I can't resist adding that the 'Brennan Center' takes its name from the Supreme Court justice who joined the majority ruling in 'Buckley vs. Valeo' in 1976, which first drew the connection between 'campaign finance reform' and restrictions on First Amendment rights - that controls on resources used to disseminate speech are controls on free speech itself. That's why the classic First Amendment violation is an illustration of the smashing of a printing press, a capital asset.

All the 'Citizens United' ruling said was that non-media companies have the same First Amendment rights as do media companies. That's it. That's all. That is not just the position of Scalia, TR - it was the position of the ACLU and of Floyd Abrams, the NY Times' lawyer in the 'Pentagon Papers' case, who saw the danger to the dissemination of free political speech by casting the case as about 'money' rather than about 'speech', and supported the plaintiffs. To Bob Garfied, my friend, I've got news for you - the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the New York Times Corporation are, in fact, corporations, which use corporate resources to endorse candidates and influence politics in election years. The logic of suppressing 'Citizens United' is also the logic of suppressing those companies as 'corrupting' candidates with the threat of negative coverage. (Media companies also use anonymous sources - is this corrupt 'dark journalism'? Just asking.) The Obama Administration's lawyer, in oral arguments before the Supreme Court, stated explicitly that its position was the all 'corporate speech' - every pamphlet, book, website, documentary, you name it - should be subject to regulation by the FEC and the courts.

I challenge Bob Garfield to challenge the lefties who obsess about Citizens United to affirm that they have no problem with a right-wing administration and a right-wing judiciary having this kind of power to decide, for example, that OTM peddles left-wing causes and anti-Republican blab in election years, and therefore its editorial matter should be regarded as a potentially-corrupting contribution to the Democratic Party, inasmuch as public radio is partly funded by tax receipts voted on by - wait for it - politicians! I won't hold my breath.

It would be absurd to posit that the Citizens Untied decision was good law or that all this dark money is a fine example of free speech, but on reflection, I can see some good coming out of the new politics.

Consider, for example, all the attack ads which infest the "public airwaves" (ha-ha). Are you influenced by them? Considering where you are reading this, I should hope not. But what about the less sophisticated citizen-consumer? Won't the people who are hostile toward reading be influenced by some lie if they hear it enough times?

The people who hate the gummint and despise the "flaming liberals" have already made their minds (such as they are) up forever (including the afterlife), and the tiny minority (5%?) of independents who might be swayed by such transparent buncombe are likely influenced by the first round of lies, but twice as many ads certainly does not equal twice as many votes, as the recent defeat of Eric Cantor illustrates.

The Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, et al. are not getting much bang-for-the-buck, and each election bleeds them of far more lucre than they pay in taxes. The avalanche of money they're spending is not producing corresponding landslides at the polls, and that's fine with me.

Don't you confess to a certain schadenfreude at having witnessed the robber barons squandering the riches of Croceus only to have President Obama reelected? And all that money, which was once in numbered accounts in the Cayman Islands, doesn't just disappear. No, it trickles down to numerous pollsters, focus groups, producers, cameramen, video editors and actors ("I'm dressed like a doctor, and I support fracking") who otherwise might not be employed. Think of it as the anti-Obama stimulus.

You *can* fool all of the people all of the time, but it's expensive.

Citizens United is a red herring. The real problem is that the voices of individuals are systemically suppressed in this country by the government and federal courts (which are by no means serving the cause of justice, but employ underhanded, deceptive trickery in exercising "due process of the law" which "due process" turns out in the end to be entirely arbitrary, without any definable "process") -- while the media (including the On the Media), academia, and rights organizations (including the Brennan Center for Justice, and ACLU) studiously look the other way. You can see for instance "The Price of Injustice of our Justice System" http://cajfr.org/blog/the-price-of-injustice-of-our-justice-system/ on that.

When will the press, academia, and rights organizations start focusing on the government-instituted absence of speech rights of individuals, and institutionalized absence of justice in the federal "judicial procedure" rather than on red herrings like "citizens united"?

Scalia Law: Corruption is a First Amendment right. Orwell couldn't top this.