Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
April 11, 2012
Whether Democrat or Republican, I believe most U.S. citizens feel that members of our Supreme Court habitually use obviously bad precedents to make brand new bad decisions. One example is the contention that because corporations are sometimes considered not to be individuals that they can never be accorded the same rights as individuals. Thus they feel that corporations do not have a right to freedom of speech! Unfortunately (1) The “sometimes” ruins the syllogism and clearly belies their bad logic and (2) there is no place in the Constitution where it says that the right of “freedom of speech” is reserved to individuals only! The argument is either (a) patently dishonest or (b) patently stupid. Take your choice! Unfortunately, there is no (c) and there is no (d) in this case.
Meanwhile, regarding the argument that money and speech are the same thing, unfortunately there is no (a), no (b), no (c), and no (d). This argument is based on the drinking of untreated sewage. For a Supreme Court Justice to say that a donation of millions of dollars simply shows that the donor agrees with the lucky candidate also reveals the rancid quality of the colleagues with whom that Justice sleeps. Is there anyone naive enough to think that for a good deal smaller donation that the same Justice might not change his own “valuable” opinion? The question we must now ask is not whether we ought to “let the sleeping dogs lie,” but whether or not the slumbering and cowardly legal profession will continue to“ let the lying dogs sleep?”
Al Finkelstein