Hillary’s Supreme Court Litmus Test
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillarys-supreme-court-litmus-test-1432250132
Perhaps you remember when litmus tests for Supreme Court nominees were frowned upon, even by the most ideological candidates. That was when the litmus-testing came from the right on abortion. Hillary Clinton broke through that barrier on the left this week when she announced that support for restrictions on political speech would be make- or-break for her Supreme Court choices.
“The Supreme Court made a grave error with Citizens United,” Mrs. Clinton said of the 2010 case restoring the First Amendment right of businesses and unions to participate in politics. “I will do everything I can to appoint Supreme Court Justices who protect the right to vote and do not protect the right of billionaires to buy elections.”
Recall that Citizens United was about the right of a conservative political group to criticize Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy by distributing a 90-minute documentary “Hillary: the Movie” on cable TV during the 2008 presidential primaries. Apparently she wants to ban the sequel.
Mrs. Clinton is also supporting the efforts of Congressional Democrats to amend the First Amendment to restrict this kind of political speech. That isn’t likely to pass, but that’s where her new litmus test comes in. Citizens United and many of the current Supreme Court’s campaign finance rulings were decided 5-4. Replace a single conservative Justice with a litmus-test liberal and the Court can overturn those precedents and edit the First Amendment on the fly.
Mrs. Clinton’s declaration is also curious in light of the controversies surrounding contributions to the Clinton Foundation. A recent revelation addresses the foundation’s relationships with labor unions. According to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, labor groups contributed some $2 million of their general treasury funds to Clinton-related foundations in recent years, including the William J. Clinton Foundation, the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and the Clinton Global Initiative.
The donations are noteworthy because while the Clintons have defended the donations of foreign governments on grounds that the foundation is a charity, not a political organization, many of the unions apparently thought differently. The National Institute compared the Clinton Foundation reports to union disclosure forms filed with the Department of Labor, and it turns out the unions marked some of their Clinton Foundation contributions as supporting “political activities.” Would Hillary want a First Amendment carve-out to ban those contributions too?
Unions spend millions of dollars every year on politics and lobbying, much of it collected from workers who may not agree with the union’s political goals. Mrs. Clinton says we should amend the Constitution to “fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all.” Present company apparently excluded.
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