Tuesday, August 13, 2019

On its face, then, Section 3 of the Democracy for All Amendment invalidates the rest of it.

I find it deeply disturbing how many politicians are so willing to seek tactical advantages in their pursuit of power at the cost of strategic freedoms. In this case, senators willing to curtail freedom of speech in order, so they think, to make it easier for them to control speech and win elections.

From Every Democrat in the Senate Supports a Constitutional Amendment That Would Radically Curtail Freedom of Speech by Jacob Sullum. Ignore the partisan jibe. Most senators, when given the right circumstances, are comfortable curtailing freedoms if it advances their partisan agenda.
Every Democrat in the Senate is backing a constitutional amendment that aims to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 decision in which the Supreme Court lifted legal restrictions on what corporations and unions are allowed to say about politics at election time. That would be troubling enough, since Citizens United, which involved a film that was banned from TV because it was too critical of Hillary Clinton, simply recognized that Americans do not lose their First Amendment rights when they organize themselves in a disfavored way. But the so-called Democracy for All Amendment goes much further than nullifying one Supreme Court decision. It would radically rewrite the constitutional treatment of political speech, allowing Congress and state legislatures to impose any restrictions on election-related spending they consider reasonable.
The kicker is that not only are they tyrants trying to constrain free speech, but they are idiots as well.
The third section of the amendment contradicts the other two sections by stating that "nothing in this article shall be construed to grant Congress or the States the power to abridge the freedom of the press." The amendment's backers seem to think they are constitutionalizing the "media exemption" from limits like the ones overturned in Citizens United. Under that exception, news outlets such as The New York Times and CNN were free to talk about political candidates close to an election, even though they were organized as corporations.

As scholars such as UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh have shown, however, the "freedom of the press" protected by the First Amendment does not refer to a particular profession. The clause was meant to protect anyone who uses a technology of mass communication—the printing press at the time and, by extension, TV, radio, and the internet today. On its face, then, Section 3 of the Democracy for All Amendment invalidates the rest of it.
There are real problems they could be solving and this is what they spend their time on.


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