vol 83m issue22

Posted by HighlandWindsLLC Miller on May 19, 2010; 7:10pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/vol-83m-issue22-tp5076432.html

quoting sarbajit roy:

As an ordinary citizen who has personally argued and won some cases before the Supreme Court of my country (India) on Free Speech issues (one coincidentally involving large corporations and television broadcasting), I was actually quite impressed with the reasoning in the majority ratio handed down by your Supreme Court (although to be frank, I am not up to speed on the case law of your country).in "Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission". The message I got from the judgement is that the Court is adamant on ensuring that citizens are fully informed no matter what the source of information is so long as the mandatory disclaimers are in place and the bias is spelled out up front. "The Government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but it may not suppress that speech altogether." Heck, now Osama-BL Inc. has the right to buy air-time and tell you what he thinks of the Georges Bush,


I wanted to say that I believe the disagreement about this Supreme Court decision centers on the issue of timing. It has been shown that if ads are allowed to be run on a candidate and their position right up to the day before the election, there is no chance to respond by the candidate. Damning statements with no validity at all can be placed on our television sets or on radio the day before and the candidate has no way (no time) to respond to them. Therefore, in the past, we cut off new ad content quite a bit before, thereby protecting all.

Peggy Miller

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