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Ira Glasser - former ACLU Executive Director - at the Huffington Post : Understanding the Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court Ruling

By Andis Kaulins

At the Huffington Post, Ira Glasser (Executive Director, ACLU, 1978-2001, Retired) sets straight the erroneous and oft emotionally distorted opinions floating around about the Citizens United Ruling, writing inter alia:

"The recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has been greeted with screaming dismay by most liberals. Many of them mistake the decision for doing things it did not do: for example, one hyperbolic letter to The New York Times asserted that the decision overturned "the century-old ban on corporate contributions to political campaigns." It did no such thing. Corporations are still banned from contributing to a candidate or to a candidate's campaign. The assertion was wrong, and the Times was remiss in publishing such a factually false claim.....

1. The issue at stake in the case was whether, consistent with the First Amendment, the government could criminalize speech that criticized a public official who was also a candidate for elective office, 60 days before a general election and 30 days before a primary."

One should read that article in full to understand that the Citizens United ruling greatly supports free speech on both sides of the political fence.

See our previous posting Money is not Speech : The Volokh Conspiracy Calls the Legal & Political Community to Order on US Supreme Court Corporate Free Speech Decision

Full post as published by LawPundit on February 03, 2010 (boomark / email).