James Taranto has a great column about how all the left-wing vitriol over the Citizens United case really is just an attempt to maintain the once monopoly power of left-wing corporations over political speech.
News flash — The New York Times is a corporation which protects its electioneering for liberal causes under the banner of press freedom, while seeking to deny other corporations similar rights.
The Privilege to Speak (via Instapundit):
A corporate division has once again exercised its First Amendment rights to argue that corporations don’t have First Amendment rights. This time, however, the New York Times Co. claims to have discovered a loophole that protects its First Amendment rights.In an editorial today, the Times Co.’s eponymous flagship newspaper answers Justice Samuel Alito, who in a terrific speech last week at the Federalist Society in Washington penetratingly (“speciously,” according to the Times) defended the court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That 5-4 ruling struck down portions of two laws that imposed government censorship on political speech by corporations and unions (though they made an exception for “media corporations” such as the New York Times Co. and News Corp., which publishes The Wall Street Journal and this website).Alito elaborated an argument this column made in January 2010, just after he and his colleagues handed down Citizens United. He noted that many landmark free-speech decisions vindicated the rights of corporations, including two that involved the New York Times Co. …The Times Co.’s notion that only certain types of corporations are “deserving of constitutional protection” is pernicious. It recasts freedom of expression as a privilege rather than a right. It assigns to the government the authority to determine which corporations are to be favored with the “media” distinction allowing them to engage in political debate.The Times Co. wants itself and similar corporations to enjoy a monopoly on free speech. The only way to accomplish that is through a regime in which the government effectively licenses the press. That would be an anathema to America’s constitutional tradition.
The NY Times is the enemy of freedom with which it doesn’t agree. Which means that it is the enemy of freedom.
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