The splendid Justice Samuel Alito reacts to President Obama's mischaracterization, in his State of the Union address, of last week's affirmation of free speech by the Supreme Court.
The Left can't be seen to be attacking free speech directly, so the prevailing mantra seems to be that last week's Citizens United decision would let foreign corporations contribute to U.S election campaigns. In reality, the Supreme Court, in its Citizens United decision, specifically declined to extend the ruling to foreign corporations.
2 comments:
I think Alito was out of line, that the President (of either party) has the right to criticize Supreme Court decisions, and that the Supremes' role at a SOTU address is to sit quietly and listen. They are there to represent the Judicial Branch. To borrow Roberts' formulation, umpires do not cheer.
There's nothing wrong with the President advocating legislation to overturns Supreme Court decisions, not all of which are based solely on interpretation of the Constitution. Whether the Citizens' United decision is solely based on the First Amendment is debatable, and there may be legislation that works around the Supreme Court's objections. It's fine for Obama to advocate new legislation in this matter.
Finally, it's easy to envision a US corporation with a majority (or large minority block) of foreign shareholders, and clearly that's an issue that needs to be addressed. The issue isn't where the corporation is incorporated, it's who controls the corporation.
So it's ok for Obama to chastise the Suprememe Court in his State of the Union (instead of a more appropriate setting) and they're supposed to just sit there and take it? Even if they feel or know it to be bull? One could say it was the president who acted out of line. Oh, but I know the people are not allowed to question Obama.
The President needs to stop blaming eveyone else for his and his party's failures and start leading. The Democrats control the entire country and they're still playing the finger pointing game.
It's getting old, fast.
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