CEO can be arbitrarily ordered to appear in every corporate ad, for example, why couldn\u2019t anti-abortion activists \u201cfine-tune\u201d Roe v. Wade by declaring any woman is free to seek an abortion — but that her life-size photo must appear that week in her local newspaper, labeled \u201cinfamous slut\u201d … at her own expense? <\/p>\n
That would surely fit Bill Clinton\u2019s prescription, leaving abortions \u201csafe and legal\u201d while making them considerably more \u201crare\u201d … wouldn\u2019t it? How could Democrats object? <\/p>\n
Because when it says \u201cCongress shall make no law,\u201d or \u201cThe right of the people … shall not be infringed,\u201d it really means \u201cCongress may impose any and all the \u2018reasonable restrictions\u2019 it sees fit to discourage this behavior\u201d … right? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back in 1963, one Ernesto Arturo Miranda was arrested for robbery in Arizona. While in custody he confessed to raping an 18-year-old woman two days before his arrest. He was convicted on the more serious charge. But in 1966 the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, threw out the confession — and with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-speech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-7a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":445,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}