Soft Money and Justice Thomas

Yesterday's 5-4 Supreme Court decision upholding the McCain-Feingold campaign reform act -- including its prohibition on use of corporate "soft money" and for funding of "issue" ads that mention candidates -- is really a very modest step. That is clear when one realizes how long America has been fighting against the corrupting influence of money in politics. It's been going on since Teddy Roosevelt, more than 100 years.

All of this yielded classic knee-jerk dissents by the Court's conservative core (Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas), who continue incorrectly to equate political contributions with political speech. But the most telling sign that the Right is whacked on this issue comes from Justice Clarence Thomas -- the silent one, still suffering the ignominy a decade+ later of Anita Hill -- who would not even agree that political ads "authorized" by a candidate must clearly identify that candidate. The vote here was 8-1, with everyone else on the Court joining.

This graphic from the Washington Post illustrates the point. I guess Thomas thinks that since politics is mostly about overstatement and misleading claims anyway, it is unimportant whether voters can be misled about who is making the claims. That's absurd, but it shows how out of touch and foolish Thomas remains all these years later.

 Posted by glenn