What's Wrong with Gay Republicans?
Filed By Michael Hamar | January 12, 2012 1:00 PM

I once was a Republican. But the party I belonged to back then was a very different political party from what exists nowadays.

Yes, back then, the Christianists had begun to slowly infiltrate the party, yet they were still viewed as delusional by the majority and moderates held sway and religion had not been fully conflated into the party platform. Back then, facts, figures and rational analysis were actually respected and I was known for always backing up my opinions and positions with hard facts and objective data.

Indeed, I was awarded honors by both the local city committee by even received a plaque from then-Governor Jim Gilmore shortly before I resigned from the GOP. Admittedly, I wasn't out of the closet back in those days, but homophobia had not become one of the most important planks in the party platform either.

That's all changed nowadays and yet some gays - in what I can only view as a form of masochism and internalized self-loathing - continue to cling to saying they are Republicans. To me it's akin to someone of Jewish descent belonging to a neo-Nazi organization. I do not understand the mindset.

A very much on point column in the Huffington Post calls out to gay Republicans and basically asks them WTF is wrong with them. Here are some highlights:

Dear gay Republicans, ...Let's put economic and other issues aside for a moment; we can have a spirited debate about the backward GOP approach to taxes, the environment, and foreign policy another time. I don't understand how you can look beyond the fact that a major portion of your party's fundamental beliefs are that you are not equal.

This isn't a minor issue within your party. The Republican Party platform calls for amending the United States Constitution to discriminate against you. Party officials actually want to use our country's foundational document, which grants and extends rights and freedoms to people, to limit yours. But that's only the tip of the iceberg.

...Your party has thrown you in the deviant pile. Your party has labeled you a sexual predator. Your party is afraid of you and does not incorporate your voice or believe in your dignity.

This fact isn't a small debate within your party. It is not some misguided homophobes who are simply unaware of the LGBT community and all its accomplishments, struggles, and contributions, speaking out of turn and out of step with the platform. This is your party's platform...

...So when you vote for these guys and actively try to put them in power, you are hurting yourself, you are hurting me, you're hurting every loving LGBT family, and, most importantly, you're hurting America.

I'd love to hear how gay Republicans honestly justify supporting a political party that hates them and seeks to keep them less than full citizens.

From The Bilerico Project

While the vast majority of abortions take place in the first trimester that wouldn't be as sensational as pictures of late term abortions which by the way make up .08% of all abortions in the US. At least 36 states make late term abortions illegal and many do not adhere to the Supreme Court's ruling that bans must include exceptions for threats to the woman's life, physical health, and mental health. The war against a woman's right to own her body wages on.


Aborted Fetuses: The Awkward Guest at Your Super Bowl Party

—By Kate Sheppard

Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry has been running graphic ads of aborted fetuses in key primary states, as my colleague Tim Murphy has reported. Now the gruesome ads are coming to the Super Bowl.

Nothing says "pass the dip" like a bloody fetus. Normally, Terry wouldn't be able to get these kinds of ads on television. So he's launching a non-serious campaign for president (running as a Democratic challenger to President Obama) in order to exploit a loophole in Federal Communications Commission rules that requires station to run campaign ads in the weeks ahead of a primary election—no matter how grisly they might be. In the 45 days ahead of a primary and 60 days ahead of a general election, candidates for federal office can run whatever they want on local stations, as long as they pay for the airtime.

Yes, the FCC can try to fine you a half-million dollars for a "wardrobe malfunction," but bundles of bloody body parts is A-okay.

Terry can't, however, force the networks to run his ads nationally, as Jezebel points out. So if you live in a state that doesn't have a primary within 45 days of the Superbowl, you can enjoy your nachos without looking at fetal body parts. (Which, it's probably worth pointing out, are from late-term abortions; the vast majority of abortions take place in the first trimester.) But if you live in a Super Tuesday state or any of the others voting in February or early March, be prepared. The Greeley Gazette writes that Terry and his group have ads "ready to go" in 40 markets.

At least this means Miller's "Man Up" ads won't be the most offensive thing on your TV this Super Bowl.
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/...per-bowl-party

When will it stop?

*posting for Arwen*

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/comme...serves-justice

Robert Champion deserves justice

Each year, the country takes time to reflect upon the life and work of one of my heroes, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and in that reflection it is common place to ask: How close are we to achieving the dream?

In the world of sports, the black community likes to take inventory of things such as opportunities for blacks to be head coaches, the image of the black athlete and team ownership. These are valid achievements to measure, but I find that accounting somewhat limited in scope and lacking in introspection.

After all, King's own words suggest the world he dreamed of was not just about blacks and whites.
[+] EnlargeRobert Champion
AP Photo/The Tampa Tribune, Joseph Brown IIIRobert Champion was a drum major at Florida A&M.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Race was the backdrop -- not the sole impetus -- behind King's dream that one day everyone will be judged solely by the "content of their character."

Obviously we're not there yet.

Just this week, a Cincinnati landlord lost her appeal of a ruling that hanging a "Public Swimming Pool, White Only" sign at her duplex was racist and against the law. But no matter how often we read such headlines, or athletes or their agents try to compare contract negotiations to slavery, it's safe to say we are getting closer.

At least in terms of blacks and whites living together as brothers and sisters.

As for the deeper meaning behind his dream … well, that's another matter.

Take, for example, the Robert Champion murder at Florida A&M, the country's oldest historically black college.

To refresh your memory, Champion was the young man who died of internal bleeding in November after allegedly being hazed by his bandmates. Champion was a drum major for FAMU's highly regarded marching band and reportedly opposed hazing. The attack happened in a hotel parking lot, on a chartered bus, after one of the biggest games of the year. Champion is said to have dropped the baton, and band members were upset. There were 30 students on the bus at the time of Champion's death.

I repeat: 30 witnesses on a bus.

But, so far, no one has been fired. No one is in jail. Only band director Julian White was been put on administrative leave with pay.

Why?

[+] EnlargeFAMU Band
AP Photo/Rob CarrOther members of the band were present when Robert Champion died, but to this point no one has been charged.

This week, Champion's parents held a news conference announcing that they are suing the charter bus company and revealing that their son was gay. Although they said they didn't think this was a hate crime, their lawyer, Chris Chestnut, said Champion's sexual orientation could have played a role in the vicious beating. Chestnut said he interviewed several students who said that they were also hazed that night but that Champion's treatment was far worse. They told Chestnut they believed Champion was targeted in large part because he was gay. Meanwhile, Chuck Hobbs, the attorney for White, said his client believes the incident was a hate crime.

Again, nearly two months have gone by. The autopsy concluded that his death was a homicide, but no one is in jail.

No one has been fired. Four students who were initially suspended from FAMU have been reinstated. How is this even possible with so many witnesses? How can school officials and parents have peace knowing there might be killers roaming free on the FAMU campus? Is it OK because it was hazing? Is it OK because the victim was gay? Or is it OK because hypocrisy says it's OK?

I don't think I need to tell you what Tallahassee, Fla., would look like right now if Champion had been beaten to death on a bus full of white students at a predominantly white university. And yet the rallying cry for justice from some of the nation's most prominent black leaders such as Jesse Jackson, politicians such as U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., and organizations such as the NAACP has been pretty much mute since Champion's sexual orientation became part of the story.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., spoke at the school Friday in honor of King's birthday. Waters' office said the congresswoman, who signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act, was to talk about the murder but didn't provide further details. As far as I can tell, only the National Black Justice Coalition, a Washington, D.C., based nonprofit serving the black LGBT community, has been a consistent national voice since the hate crime element was introduced.

"I wonder what would Dr. King be thinking about right now in light of the purgatory we find FAMU to be in," said Sharon Lettman-Hicks, the executive director of the NBJC, in a phone interview. "There is such a thing as right from wrong, and the injustice done to Robert Champion must be made right.

"I think right now everyone is in the state of how do we avoid the maximum liability, just like what we saw at Penn State. I think it's an attempt to protect everyone who is alive with a complete disregard for the lost life. We are watching survival of the fittest play out, and it's pretty barbaric. I want humanity to prevail."

CLICK LINK FOR FULL ARTICLE!!!

Excellent
 

"Work it" canceled.

--------------


After only two episodes, ABC has pulled the plug on its controversial new comedy, "Work It," reports Zap2it.

Tuesday night's episode drew only 4.9 million viewers, and a dismal 1.5 rating in the coveted 18-49 demo. "Work It" was consistently panned by critics, including HuffPost TV's resident critic Maureen Ryan, who called the cross-dressing comedy, "One of the worst sitcoms of all time."

"Work It" has been widely criticized for its gender politics, but that's not all. In its pilot episode, Amaury Nolasco's character uttered the cringe-worthy line, "I'm Puerto Rican... I'd be great at selling drugs."

Not surprisingly, the joke backfired, setting off a firestorm of criticism on Facebook and Twitter, and even a primetime demonstration by about two-dozen people on Wed., Jan. 11 outside ABC studios in New York.

It looks like even the sitcom's provocative artwork and timely references couldn't save this sinking ship.



Rest of the story:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1206016.html

And we lose another beautiful spirit...
 

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/X8n...0113_wmain.jpg

Gay Teen Filmmaker Eric James Borges Commits Suicide
By CHRISTINA NG | Good Morning America – Fri, Jan 13, 2012

A gay California teenager who made an anti-suicide video last month urging other gay kids to "never give up" has killed himself. The death on Wednesday of young filmmaker EricJames Borges, 19, has shocked his friends. "He advocated pro-life for gays. He wouldn't want anyone to [commit suicide]," said close friend James Criss. "It's so shocking to see that he did it himself." Borges made a video just last month for the "It Gets Better" project, a campaign that features personal hope-filled videos to LGBT teens to get them through difficult times.

"I know it is hard and I know what it feels like to be rejected and abused for your biological sexual orientation," Borges said in the video. Borges talks about being bullied from kindergarten through high school. "I was physically, mentally, emotionally and verbally assaulted on a day-to-day basis for my perceived sexual orientation," Borges said. "I was stalked, spit on, ostracized and physically assaulted." In high school, he said he reached his breaking point when he said he was assaulted in a full classroom with a teacher present. He dropped out, graduated through independent studies and went to college.

He also described a traumatic coming out experience in an "extremist Christian household." His parents did not accept his sexuality and he said he was kicked out of his home around the end of September. "My mother knew I was gay and performed an exorcism on me in an attempt to cure me," Borges said. "My anxiety, depression, self-loathing and suicidal thoughts spiked. I had nowhere safe to go, either at home or school." Criss, 19, said that Borges struggled for a few weeks as he bounced around the homes of different friends, but was eventually happy and settled with a new roommate. Borges said in the video that he came out in an attempt to educate others about the consequences of homophobia.

"I'm giving you this condensed history of my background to tell you this: it gets better," Borges said. "Now, I am a supplemental instructor of sexuality, a freelance guest speaker, a published writer and I work for the Trevor Project, the world's largest organization focused on suicide and crisis prevention among LGBTQ youth. I have met and befriended the most incredible and authentic people since I've come out." A confident Borges reassured viewers that once they got through the difficult time, they would find love and happiness. "You will love and be loved and I love you. You have an entire life, fit to burst with opportunities ahead of you. Don't ever give up and don't ever for one second think that you're not a valuable and beautiful contribution to this world. It gets better."

In the days before his suicide, Criss saw nothing to warn of the coming suicide. "He seemed like the normal old Eric the last time I saw him. He was fine. I couldn't tell anything was wrong with him," Criss said. In November, the young filmmaker made a video titled, "Invisible Creatures: A Short Film by EricJames Borges." The video features couples of different ages, some heterosexual and some homosexual, lovingly hugging, kissing, walking and talking in a field.

Anti-Suicide Activist Kills Himself

"Eric was a very driven and passionate individual," Criss said. "As long as I've known him, he was always seeking to do good for others. He wanted to make the world a better place, especially for the gay community." Criss said Borges had intended to use the video for applications to film school, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. "He had so much talent in him," Criss said. "He was a visionary."

Criss said Borges was a big fan of Lady Gaga and that his favorite song off of her new album was the inspiring "Edge of Glory."

"He loved her so much. That was probably his role model," Criss said. "He often quoted her. He was very passionate about her."

Dang that is good. Thank you Anya for posting this

48% of the World's 1% Are Americans
 

Americans Occupiers in Zuccotti Park made famous phrases like "the 1 percent" to protest wealth disparity within the U.S. -- but the rest of the world can throw that term right back at us. As CNN points out today, World Bank economist Branko Milanovic writes in his book The Haves and the Have-Nots that 29 million of the 60 million people who constitute the top 1 percent of income earners globally (or 48 percent of them) are American, based on 2005 data. It's a finding that grabbed our attention, since Occupy Wall Street has tried to make "the 1 percent" Enemy No. 1 in the U.S. Here's how he rounds out the rest of the top percentile in his book:

Next follow about 4 million Germans; about 3 million French, Italians, and Britons each; 2 million Canadians, Koreans, Japanese, and Brazilians each; around 1 million of Swiss, Spaniards, Australians, Dutch, Taiwanese, Chileans, and Singaporeans. There is nobody from Africa, China, India, or from East Europe or Russia (in statistically significant numbers, of course).

That's more or less the rest of the developed world. The sad truth of how destitute billions of people are is reflected in the fact that an individual only needs to earn $34,000 annually to make it in that top percentile. For comparison, the 1 percenters within the U.S. population make $506,000 or more every year, as The Wall Street Journal reported in October. Though the Occupiers certainly care about poverty across the world, statistics like this don't do a whole lot to deflate that whole "they're just dumb kids with MacBooks" argument against them.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/busin...ericans/46978/

While I agree (the facts say that I must) that we (as a nation) have a higher percentage of those in the 1%, I also have to applaud the efforts of the occupiers. I think it is important, before making them appear to be a bunch of whiners when the rest of the world isn't where our country is financially (nor have they ever been), the occupiers are operating on a national level, not global. Their focus is, and has been, strictly on the U.S. and I don't really think it is fair to compare what was set up, and continues as a movement within the U.S. borders, dealing with a U.S. problem, to a larger global scale of wealth and income; to me, that is comparing an apple and an orange when the original issue focused solely on the apple and was designed as such.

The shape of our economy in the U.S. has been pretty ugly to a lot of folks, including many who never saw the collapse of all they had worked for coming. Also true, some folks made some pretty bad decisions within the housing market; it isn't reasonable to assume that if I'm making 50 or 60 grand a year that I can afford to buy a house that costs a million dollars. I'm not saying people weren't duped, but this is some pretty basic math, so some of the problem was due directly to some of our own personal decisions; just one brick in the pile of many that got us where we are today.

The gap between the haves and have nots in this country has been growing by leaps and bounds; the middle class, which is the backbone of this country, is being squeezed to death. I'm not proposing a Robin Hood mentality, but the survival of the middle class is a significant piece of the puzzle in our economy and something has to be done to breathe life back into that segment. This is my opinion. I say kudos to the occupiers.

Glynn

Carbon dioxide in oceans gives fish a deathwish
Posted on January 16, 2012 - 06:00 by Kate Taylor

http://img.tgdaily.com/sites/default.../clownfish.jpg

The increasing amount of dissolved carbon dioxide oceans is driving fish crazy, Australian researchers say.

At the levels predicted for the oceans by the end of this centory, it will interfere with their ability to hear, smell, turn and evade predators, says Professor Phillip Munday of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.

"For several years our team have been testing the performance of baby coral fishes in sea water containing higher levels of dissolved CO2 – and it is now pretty clear that they sustain significant disruption to their central nervous system, which is likely to impair their chances of survival," he says. Munday's team says that high CO2 levels in sea water disrupt a key brain receptor in fish, causing marked changes in their behaviour and sensory ability.

"We’ve found that elevated CO2 in the oceans can directly interfere with fish neurotransmitter functions, which poses a direct and previously unknown threat to sea life," he says. After studying how baby clown and damsel fishes performed alongside their predators in CO2-enriched water, the team found that, while the predators were somewhat affected, the baby fish suffered much higher rates of attrition.

"Our early work showed that the sense of smell of baby fish was harmed by higher CO2 in the water – meaning they found it harder to locate a reef to settle on or detect the warning smell of a predator fish. But we suspected there was much more to it than the loss of ability to smell," says Munday.

The fishes' sense of hearing was also impaired, meaning that they no longer avoided reef sounds during the day - making them much more vulnerable to predators. The fish also tended to lose their natural instinct to turn left or right – an important factor in schooling behaviour which also makes them more vulnerable, as lone fish are easily eaten by predators.

"All this led us to suspect it wasn’t simply damage to their individual enses that was going on – but rather, that higher levels of carbon dioxide were affecting their whole central nervous system," says Munday. The reason appears to be that high CO2 directly stimulates a receptor in the fish brain called GABA-A, leading to a reversal in its normal function and over-excitement of certain nerve signals.

While most animals with brains have GABA-A receptors, the team considers the effects of elevated CO2 are likely to be most felt by those living in water, as they have lower blood CO2 levels normally. The main impact is likely to be felt by some crustaceans and by fishes, especially those which use a lot of oxygen. Prof. Munday said that around 2.3 billion tonnes of human CO2 emissions dissolve into the world’s oceans every year, causing changes in the chemical environment of the water in which fish and other species live.

"We’ve now established it isn’t simply the acidification of the oceans that is causing disruption – as is the case with shellfish and plankton with chalky skeletons – but the actual dissolved CO2 itself is damaging the fishes’ nervous systems."

Wikipedia to Go Dark on Wednesday
 

It's been speculated, and now it's confirmed: Wikipedia plans to give its users a (severe) taste of the Internet under SOPA by going offline in protest of the bill on Wednesday. Last week Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wiles wondered aloud in a statement if the site should coordinate a shutdown with Reddit planned for this Wednesday, January 18, to register its disgust with the much-maligned Internet censorship bill. And today we see Wales tweeting sly confirmation the massive online encyclopedia will indeed go dark.

We're glad to see a hat tip to Wikipedia's most loyal users! That suggests something else too: unlike Reddit users, who you'd expect to be anti-SOPA partisans anyways, a Wikipedia blackout will make site's more passive users very aware of the bill's existence when they lose access to that repertoire of knowledge that is Wikipedia. Wales writes that Wikipedian consensus is currently for a 24-hour shutdown of the site's English-language versions globally. So beside our inner Internet deviant enjoying seeing Wikipedia officially go anti-SOPA, we appreciate the decidedly Wikipedian way the site made the decision to go dark: with a "Wikipedia talk" forum you can read for yourself here. As Wales writes, it was a community decision.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/techn...dnesday/47467/

Zappos Says Hackers Accessed 24 Million Customers' Account Details
 

Twenty-four million Zappos customers are getting an unpleasant Sunday-evening surprise.

The Amazon-owned e-commerce firm has revealed that it was the target of a cyber attack that gained access to its internal network, including the accounts of 24 million of its users. Though the company says that no complete credit card numbers were revealed in the breach, the intruders may have accessed customers’ names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, addresses, the last four digits of their credit card numbers, and encrypted passwords. Zappos says it’s taken the precaution of resetting the passwords of all its customers and directing them to set a new password upon visiting the site.

“We were recently the victim of a cyber attack by a criminal who gained access to parts of our internal network and systems through one of our servers in Kentucky,” chief executive Tony Hsieh wrote to Zappos employees in an email posted to the site, declining to offer more information about the breach. ”We are cooperating with law enforcement to undergo an exhaustive investigation.”

Even after choosing a new Zappos password, users should be careful to also change their passwords on any site where they’ve used a similar or identical password, in case Zappos’ intruders are able to decrypt the scrambled passwords they’ve stolen. Zappos is also warning affected customers to watch out for phishing emails that will use their stolen email addresses to spoof official Zappos emails and ask for account credentials or financial details.
Hsieh wrote in his all-hands email that every employee at Zappos’ Henderson, Nevada headquarters will be assisting in the customer response to the breach, and that the company will only be responding to emails rather than phone calls in its effort to answer the massive number of queries that it expects to receive. ”We’ve spent over 12 years building our reputation, brand, and trust with our customers. It’s painful to see us take so many steps back due to a single incident,” he wrote in the email. “I suppose the one saving grace is that the database that stores our customers’ critical credit card and other payment data was not affected or accessed.”


http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygree...rtner=yahootix

A step in the right direction.
 

http://www.thespec.com/news/world/ar...lear-scientist

Iran says CIA behind assassination of nuclear scientist

I have no idea if this is true. I do, however, think we are on the doorstep of another war in this region. I am sickened by this possibility. We are certainly involved in assinations.

I want all nations worldwide to dismantle and stop producing nuclear weapons- including the United States. Pipe dream, I know.

Well I will say this about that, since 2010 this makes 4 nuclear scientists killed in similar circumstances in Iran. Either Iranian nuclear scientists are the kind of people who make a lot of very nasty enemies in their personal lives or it's political assassination. Either way, I imagine nuclear science as a career path has taken a major hit in Iran.

Article in the Guardian:
Iran's nuclear scientists are not being assassinated. They are being murdered

Killing our enemies abroad is just state-sponsored terror – whatever euphemism western leaders like to use


http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...an-Ira-007.jpg
Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the Iranian nuclear scientist killed in Tehran on January 11, with his son, Alireza. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images

On the morning of 11 January Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy head of Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, was in his car on his way to work when he was blown up by a magnetic bomb attached to his car door. He was 32 and married with a young son. He wasn't armed, or anywhere near a battlefield.

Since 2010, three other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in similar circumstances, including Darioush Rezaeinejad, a 35-year-old electronics expert shot dead outside his daughter's nursery in Tehran last July. But instead of outrage or condemnation, we have been treated to expressions of undisguised glee.

"On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear programme in Iran turn up dead," bragged the Republican nomination candidate Rick Santorum in October. "I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly." On the day of Roshan's death, Israel's military spokesman, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, announced on Facebook: "I don't know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but I certainly am not shedding a tear" – a sentiment echoed by the historian Michael Burleigh in the Daily Telegraph: "I shall not shed any tears whenever one of these scientists encounters the unforgiving men on motorbikes."
Complete Article:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...onsored-murder

Check-Ups Urged for Mexicans with Flawed Implants

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) Jan 12, 2012 - Mexican women with breast implants made by a French company behind a global health scare should be examined by a doctor, Mexico's plastic surgeons said on Wednesday.

About 4,500 Mexican women received implants made by the now-defunct company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), according to a survey of the 1,200 members of the Mexican Plastic, Aesthetic and Reconstructive Surgery Association.

Mexican health officials have received no reports of serious problems with the suspect implants but it would be prudent for women who have the implants to get them checked for faults, said association president Alejandro Duarte.

"This is not cause for panic," he told reporters at a news conference.

PIP, once the third-largest maker of breast implants in the world, is accused of using industrial-grade instead of medical-grade silicone in some of its implants. They were sold in a number of European and Latin America countries.


The French government in December advised 30,000 women who had PIP implants to have them removed following the death from cancer in 2010 of a French woman who had the implants.

PIP products were sold in Mexico by two distributors from 1994 to 2010, when Mexican regulators suspended their sale.

"These people had no scruples and sold two-for-one," said association treasurer Alfonso Vallarta, who heads a campaign for safe plastic surgery, adding that the wholesale price of PIP implants at $450 a pair was about half that of rival products.

Most of the reported PIP implant surgeries took place in central Mexico, including the states of Guanajuato and Queretaro.

Health authorities have said there is no evidence of an increased cancer risk due to the PIP implants, but that they have higher rates of rupture that could cause inflammation and irritation.

God I hope the CIA is not murdering people still.

Please?

It isn't the 14th amendment that is the problem. It is the bizarre interpretation of the 1st amendment by the Supreme Court.

Complete article:http://www.truth-out.org/problem-cit...ood/1326497162

"The incorrect - but widely held - reading of Citizens United is that the corruption of elections arose fundamentally because the Supreme Court adopted a legal doctrine of corporate "personhood" which endowed corporations with First Amendment free speech rights, which, combined with the notion that spending money to promote a candidate is a form of speech, gives corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of their money in elections. This incorrect reading of Citizens United is compounded by the further error that a constitutional amendment is necessary and sufficient to remove those corporate constitutional rights and to remove corporate money from elections, or could prevent the pro-corporate majority on the Supreme Court from making further decisions corrupting elections.

Fortunately, the inordinate influence of private money in elections can be fixed, and the fix is far easier to accomplish - and more certain of success if accomplished - than any kind of constitutional amendment, as described in "Constitutional Amendment Not Needed: Congress Already Has a Remedy."

The Supreme Court did not base its pro-corporate First Amendment decisions on supposed "constitutional rights" of corporations. Instead, it applied novel interpretations of the First Amendment that were independent of the identity of the speaker to open the floodgates of corporate money in elections, thereby turning elections into the high-return investment vehicles they are today.

The novel interpretations of the First Amendment were initiated in two Supreme Court cases decided decades before Citizens United. In its 1976 Buckley v Valeo decision, the Supreme Court equated spending money in politics with First Amendment protected speech and overturned federal limits on expenditures in elections as violating the First Amendment.

Thus, in Citizens United, the Supreme Court continued to articulate a theory of speech that underlies all the court's decisions allowing money into politics. What was novel in Citizens United was not anything remotely related to corporate personhood, but the court's expansion of the theory it provided in Bellotti from referendum questions to electioneering for candidates. In both cases, the court defined freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment from the perspective of the listener, rather than of the speaker. The court held that the listener had the right to listen to all sources, whether the sources be corporations, partnerships, other business entities, individuals, associations or nonprofits. The court relied on the phrasing of the First Amendment to rule that Congress could not abridge "freedom of speech" in the abstract, irrespective of the source of the speech or the rights - or absence of rights - of the speaker.

The court could not have made any clearer that the right it defined has nothing to do with the "personhood" of the speaker, the source of the money for the speech or the rights of the source of the money.

Many may be surprised to learn that no federal campaign finance law has ever been struck down by the Supreme Court on grounds of "corporate personhood" or any kind of corporate rights. The court has consistently hinged its decisions on the First Amendment rights of the listener to hear all sources of the free and open debate and of society to enjoy an abstract "freedom of speech" disconnected from the identity of the speaker.

Citizens United was not the only case in which the Roberts 5 placed their pro-1-percent thumbs on this scale of justice. Of the four other decisions since 2006 in which the Roberts 5 extended the role of private interest money in politics, three had nothing to do with corporations. While the fourth did as much as Citizens United to open wide the gates to corporate money, like Citizens United, it did so without resorting to corporate personhood or corporate "rights." Those four cases seem to have been largely ignored by those inflating the importance of "corporate personhood" as the key problem. Together these cases show that corporate personhood actually has nothing to do with the key problem of money in politics.

The relatively ignored 2011 Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett decision, which overturned an Arizona public campaign funding law adopted by referendum, is probably more important than Citizens United. This is because it struck down a way of using public funding to effectively compete with private interest money in elections. The Roberts 5 thus showed they would brook no workarounds of their decisions that have the effect of mandating corrupt elections.

Abolishing corporate constitutional rights or the legal concept of "corporate personhood," as it applies to elections, would have no effect on the court's analysis in Citizens United or any of these other four cases, because none of its decisions mentioned, relied upon or in any way depended on that concept or any rights of corporations. The same is true of all the court's decisions dating back to the 1976 origin of the "money is speech" doctrine. The decision in Citizens United struck down a 1907 federal law which prohibited corporate-sponsored political messages. That law had been adopted after two presidential elections in which massive, corporate-funded electioneering determined the outcomes led to popular outrage against corporate contributions and forced Congressional action.

No breathing human person with standing in the Citizens United case actually asserted the "right" to have his or her TV programming interrupted to hear a corporate-sponsored political message. This "right" of real living persons to hear corporate electioneering was created by the Roberts Court for an imaginary voter. The court allowed the not-for-profit corporate party in the case to rely on court-imagined rights of real, living human beings who were not parties to the case. So, the court in effect struck down laws embodying the long-standing will of the people without any plaintiff in court asserting an individual right violated by that law. Further, as Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor asserted in their dissent, the court used the case to "rewrite the law relating to campaign expenditures by for-profit corporations and unions" which also were not parties to the case. In all these ways, the court decision thus violated the Constitution's "case and controversy" requirement. The decision was actually no more than an "advisory opinion," a type of decision the US Supreme Court has no constitutional authority to make. The Roberts 5 thus played fast and loose with constitutional limitations on its powers.

Where the Roberts 5 did "shockingly" break new ground in Citizens United and did reverse clear precedent was in its failure to strike a rational and principled balance between the negligible speech value of private money in elections and the harm such private money causes to the democratic form of government. As stated by Justice James C. Nelson, dissenting from what he considered a futile effort by the Montana Supreme Court to insulate Montana from the pernicious and unconstitutional effects of the Citizens United decree:

Citizens United distorts the right to speech beyond recognition. Indeed, I am shocked that the Supreme Court did not balance the right to speech with the government's compelling interest in preserving the fundamental right to vote in elections. Western Tradition Partnership v. Attorney General Bullock (Montana, December 30, 2011)

The sterile, highly technical issue of corporate personhood is an antiquated doctrine that played no role in Citizens United or any of the other election cases. From a practical point of view, as the Supreme Court itself pointed out, whether corporations should have First Amendment rights is the wrong question to ask, and, also, the wrong argument to wage. Limiting the scope of who can enjoy speech rights alienates such potential allies as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and diverts energy away from the actual constitutional problems.

A public aroused by and sympathetic to Occupy Wall Street may pressure Congress for an immediately available solution already provided in the Constitution and based on ordinary majority votes, as described in the "Constitutional Amendment Not Needed: Congress Already Has a Remedy" article. Diverting this public into seeking an unnecessary constitutional amendment on an irrelevant issue allows the serious threat to democracy created by the present Supreme Court majority to continue for the 2012 election, and on into the indefinite future.

Consider, also, that attacking the actual First Amendment grounds used by the court demonstrates the gross unfairness of the court's decision. To see this, let's compare a recent, genuine First Amendment issue involving Occupy Wall Street protesters. In addition to their general assemblies, working groups, marches and demonstrations, in which they exercised their pure First Amendment rights of "freedom of speech" and "right of the people peaceably to assemble" the protesters used the extremely effective symbolic communication activity of encampments for discussion and learning by the dispossessed and the committed. The police violently attacked and destroyed encampments and arrested or assaulted many protesters who were clearly exercising rights embodied in the First Amendment.

While this pure political speech and assembly on behalf of the 99 percent has been violently suppressed, the use of money by the 1 percent to influence elections, politicians, policies and contracts for private gain continues under the protection of the Roberts 5. This amounts to one rule for the 1 percent and an entirely different rule for the protesters representing the 99 percent.

The comparison of the treatment of private money in elections with the treatment of Occupy encampments is instructive on both sides of the First Amendment scales. A fair balancing of the respective weights strongly favors protecting the Occupy protesters' First Amendment right to peaceably assemble in their highly communicative encampments that do no harm, while denying the 1 percent a right to corrupt politics with their high-return-on-investment transactional spending on behalf of candidates that are highly destructive to the democratic form of government. Unfortunately, so far, neither municipal authorities nor the Supreme Court has done that fair balancing.

The contrast in application of the rule of law is at the very heart of what Occupy Wall Street is protesting - one law for those in the 1 percent who paid for advertising to have representatives elected into government, and another law for the majority of the governed.

While corporate advertising often works to elect candidates favorable to the corporations, it does not appear to satisfy the democratic aspirations of the public: "the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 20 percent of likely US voters say the federal government has the consent of the governed."

The urgency of removing private money from elections demands first properly understanding the basis for the court's decisions. It also requires determination not to be diverted by politicians, fundraising public interest organizations or professional activists from using that understanding to create an effective strategy.

Fortunately, an effective strategy does not require a constitutional amendment, whether for the irrelevant task of repealing corporate personhood or for the imperative task of excluding private money - not just for-profit corporate money - from elections.

Without the corporate personhood and constitutional amendment diversions, Sen. Sanders, Rep. Deutch and an aroused public can demand that Congress use its existing constitutional powers under Article III, Section 2 to restore the traditional limits on court jurisdiction over the political question of private money in elections. Then Congress will be free to pass legislation abolishing corrupting private finance of elections. While substantial public pressure is still needed for Congress to pass this legislation with ordinary majority votes, the barrier to success is far lower than the third-thirds vote in each house and ratification by three-fourths of the states required for a constitutional amendment. This direct route to restoring government of, by and for the people addresses the actual constitutional problems raised by the court, removes court power to find other creative vehicles to corrupt election and is available now without a constitutional amendment."

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