Prostitute Politicians

Ok - not much time to write tonight, but I really want to at least put down a couple of comments on the recent Supreme Court ruling on corporate donations to campaigns. Unsurprisingly, I am incredibly disappointed in the ruling and pretty stunned that something so disingenuously naïve could come from the Supreme Court.

There are lots of really interesting things being written and I want to comment on lots (particularly the idea that 'money = speech'), but for now, in the interest of getting at least a minimum amount of sleep tonight and making it to work on time tomorrow, I'm just going to comment on this transcription of House Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's comments about the ruling yesterday on Meet the Press

McConnell had this to say:

I don't know who [the ruling] benefits, but it's a important victory for the first amendment.  RIght now if you're General Electric and you own NBC, you can say anything you want to about any candidate right up to the day of the election. But if you're a corporation or a union that doesn't own a media outlet you haven't been able to. So you've had this big gap in the First Amendment, applying one standard to media-owned corporations and another standard to unions and corporations that don't own media outlets. Now the Supreme Court has said the First Amendment is for everyone, I think that's a step in the right direction.

First of all - he doesn't know who it benefits? What nonsense. Second, I think I've come up with a new motto for the GOP:

Never surprising, always disappointing

What do you think? Catchy, huh?

More on speech/money and bi-partisanship to come!