Getting money out of the election system sounds like a good goal. But the reality of it is, it ends up being incumbent insurance. And the one thing we all seem to agree upon is that we are headed in the wrong direction. The last thing we need to do is lock in this group, particularly in Congress.

You are all over this. Shall make no law should have been enough to torpedo McCain-Feingold the first time around.

It doesn't matter how well intentioned It is, we have to follow the constitution.

The New York Times is owned by a corporation. It attempts to influence elections through the content of its pages, including its editorials and endorsements. McCain-Feingold protects the statments and opinions of the NYT on the eve of elections but prohibits those of Citizens United. Please explain why such a distinction passes Constitutional muster.

To the professors: when it comes down to it, you can kiss precedence and case history goodby with these Supremes. Already been demonstrated in the Bong hits for Jesus case, the school segregation case, I believe from St. Louis, the Ricci case…..and now the "Hillary Movie" case. And who can ever forget how the Rehnquest Court unconstitutionally bypassed precedence in Bush v Gore.

Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia are bullrushing Kennedy to go along with Roberts' conservative agenda. We're going to see a lot more of this. More hand picked cases for the purpose of making radically conservative rulings the new way forward in America. Won't that be great?

1. Do corporations have free speech rights?

The current answer is "yes". Compare Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233, 244 (1936) ("Appellant contends that the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to corporations; but this is only partly true. A corporation, we have held, is not a ‘citizen’ within the meaning of the privileges and immunities clause. Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall, 168, 19 L.Ed. 357. But a corporation is a ‘person’ within the meaning of the equal protection and due process of law clauses, which are the clauses involved here.").

2. Are political contributions/expenditures protected "speech"?

The current answer is also "yes". See Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 16 (1976) ("[T]his Court has never suggested that the dependence of a communication on the expenditure of money operates itself to introduce a nonspeech element or to reduce the exacting scrutiny required by the First Amendment.").

3. Is the prohibition on laws abridging the freedom of speech absolute?

No. See New Rider v. Board of Ed. of Independent School Dist. No. 1, Pawnee County, Oklahoma, 480 F.2d 693, 698 (10th Cir. 1973) ("Constitutional rights, including First Amendment rights, are not absolutes. Courts must balance them against a compelling public interest.").

All this leads to a final conclusion (excerpted from Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652, 658-59 (1990)), which is currently being challenged in the Citizens United case:

State law grants corporations special advantages-such as limited liability, perpetual life, and favorable treatment of the accumulation and distribution of assets-that enhance their ability to attract capital and to deploy their resources in ways that maximize the return on their shareholders' investments. These state-created advantages not only allow corporations to play a dominant role in the Nation's economy, but also permit them to use “resources amassed in the economic marketplace” to obtain “an unfair advantage in the political marketplace.” MCFL, 479 U.S., at 257, 107 S.Ct., at 627. As the Court explained in MCFL, the political advantage of corporations is unfair because

“[t]he resources in the treasury of a business corporation … are not an indication of popular support for the corporation's political ideas. They reflect instead the economically motivated decisions of investors and customers. The availability of these resources may make a corporation a formidable political presence, even though the power of the corporation may be no reflection of the power of its ideas.” Id., at 258, 107 S.Ct., at 628.

We therefore have recognized that “the compelling governmental interest in preventing corruption support[s] the restriction of the influence of political war chests funneled through the corporate form.” NCPAC, supra, 470 U.S., at 500-501, 105 S.Ct., at 1470; see also MCFL, supra, 479 U.S., at 257, 107 S.Ct., at 627.

There should be no limits to spending to "influence" elections by any person: corporate, union, or individual. And there should be complete and immediate disclosure of contributions to candidates and parties.