An editorial “Talk about judicial activism” observes:
“It is gospel among die-hard conservatives that the federal court system is a bastion of politically inspired activism by liberal judges bent on circumventing the legislative process and making their own laws.
“A decision by the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, however, is a breathtaking exercise in judicial activism.
“The justices ruled that corporations – and by extension their trade associations, unions or similar organizations – may not be barred from funding campaign advertisements that directly endorse particular candidates.
“In doing so, the court not only invalidated a portion of the 2003 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, but overturned a 1990 Supreme Court decision.
“Remarkably, the five-member majority did so after expanding the scope of the case without being asked to do so. That is, they first considered a narrow issue relative to campaign finance – whether a documentary about Hillary Clinton, funded by a conservative political advocacy group, was a political ad – but then decided to examine issues that hadn’t been raised by any party to the case.
“This is all, of course, in the name of free speech. But it pretends that a corporation is a citizen, that a multibillion-dollar enterprise has the same ability as a person to influence the political process. What it actually does is convert free speech to paid speech, turning over to the highest bidder the political process and the public policy that it produces.”
WATCHDOG: A vigorous wag of the tail!
