ONeill: Time for a campaign finance amendment
Would that the First Amendment actually said: Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press and centuries from now we solemnly trust these sacred rights will continue to prevail with appropriate application of wisdom and common sense pertinent to their context.
Arguably, there would never even have been a need for Oliver Wendell Holmes to point out that, The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater.
Of course it wouldnt unless free speech were an absolute. It absolutely isnt.
Alas, the Founding Fathers were neither perfect nor perfectly prescient neither John Roberts nor Sheldon Adelson was foreseen.
We do the best we can in 2014 without channeling the enlightened but necessarily Fallible Fathers of 1789. Common sense isnt specifically noted in the Constitution, but we preclude it at our own 21st century risk.
It would be societally embarrassing to add an amendment stipulating common-sense recourse, but a 28th Amendment settling the score on money and free speech would more than suffice. From Citizens United to McCutcheon, the democracy-devolving case is already being made.
Democracy for sale is a clear and present danger and results when the political arena morphs into the purview of billionaire ideologues and vested interests. American exceptionalism shouldnt be disingenuous code for money talks.
Its past time to just flat out say that money is not speech under the First Amendment, any more than corporations are people.
Of course, they arent. But it needs codifying, along with the right to limit what individuals and corporate entities can spend on elections, to pull us back from especially the Super PAC brink.
The time for a common sense, common good, limits-on-obscene spending amendment is upon us. Actually, the Moneyball era is engulfing us.
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ONeill: Time for a campaign finance amendment