He writes dissents a lot; if there’s an 8-1 decision, it’s almost always Thomas on the short end. But he hardly ever writes decisions. Usually they only give him unanimous, relatively uncontroversial decisions like this one (which was only about standing). That’s because his reasoning, even when he’s on the same side as the other conservatives, is completely whacked. People think of him as a Scalia clone because they vote the same most of the time, but his thinking is different and even Scalia thinks he’s nuts.
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That only works if the megaphone you use is just as loud as your opponent’s. Thanks to recent SCOTUS rulings corporate interests can now shout FAR louder than individual candidates or your average grass-roots organization.
When your opponent runs 10 TV, radio, newspaper and internet ads to your 1, and all 10 of theirs are lies, how do you defend against it?
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Scalia and Thomas, both of whom I spotted eating the maggot-infested carcass of a dog by the side of a Virginia highway last week, are okay with lying to voters.
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The Republican SCROTUS Con cabal of the U.S. SCOTUS ruled to embrace lying!!! ____OHHHH…color me surprised! Quelle Surpise!
Why, without lies, the GOP would cease to exist even more rapidly than its current trending. So that the GOPigs, Cons and Baggers’ enablers on the SCOTUS would create a platform for them is NO surprise really!
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I’m sure Clarence waited for his Master, Scalia, to eat his fill of the best parts before gorging himself!
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No surprises, with two nuts.
The solution is actually very simple-Voters need to stop paying even the slightest attention to political ads. This may already be happening given the number of candidates with huge funding advantages who have lost (Eric Cantor, for one). All ads, political or otherwise are lies and everyone knows that.
The Susan B. Anthony List is a group of Islamic fundamentalist pedophiles and receives most of their funding from the Iranian government, Mexican drug cartels and Malaysian pornography producers.
None of that is true, but I assume since they’re defenders of lying they’ll be okay with me doing it, too.
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The Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint.
Clarence Thomas and Sarah Palin are, if not the most destructive and useless people inflicted on this republic in the 21st Century, they certainly are among the most useless and destructive
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That’s much easier said than done. Most voters are only marginally engaged in the process, and they consume lots of commercial media. There’s a reason about $170 billion was spent on advertising in 2013. It works.
As for the Eric Cantor thing, I heard something interesting on Media Matters radio this weekend. Apparently big money interests paid various right wing radio personalities millions of dollars, and those various personalities strongly promoted Brat over Cantor. The Kochs alone gave $700k to Mark Levin. And every city in Cantor’s (former) district features one or more of those personalities. All the Cantor thing tells me is that (undisclosed) paid endorsements work better than ads.
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Title tells you all you need to know about the group.
They want the right to lie to the voters.
It’s that simple.
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Yeah, how do you fuck up a majority opinion?
We’ll find out, huh?
I think First Amendment issues doom any law of this kind, at least here in the U.S. - thus the unanimous decision.
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Is it only pro lifers who can lie about candidates? Can I say Mitch McConnell is a goat f@cking child molester?
This could be a huge problem for Dems. Republicans have no ethics, they will lie about anything and everything, and the more outrageous the lie, the greater the clamor from the corrupt corporate media. Democrats will bitterly complain, but they will not engage in behavior they feel is beneath them…like lying about an opponent.
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So lying is okay as long it is for a conservative cause, you can rest assured if Friends of the Earth were telling untruths about their cause this supreme court would rule against their having standing to challenge a law in any state.
These people are just so damn obvious. I think we should organize some big money folks to run a campaign to impeach all of the conservative members of the Supreme Court. Money = Free Speech right?
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Lies told during a campaign have a long and wonderful history. However, there is a very thin line between campaign lies and libel. Given the propensity for the parties to spin the truth, perhaps it is time for a legal basis for action. Maybe one basis is a law like this, where the liar is criminally charged and then penalized appropriately. That would easily form the basis for follow-up civil action that would bankrupt some of the lie factories. I hope the law stands.
and now the scouts sanctioned lying
Ottnott…Actually it was a maggot infested puppy. They ate it after they choked it to death. The puppy’s name was Truthie and she belonged to my Uncle Sam…
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Yes, but realistically, how would you ever arbitrate this stuff? I’d love to live in a world where politicians and their cronies couldn’t lie, but judging that stuff is, legally speaking, next to impossible - not to mention it would flood the court system. Is there another country where this sort of legislation works we could look to for a case study?