The President certainly put the Supreme Court in an awkward position during the State of the Union address. With six of the Court’s nine members sitting mere feet in front of him, the President lambasted the Court for a recent case they decided.

He stated that the Court’s decision, “reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.”

Emboldened Congressmen and Senators hooped and hollered in support of the President’s statement, some directly behind the Justices, obnoxiously leaning forward to clap right in their ears.

The Justices, who tried to remain neutral throughout the speech, had no choice but to sit quietly, and show no reaction.

Well, almost. Justice Samuel Alito apparently couldn’t keep from shaking his head just slightly, in obvious surprise and disagreement with the President’s statement.

What the President did was, to say the least, in poor taste. The Justices aren’t required to be there.

They’re a non-political branch of the federal government, co-equal with Congress and the President, and they simply go to show respect to the other branches.

It was a little like hitting a man whose hands are tied behind his back. But it’s worse than that. The President was factually wrong about the Court’s decision.

I guess that’s more like hitting an innocent man when his hands are tied behind his back.

The Supreme Court’s decision struck down part of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. The law prohibited certain political ads aired by corporations near an election.

The case came about last election cycle when a group called Citizens United made a hyper-critical documentary aimed at Hillary Clinton. It was supposed to be released during the Democratic primary.

The Federal Election Commission decided the movie was a political ad and, based on the McCain-Feingold law, moved to ban it.

Citizens United challenged the law as an unconstitutional violation of its free speech rights.

The Court sided with Citizens United and declared that McCain-Feingold’s restrictions on political ads violated the First Amendment.

The Court’s decision overturned the 2002 portion of the federal campaign finance laws, not “a century of law” as the President said.

The Court also explicitly stated that it was not overturning the ban on political ads regarding foreign corporations. The President was wrong on this point, too.

The President should have at least gotten his facts right before he arrogantly called out the Supreme Court. No wonder Alito couldn’t help but shake his head.

Moreover, the President urged Congress to pass another law to undo the Supreme Court decision. After all, people must not be allowed to speak freely in the middle of an election!

That’s all corporations are – people. Corporations are merely collections of people. People have First Amendment rights, and so should corporations.

If the First Amendment doesn’t protect political speech, then what good is it? Political speech ought to be the least restricted type of speech there is.

Yet, Democrats and progressive Republicans like John McCain abhor freedom of speech when it’s not in their personal best interest.

McCain’s re-election is being challenged in the Republican primary by the more conservative former Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth.

Recently John McCain forced Hayworth to quit his radio show by claiming the show was illegally promoting Hayworth’s campaign in violation of campaign finance laws.

Campaign finance restrictions benefit liberal politicians, liberal ideas, and incumbents in general. If liberals can eliminate private speech, they can count on the state-run mainstream media to do their bidding.

Incumbents benefit due to the restriction of voter’s access to opposing viewpoints. Just look at how McCain used the law to protect his own seat.

The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.” It’s hard to figure out how that sentence can be twisted to support banning movies, radio shows and political ads.

Some countries don’t have freedom of speech like we do. Two years ago Canadian writer Mark Steyn was hauled before the Ontario Human Rights Commission on charges that an article he wrote, which criticized radical Islam, had violated Muslim’s human rights. The charges were eventually dropped on technical grounds.

In the Netherlands, the controversial lawmaker, Geert Wilders, is currently on trial on similar charges. He is charged with inciting hate against Muslims in connection with a video he produced which displayed passages from the Quran on top of images of terrorist attacks carried out in recent years.

You see, the First Amendment protects unpopular ideas and unpopular people who hold them. It protects their speech from being snuffed out by the majority, no matter the content.

The Supreme Court didn’t open the door to undue political influence; it opened the door to free speech.

Now if “Evil Corp.” runs an ad supporting candidate X, “Good & Co., Inc.” can run an ad in opposition. It seems to me that more information being exchanged in the marketplace of ideas is a good thing.

It’s a slippery slope toward hate speech trials and Thought Police when we start trying to regulate and ban political speech.

Thankfully, the Supreme Court struck a blow for the freedom of speech in its decision.



Tar Heel Dispatch is written by Tyler Younts, a second-year law student at Campbell University. Younts, who grew up in Farmer, has a passion for writing and for politics and for writing about politics. E-mail comments to news@randolphguide.com or directly to Younts at tlyounts0209@email.campbell.edu