And by that I mean classical Bullshit, whereby the writer just spews a bunch of smart sounding shit that actually means nothing upon even casual analysis. This is a doozy.
Look at what Lessig is actually saying here. Shorter Lessig:
So the Citizens United case was decided basically correctly and in-line with precedent. Those who have been criticizing it are way off base in a manner that raises doubts as to whether they a) read the opinion b) understand the issues and/or c) care about free speech. BUT the opinion is still problematic because of... uh.... foreigners!! Foreigners are even worse than corporations, who aren't that bad really, except maybe they are also really bad. Citizens get to choose who governs citizens. Sure there are millions of non-citizens and corporations who find themselves inside America's borders, and they get governed by the same government, but I love to type the word 'citizens' so don't stop me now. We should be able to keep the debate to citizens exclusively, except that the constitution says we can't - but I will now blame the Supreme Court for that. So in response I propose that we not get crazy and do something drastic... instead we should just amend the frickin' Constitution! But we should make sure this Amendment is a legendary masterstroke (sublime really) of arbitrary technicalities immediately abutting ripe-for-abuse-argument-and-a-whole-new-line-of-controversial-court-rulings vaguenesses that, I myself concede, will probably do nothing and should hardly ever be effectuated, like ever.
Seriously, that's basically what that column says. Look at it and tell me I'm wrong! I mean what the fuck!?
This guy hates the idea of foreign entities influencing our elections, he also dislikes corporations influencing our elections. But he doesn't a give a fuck-all about them doing this as long as it's outside of 60 days from an actual election!? Well whats the point in that exactly? Like 60 days is some magic window where people can no longer decipher bullshit? Also look at the Amendment he proposes. I'm pretty sure he didn't even write it correctly:
Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to restrict the power to limit, though not to ban, campaign expenditures of non-citizens of the United States during the last 60 days before an election.
So, this means that non-citizens can still speak during the last 60 days since his proposed Amendment specifically prohibits "banning" of speech, even by non-citizens. In other words any rule that says "non-citizens may not do any campaigning within 60 days" would remain unconstitutional, even with this amendment. But perhaps we'd get a rule that non-citizens could only air ads between 9 and 5, or could only give $XX.XX in money to any one candidate. Whoop-dee-dam-doo!!
Plainly, even under this proposed Amendment the court would still have had to decide in favor of the plaintiff in the Citizens United case, and would still have had to strike down a good chunk of campaign finance laws. So....???
But the money quote is here: "My own view is that we should encourage the broadest range of free speech, including speech by corporations, Canadians, and curious dolphins." Hmm if only we had a law that already provided that? Perhaps the founders could have written such a law down in an important place and it could be taught to school children everywhere, and our courts could uphold this principle even when the consequences were undesirable. If only such a law existed!
No, Mr. Lessig, that is decidedly not your view.
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