Sanders / Hillary nailed on hostilitty to 1st Amendment

"Bernie Sanders, greedy for power to punish people he considers greedy, has occasioned 2016's best

joke (reported in Bloomberg Businessweek): “In the Bernie Sanders drinking game, every time he mentions a free government program, you drink someone else's beer.”

But neither Sanders' nor Hillary Clinton's hostility to the First Amendment is amusing. Both have voted to do something never done before — make the Bill of Rights less protective. They favor amending the First Amendment to permit government regulation of political campaign speech
 

There is no reason the regulatory, redistributive state should distinguish between various markets. So, government that is competent and duty-bound to regulate markets for goods and services to promote social justice is competent and duty-bound to regulate the marketplace of ideas for the same purpose.

Sanders and Clinton detest the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which they say their court nominees will promise to reverse. It held that unions and corporations — especially incorporated advocacy groups, from the National Rifle Association to the Sierra Club — can engage in unregulated spending on political advocacy that is not coordinated with candidates or campaigns.

The decision simply recognized that Americans do not forfeit their First Amendment rights when they come together in incorporated entities to magnify their voices by speaking collectively.

Opposition to Citizens United is frequently distilled into the slogan that “corporations are not people,” to which Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., adds this example of “progressive” insight: “People have hearts. They have kids. They get jobs. They get sick. They cry. They dance. They live. They love. And they die.”  TB