Fuck its silent in here.......

[CubFaninHydePark]

Clarence Thomas with this concurring opinion on yesterday's campaign finance ruling:

"The success of such intimidation tactics has apparently spawned a cottage industry that uses forcibly disclosed donor information to pre-empt citizens' exercise of their First Amendment rights. I cannot endorse a view of the First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging in core political speech, the 'primary object of First Amendment protection'."

So, he's worried that public disclosure of who gave money to candidates for public office will be subject to retribution for their donations.

That would mean that Thomas thinks that there is a constitutional right to privacy.

Fucking liberal.

I have a personal issue about visiting the "Dead Pool".  So can someone tell me if Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito made anyone's list?

Does being Grandpa Simpson factor into your issue?

My real intellectual problem with the rulings of Scalia and Thomas--especially the originalist Thomas--is that corporate entities shouldn't have any rights as artificial constructions per an originalist framework--the First Amendment right to free speech at the time of the founding had to only apply to natural persons.

One thing that I think could be interesting is if courts will finally use corporate political speech to push back on the 'business judgment rule.'  Right now, boards of directors can pretty much do whatever they want, as long as there is no conflict of interest.  This ruling presents massive problems for questions of agency.  Boards, under the business judgment rule, may be tempted to authorize corporate political speech that is to their short-term benefit, but not to the short or long-term shareholder benefit.  But, if the board can get to the business judgment rule, its corporate political speech will, presumably, be beyond scrutiny.

The silver lining is that courts might get squeamish about the political-business judgment of directors, and I think there could be some pushback against the business judgment rule, of which I am decidedly not a fan.

[Yeti]

Clarence Thomas with this concurring opinion on yesterday's campaign finance ruling:

"The success of such intimidation tactics has apparently spawned a cottage industry that uses forcibly disclosed donor information to pre-empt citizens' exercise of their First Amendment rights. I cannot endorse a view of the First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging in core political speech, the 'primary object of First Amendment protection'."

So, he's worried that public disclosure of who gave money to candidates for public office will be subject to retribution for their donations.

That would mean that Thomas thinks that there is a constitutional right to privacy.

Fucking liberal.

I have a personal issue about visiting the "Dead Pool".  So can someone tell me if Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito made anyone's list?

Does being Grandpa Simpson factor into your issue?

My real intellectual problem with the rulings of Scalia and Thomas--especially the originalist Thomas--is that corporate entities shouldn't have any rights as artificial constructions per an originalist framework--the First Amendment right to free speech at the time of the founding had to only apply to natural persons.

One thing that I think could be interesting is if courts will finally use corporate political speech to push back on the 'business judgment rule.'  Right now, boards of directors can pretty much do whatever they want, as long as there is no conflict of interest.  This ruling presents massive problems for questions of agency.  Boards, under the business judgment rule, may be tempted to authorize corporate political speech that is to their short-term benefit, but not to the short or long-term shareholder benefit.  But, if the board can get to the business judgment rule, its corporate political speech will, presumably, be beyond scrutiny.

The silver lining is that courts might get squeamish about the political-business judgment of directors, and I think there could be some pushback against the business judgment rule, of which I am decidedly not a fan.

You're making it too easy for us.

[R-V]

Clarence Thomas with this concurring opinion on yesterday's campaign finance ruling:

"The success of such intimidation tactics has apparently spawned a cottage industry that uses forcibly disclosed donor information to pre-empt citizens' exercise of their First Amendment rights. I cannot endorse a view of the First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging in core political speech, the 'primary object of First Amendment protection'."

So, he's worried that public disclosure of who gave money to candidates for public office will be subject to retribution for their donations.

That would mean that Thomas thinks that there is a constitutional right to privacy.

Fucking liberal.

I have a personal issue about visiting the "Dead Pool".  So can someone tell me if Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito made anyone's list?

Does being Grandpa Simpson factor into your issue?

My real intellectual problem with the rulings of Scalia and Thomas the entire court--especially the originalist Thomas--is that corporate entities shouldn't have any rights as artificial constructions per an originalist framework--the First Amendment right to free speech at the time of the founding had to only apply to natural persons.

One thing that I think could be interesting is if courts will finally use corporate political speech to push back on the 'business judgment rule.'  Right now, boards of directors can pretty much do whatever they want, as long as there is no conflict of interest.  This ruling presents massive problems for questions of agency.  Boards, under the business judgment rule, may be tempted to authorize corporate political speech that is to their short-term benefit, but not to the short or long-term shareholder benefit.  But, if the board can get to the business judgment rule, its corporate political speech will, presumably, be beyond scrutiny.

The silver lining is that courts might get squeamish about the political-business judgment of directors, and I think there could be some pushback against the business judgment rule, of which I am decidedly not a fan.

Actually'd. I thought the same thing until I read this:

As Justice Stevens says:  "of course . . . speech does not fall entirely outside the protection of the First Amendment merely because it comes from a corporation," and "no one suggests the contrary."  The fact that all nine Justices reject a certain proposition does not, of course, prove that it's wrong.  But those who argue that (1) corporations have no First Amendment rights and/or (2) restrictions on money cannot violate the free speech clause should stop pretending that the 4 dissenting Justices agreed with you.  They didn't.  None of the 9 Justices made those arguments.

To the contrary, the entire dissent -- while arguing that corporations have fewer First Amendment protections than individuals -- is grounded in the premise that corporations do have First Amendment free speech rights and that restrictions on the expenditure of money do burden those rights, but those free speech rights can be restricted when there's a "compelling state interest."  In this case, the dissenters argued, such restrictions are justified by the "compelling state interest" the Government has in preventing the corrupting influence of corporate money.

[thehawk]

Clarence Thomas with this concurring opinion on yesterday's campaign finance ruling:

"The success of such intimidation tactics has apparently spawned a cottage industry that uses forcibly disclosed donor information to pre-empt citizens' exercise of their First Amendment rights. I cannot endorse a view of the First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging in core political speech, the 'primary object of First Amendment protection'."

So, he's worried that public disclosure of who gave money to candidates for public office will be subject to retribution for their donations.

That would mean that Thomas thinks that there is a constitutional right to privacy.

Fucking liberal.

I have a personal issue about visiting the "Dead Pool".  So can someone tell me if Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito made anyone's list?

Does being Grandpa Simpson factor into your issue?

My real intellectual problem with the rulings of Scalia and Thomas--especially the originalist Thomas--is that corporate entities shouldn't have any rights as artificial constructions per an originalist framework--the First Amendment right to free speech at the time of the founding had to only apply to natural persons.

One thing that I think could be interesting is if courts will finally use corporate political speech to push back on the 'business judgment rule.'  Right now, boards of directors can pretty much do whatever they want, as long as there is no conflict of interest.  This ruling presents massive problems for questions of agency.  Boards, under the business judgment rule, may be tempted to authorize corporate political speech that is to their short-term benefit, but not to the short or long-term shareholder benefit.  But, if the board can get to the business judgment rule, its corporate political speech will, presumably, be beyond scrutiny.

The silver lining is that courts might get squeamish about the political-business judgment of directors, and I think there could be some pushback against the business judgment rule, of which I am decidedly not a fan.

I hear what you're saying but not applying the business judgement rule to these items would be a ''Dusty running your young pitching staff' level bad idea.  The whole purpose of the business judgement rule is a pragmatic decision that judges should not be second guessing the day to day business decisions of directors or officers.  If you subjected businesses to a fact based court suit any time they wanted to make a payment that could have a political speech component, the only business that would be in business is mine (especially when you think of the indirect political component of ordinary business actions-- such as membership in a trade association or placing commercials on MSNBC/FoxNews).

While I think the decision of the Court is real dumb (does it mean that I am violating the 13th Amendment by owning shares of stock in a Company?), having judges decide what political speech is ok would be a nightmare.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

WHAT JOO LOOKEEN AT, HOMES?


Not my problem, brah.

[Brownie]

So the prevailing opinion from the lawyers here is that the press and speech can be regulated by law by Congress?

Explain.

The day I can pick up a chainsaw and stand amid a pool of Halliburton's still-warm blood is the day I will respect it's right to "free speech."  Besides, doesn't a corporation have, by definition, an entire contingency of actual human beings with their own right to free speech?

I must admit to experiencing much loldenfreude when I recalled the last decade's worth of decrying "judicial activism."

So does the Chicago Tribune not have First Amendment Freedoms? Do any media organizations have first amendment rights? Please explain further.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

So the prevailing opinion from the lawyers here is that the press and speech can be regulated by law by Congress?

Explain.

The day I can pick up a chainsaw and stand amid a pool of Halliburton's still-warm blood is the day I will respect it's right to "free speech."  Besides, doesn't a corporation have, by definition, an entire contingency of actual human beings with their own right to free speech?

I must admit to experiencing much loldenfreude when I recalled the last decade's worth of decrying "judicial activism."

So does the Chicago Tribune not have First Amendment Freedoms? Do any media organizations have first amendment rights? Please explain further.

Under the freedom of the press, yes they do. As explicitly stated in the Amendment.

That's a separate clause, though. (Perhaps for a reason?)

More than that, it's an entirely different thing than extending the rights and protections of natural persons, full stop, to merely legal persons such as corporations.

The latter, no matter where you stand on its merits, appears to be an innovation of the Gilded Age and 20th century (and now the 21st), particularly as it concerns the application of the 14th and 1st Amendments.

[CT III]

So the prevailing opinion from the lawyers here is that the press and speech can be regulated by law by Congress?

Explain.

The day I can pick up a chainsaw and stand amid a pool of Halliburton's still-warm blood is the day I will respect it's right to "free speech."  Besides, doesn't a corporation have, by definition, an entire contingency of actual human beings with their own right to free speech?

I must admit to experiencing much loldenfreude when I recalled the last decade's worth of decrying "judicial activism."

So does the Chicago Tribune not have First Amendment Freedoms? Do any media organizations have first amendment rights? Please explain further.

Under the freedom of the press, yes they do. As explicitly stated in the Amendment.

That's a separate clause, though. (Perhaps for a reason?)

More than that, it's an entirely different thing than extending the rights and protections of natural persons, full stop, to merely legal persons such as corporations.

The latter, no matter where you stand on its merits, appears to be an innovation of the Gilded Age and 20th century (and now the 21st), particularly as it concerns the application of the 14th and 1st Amendments.

Whatever.  As long as two gay corporations can't marry each other, I'm cool.

[CubFaninHydePark]

I hear what you're saying but not applying the business judgement rule to these items would be a ''Dusty running your young pitching staff' level bad idea.  The whole purpose of the business judgement rule is a pragmatic decision that judges should not be second guessing the day to day business decisions of directors or officers.  If you subjected businesses to a fact based court suit any time they wanted to make a payment that could have a political speech component, the only business that would be in business is mine (especially when you think of the indirect political component of ordinary business actions-- such as membership in a trade association or placing commercials on MSNBC/FoxNews).

While I think the decision of the Court is real dumb (does it mean that I am violating the 13th Amendment by owning shares of stock in a Company?), having judges decide what political speech is ok would be a nightmare.

I don't think it's a question of a "political speech component," since that's not what the case or the ruling deals with, but rather of outright political speech (e.g. giving money to candidates, and speech within a certain time before an election).  Sure, any sort of corporate philanthropy or giving could have a "political component," but giving to a PAC or a candidate is purely political.  It's going to be very dangerous for courts to conflate the political judgments of directors with proper business judgments and give them the same presumption.  Common sense tells us that the two aren't the same.  

Congress should legislate that the BJR doesn't apply to questions of outright political speech by corporations and then use its powers to limit appellate jurisdiction to enforce it.  The BJR itself isn't a matter of Constitutional Law, so I'd have no problem with such a workaround.  The likely outcome would be the status quo--anytime a corporation exercised unpopular political speech, it'd be subject to a valid shareholder lawsuit, which has costs, which would almost likely chill all political speech by corporations, but in a perfectly legal way.

But the real reason I hate the BJR is that it was invoked to prevent shareholders from forcing Wrigley into putting up lights in the 60's.  Had the judge been willing to tell Wrigley he was an old loon and to put up lights already, I think this franchise would've won at least a World Series between then and now.  And I'm perfectly willing to sanction the adoption of a legal rule that threatens basic assumptions of our economic order if it means the Cubs will have a better chance of winning the World Series.

[MAD]

But the real reason I hate the BJR is that it was invoked to prevent shareholders from forcing Wrigley into putting up lights in the 60's.  Had the judge been willing to tell Wrigley he was an old loon and to put up lights already, I think this franchise would've won at least a World Series between then and now.  And I'm perfectly willing to sanction the adoption of a legal rule that threatens basic assumptions of our economic order if it means the Cubs will have a better chance of winning the World Series.

Retarded.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

South Carolina CLASS...

http://www.thestate.com/local/story/1123844.html

GREENVILLE - Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has compared giving people government assistance to "feeding stray animals."

Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, made his remarks during a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn that included state lawmakers and about 115 residents.

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better," Bauer said.

In South Carolina, 58 percent of students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

...

Bauer later Friday told The Greenville News he wasn't saying people on government assistance "were animals or anything else."

Later in his speech, Bauer said, "I can show you a bar graph where free and reduced lunch has the worst test scores in the state of South Carolina," adding, "You show me the school that has the highest free and reduced lunch, and I'll show you the worst test scores, folks. It's there, period.

Correlation = causation!

Free lunches make kids poor, dumb and lazy!

Period.

And, Bauer said, it is time to confront "babies having babies. Somebody's got to talk about. Politicians don't want to talk about it anymore because it's politically incorrect."

The third rail of SC politics: infant pregnancy.

[R-V]

Health care is already regulated by the government in a manner in which there is no advantage to buying your own goddamn insurance (actually it's quite onerous for one to buy his or her own insurance rather than letting his or her employer "give" it to him or her). Health care is already regulated in that one cannot buy health insurance across state lines (ironically, one of the reasons for adopting a strong, federalist constitution was to be sure Americans could buy and sell services freely across state lines). Health care is already regulated so much that you cannot get a clear answer just how much a particular procedure actually costs. But, no, let's make it more complicated. That's really serving your constituency!

I agree that the employer-based model sucks. Already brought up how I like the Wyden-Bennett bill that destroys that model. Unfortunately it doesn't have the votes. I'm trying to deal with what's realistic given the system we have, not the system we want.

What do a majority of House Members and Senators agree on? Draft a bill that reflects that.

They agree on quite a bit, actually. The bills passed in each chamber have a lot in common. Their are some significant differences to iron out (funding mechanisms, national vs. state exchanges, subsidy levels, and an employer mandate, among other things). But the fundamentals - guaranteed issue, & banning lifetime limits and recission in exchange for an individual mandate; subsidies and Medicaid expansion to assist those falling under the mandate; and various Medicare pilot programs to experiment with moving away from the fee-for-service model - are the same.

Maybe the GOP will filibuster the bill in the Senate, maybe not. (When was the last time a true filibuster, and not the mere threat of one, actually happened?)  But when the Dems have an overwhelming majority in both houses and an Oval Office with several ball point pens in the desk and a President eager to sign most of what Congress sends him at the desk, what are you waiting for?

Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

As both Reid's memo and Dove explain, only one Republican would need to monitor the Senate floor. If the majority party tried to move to a vote, he could simply say, "I suggest the absence of a quorum."

The presiding officer would then be required to call the roll. When that finished, the Senator could again notice the absence of a quorum and start the process all over. At no point would the obstructing Republican be required to defend his position, read from the phone book or any of the other things people associate with the Hollywood version of a filibuster.

"You cannot force senators to talk during a filibuster," says Dove. "Delay in the Senate is not difficult and, frankly, the only way to end it is through cloture."

Or are you shocked that some people don't like the current Congress' and the president's agenda?

Uh, no. Not sure how that's relevant.

In closing, THIS.

None of these ideas are new and most used to sit comfortably in the GOP mainstream. The Senate bill mimics the framework of the 2006 Massachusetts health reform, an idea that was pushed by Republican then-Governor Mitt Romney and, as we know by now, was supported by new Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown. This is what Romney said about the bill after it passed: "Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced." Sound familiar?

The bottom line is that much of the battle over health reform is not about substance at all. If it were, Democrats and Republicans could have gotten together last year and reached a workable consensus reform that, indeed, would look a lot like the Massachusetts—or the Breaux-Chafee—design. But that, it seems, was never in the cards. It was politically much more productive to caricature the plan as a government take-over of health reform or a big new tax on working people.

[morpheus]

THIS

[Chuck to Chuck]

Careful, Morph.  Chapman also once wrote that taxes are a regrettable necessity. When we have a deficit, we have to raise taxes to make up the loss. Or we have to borrow more money—which means raising taxes in the future.

[morpheus]

Careful, Morph.  Chapman also once wrote that taxes are a regrettable necessity. When we have a deficit, we have to raise taxes to make up the loss. Or we have to borrow more money—which means raising taxes in the future.

I didn't realize that agreeing with something Chapman said meant that I was endorsing his entire belief structure.  If that's the case, I'll just say that I agree with Chapman's points in that article and since I don't have an exhaustive knowledge of other articles he's written I'll just say that I can't say anything substantive about his other work.  Fair enough?

Anyway, simple arithmetic says that there's a third way out of the "regrettable necessity"... but I hope that was your point in bringing it up..