I don't know what's more stunning here - the fact that Hillary flat-out tells you she wants to gut the First Amendment, or the fact that the media reports it in the same misleading Clintonese with which she presents it. I'd say it's highly likely that whoever wrote this story on CNN's web site is so deep in the tank for Hillary that he or she really doesn't think beyond the nonsense with which Hillary presents this stuff, but dang:
Clinton first made the pledge to overturn the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United, which opened the floodgates for outside money in politics, while campaigning in Iowa in 2015. She will tell an audience Saturday in a video to be played at Netroots Nation, a liberal organizing conference in St. Louis, that a key way to restore order to politics is to curb unaccounted money.
A Clinton aide said the plan was a "a key plank of Clinton's plan to challenge the stranglehold that wealthy interests have over our political system" and would allow "Americans to establish common sense rules to protect against the undue influence of billionaires and special interests and to restore the role of average voters in elections."
Organizations focused on getting unaccounted money out of politics heralded Clinton's planned announcement.
"Hillary Clinton's commitment to overturning Citizens United, and her other systemic proposals like public financing of congressional elections, are key to improving our chances of victory on every other issue. It's great that she elevated progressive infrastructure by making this announcement at Netroots Nation -- and that she is promising to elevate the fight against big money influence in politics during her first month in office," said Marissa Barrow, a spokeswoman for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
Glaring omission number one in this story
Glaring omission number one in this story: Nowhere will you find an explanation of what the Citizens United case was actually about. Citizens United is a private organization that used its own money to fund the production of a film critical of a certain Democrat politician. And who was that politician? Why, it was Hillary Clinton. The left was aghast at this and tried to use the force of the federal government to charge that Citizens United had violated "campaign finance laws" by making the film and not treating the expenditures as if they were campaign spending subject to regulation under the FEC, including limits on what could be spent and disclosure requirements.
This led to the Supreme Court ruling that the left cannot stop shrieking about: That private corporations have the same free speech rights under the First Amendment as private individuals, and that it is neither a speech crime nor a campaign spending crime for them to make a movie critical of any politician - including Hillary.
For all the left's talk about "unaccountable money," what this really means is that they don't want corporations to have the same political spending rights as unions - and Citizens United blew their ideal world to smithereens.
So along comes the very politician who was criticized in the film in question, vowing if elected president to change the Constitution to make it illegal to produce such a film in the future. And somehow in writing a story about this, CNN neglects to mention any of that. Astonishing.
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So is this, and it's the only somewhat silver lining to this whole thing: Hillary as president (or any president for that matter) doesn't have the authority to change the Constitution, and can't even really do very much to set such a process in motion. Even if she were to try proposing it, you'd still need a more-than-supermajority act of Congress and the ratification of 38 states, or a call by as many states for a constitutional convention. That is certainly not going to happen, at least not for the purpose of gutting Americans' First Amendment rights.
If Donald Trump were to propose such a thing, the media narrative would be that a dummy who doesn't even understand how the government works had proposed to take away Americans' rights in a way that wasn't even possible. But when Hillary proposes it, we're told she wants to go after "unaccountable money" and we're not reminded of her own personal interest in the matter.
Great reporting there, CNN.
What could happen under a President Hillary, however, is the rogue use of regulatory powers to harass and investigate the makers of such films as if Citizens United had never happened, and as if there were no such First Amendment rights. Obama has turned executive disregard for the Constitution into a high art form, and there is no reason to believe Hillary would do anything but push that approach even farther. What's the point of amending the Constitution if you're just going to ignore it when you want to anyway? Hillary has already announced her disdain for Americans' free speech rights, and you can absolutely expect that she would use her authority over the executive branch to make it as difficult as possible for you to exercise them.
I guess CNN sees that coming and figures it had better start now by reporting new in a way that's pleasing to the queen.
I don't know what's more stunning here - the fact that Hillary flat-out tells you she wants to gut the First Amendment, or the fact that the media reports it in the same misleading Clintonese with which she presents it. I'd say it's highly likely that whoever wrote this story on CNN's web site is so deep in the tank for Hillary that he or she really doesn't think beyond the nonsense with which Hillary presents this stuff, but dang:
