Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Coming back to the point that some people need to be

dragged to the town square and flogged,
The [government's] lawyer, Malcolm L. Stewart, said Congress has the power to ban political books, signs and Internet videos, if they are paid for by corporations and distributed not long before an election.

Mr. Stewart added that there was no difference in principle between the 90-minute documentary about Mrs. Clinton, “Hillary: The Movie,” and a 30-second television advertisement.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the government’s uncompromising position could have dire consequences for the McCain-Feingold law.

“If we think that the application of this to a 90-minute film is unconstitutional,” Justice Kennedy said, “then the whole statute should fall under your view because there’s no distinction between the two?”

Mr. Stewart said the two kinds of communications should rise or fall together, so long as each satisfied a test set out by the court in a decision in 2007. That decision said restrictions in the McCain-Feingold law applied only to communications “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.”...

Stewart, his superiors who think this is a good idea, and every bastard who shoved McCain-Feingold down our throats, one at a time, preferably with a flagrum. Damn these people who want to control what we say.

2 comments:

perlhaqr said...

Say?

Buddy, they wanna control everything.

Anonymous said...

I dunno. I hold it against McCain and Feingold, certainly, but I agree with Tam in thinking it almost looks as if Stewart is throwing the case. (I mean, "holding up a sign in the park," and he waffles?) Be interesting to find out Stewart's politics and career history, to see where he's fallen before this. But perhaps I'm too naive and optimistic.