More Fallout From Citizens United: Corporations Granted More Power to Propagandize to Americans

The controversial 2010 Supreme Court ruling did not just affect corporate "speech" in elections. 

Tamara Piety is a constitutional law professor and dean at University of Tulsa’s College of Law. Her latest book, Brandishing The First Amendment: Commercial Expression in America, describes how federal courts have aggressively and inappropriately expanded the First Amendment rights of for-profit corporations in recent decades.

The book starts with a striking assertion, that if the government cannot regulate corporate speech then it cannot regulate commerce, especially in our media-driven world. Piety writes that the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, which deregulated corporate political speech, also will make it harder for the government to protect public interests because corporate rights to say anything is ascendant in the federal judiciary.

Steven Rosenfeld interviewed Piety about Citizens United's reach beyond the electoral arena. Below is a slightly edited transcript.

Steven Rosenfeld: Are we talking about advertising or does it go deeper than that?

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Another Abortion Showdown in Virginia

Attorney General Cuccinelli rejects the decision of the Board of Health.

Last Spring, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell was a pretty credible candidate for the vice presidency. Then he tripped over a trans-vaginal ultrasound bill that enraged women throughout the commonwealth and turned—almost overnight—into a great big political cautionary tale. As Alexander Burns explained in Politico, McDonnell’s early support of a law that would have mandated an invasive ultrasound procedure for women seeking abortions “turned McDonnell’s national political fortunes upside down.” (He later switched positions, signing a modified version of that law that did away with the now politically-toxic internal probe.) McDonnell not only became a walking human punch line for a few days, but he also may have finally managed to turn the commonwealth into a blue state: President Obama appears to have opened up a 20-point lead over Mitt Romney among women voters, who, presumably, didn’t want the state probing them for no coherent medical reason.

You’d think the lesson would be clear here: Voters may be deeply conflicted on the question of abortion, but women aren’t going to tolerate state efforts to eliminate it under the guise of protecting their superfragile health. Even voters worried about jobs and the economy aren’t too distracted to notice when the state begins to talk about women as if they just aren’t all that bright. But the message seems to have been lost amid breezy explanations that the Virginia trans-vaginal overreach was a one-off, or that the governor’s tanking poll numbers were unrelated, or that women in the commonwealth just won’t notice a blatantly political government overreach if it happens again.

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Profit and security at the London Olympics

G4S - the Anglo-Danish conglomerate - has put the security of the London Olympics at risk. Or so it would seem according to recent headlines.

The largest private security company in the world, G4S employs over 650,000 people in 125 countries. But the news broke last week that it could not provide the 13,000 security guards it had promised for the Olympics.

Britain's muckraking journalists responded with aplomb. The papers abounded with stories of inept trainees asleep in classes or lacking in English. Other would-be security guards failed to spot pistols, bombs and grenades.

Certainly, G4S' shenanigans have laid the ground for a scandal of Olympic proportions if terrorist attacks do occur.

The British armed forces now have to provide at short notice an additional 3,500 personnel on top of 13,500 already committed to the Olympics. Troops returning from Afghanistan and others who were training for deployment will make up for G4S' apparent inability to recruit enough rent-a-cops. Real police are also being taken off their beats to fill the gaps.

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Mass Arrests Likely at Political Conventions: 6 Historical Precedents

Clinton's law designates political conventions National Special Security Events, a category of state security that virtually dooms the exercise of First Amendment Rights. 

The Republican and Democratic Party conventions later this summer will probably witness the mass arrest of many American citizens assembling to exercise their First Amendment rights. Mass arrests accompanied the Republican conventions held in New York in 2004, when 900 people were busted, and in St. Paul in 2008 when 300 were detained, including 30 journalists.

A political convention is designated a National Special Security Event (NSSE), a category of state security originally established by President Clinton through a classified 1998 directive. NSSEs also include the Olympics, the Super Bowl and gatherings of world leaders like the G20 or NATO summits. An event receiving a NSSE designation gives federal and local law enforcement wide discretion, often leading them to treat protesters as potential terrorists and threats to national security.

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Reassessing Solitary Confinement in the U.S.

Thank you, Chairman Durbin, Ranking Member Graham, and members of the Subcommittee for holding this hearing on the human rights, fiscal, and public safety consequences of solitary confinement in United States prisons, jails, and detention centers. My name is Michael Jacobson and I serve as President and Director of the Vera Institute of Justice. Vera is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit center for justice policy and practice, with offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans. Since 1961, Vera has combined expertise in research, technical assistance, and demonstration projects to help develop justice systems that are fairer, more humane, and more effective for everyone. One of the ways Vera works toward these goals is through its Segregation Reduction Project, which partners with states to decrease safely the number of people held in segregation (also called solitary confinement), provides recommendations tailored to the states’ specific circumstances and needs, and offers assistance as states plan and implement changes. A. Background on Use of Solitary Confinement/Segregation in U.S. Prisons Since the 1980s, prisons in the United States have increasingly relied on segregation to manage difficult populations in their overcrowded systems. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the number of people in restricted housing units nationwide increased from 57,591 in 1995 to 81,622 in 2005.1 Segregation was developed as a method for handling highly dangerous prisoners. However, it has increasingly been used with prisoners who do not pose a threat to staff or other prisoners but are placed in segregation for minor violations that are disruptive but not violent, such as talking back (insolence), being out of place, failure to report to work or school, or refusing to change housing units or cells. In some jurisdictions, these prisoners constitute a significant proportion of the population in this form of housing.

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Robert J. Sampson - "The Social Order of the American City: Lessons for Crime and Justice"

Federal Judge Richard Posner: The GOP Has Made Me Less Conservative

Judge Richard Posner, a conservative on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, has long been one of the nation's most respected and admired legal thinkers on the right. But in an interview with NPR, he expressed exasperation at the modern Republican Party, and confessed that he has become "less conservative" as a result.

Posner expressed admiration for President Ronald Reagan and the economist Milton Friedman, two pillars of conservatism. But over the past 10 years, Posner said, "there's been a real deterioration in conservative thinking. And that has to lead people to re-examine and modify their thinking."

"I've become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy," he said.

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Double-bunking in crowded prison cells is not a problem for Toews

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says he has no problem with the number of federal inmates sharing cells built for one.

And even as he reiterated his commitment to building 2,700 new cells in existing prison facilities, he said those additional units aren’t meant to alleviate the pressures caused by double-bunking – because there’s no need.

“We won’t make any changes on the double-bunking policy. Double-bunking is appropriate. All Western democracies use double-bunking, dual accommodation, in appropriate cells,” he told The Globe and Mail in an interview. “And we will continue to do that.”

Mr. Toews used a Winnipeg press conference Wednesday to underscore that the increase in inmate population isn’t nearly as high as Corrections Canada projected. The Tackling Violence Crime and Truth in Sentencing acts were expected to result in 3,600 more inmates into the penal system by March of 2013; increases so far are closer to one-third that.

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The Return of Dickensian Debtor Prisons

It's difficult to hear these stories and wonder if we have suddenly transported into some Dickensian nightmare:

How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn't pay a medical bill -- one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn't owe. "She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it," The Associated Press reports. "But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs."
Although the U.S. abolished debtors' prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don't pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff's deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.
Under the law, debtors aren't arrested for nonpayment, but rather for failing to respond to court hearings, pay legal fines, or otherwise showing "contempt of court" in connection with a creditor lawsuit. That loophole has lawmakers in the Illinois House of Representatives concerned enough to pass a bill in March that would make it illegal to send residents of the state to jail if they can't pay a debt. The measure awaits action in the senate.

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