Cafe de Mello

On Thursday, January 21^st the five conservative jesters on the Supreme Court (the same five who decided that counting votes is irrelevant to elections) ignored the courts usual reluctance to overturn several established precedents and voted to give corporations all of the free speech rights of individuals.

I have written a couple posts noting my reaction to this, but I didn’t have time to highlight the single slimiest response to this ruling. This nauseating stream of verbal diarrhea spewed from the mouth of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

Commenting on the Supreme Court’s ruling McConnell said, “For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process.” He then stuck a big “For Sale!” label on the left breast of his jacket (right over where his heart should be).

I have read some honest free speech absolutists who genuinely think the courts ruling was correct on constitutional grounds, and the kinds of legislation proposed by Representative Alan Grayson may mitigate the some of the damage done to our political process. But there is no excuse for McConnell to react as though the Supreme Court was acting on the behalf of some repressed minority.

No one with anything besides cottage cheese and moss between their ears thinks corporations have had too little participation in our political process. This is the kind of corporatist/oligarchist thinking the Democrats need to haul in front of the populist movement in America and show them that the Republicans are really not on their side.