Corporations are different from human beings!
For those who haven't had the chance yet, I highly recommend that you take a look at Justice Stevens' brilliant rebuttal to the majority opinion in Citizens United v. FEC beginning on page 88 of this PDF file.
Here are just a few snippets:
The fact that corporations are different from human beings might seem to need no elaboration, except that the majority opinion almost completely elides it. Austin set forth some of the basic differences. Unlike natural persons, corporations have "limited liability" for their owners and managers, "perpetual life," separation of ownership and control, "and favorable treatment of the accumulation and distribution of assets . . . that enhance their ability to attract capital and to deploy their resources in ways that maximize the return on their shareholders’ investments."
The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind. While individuals might join together to exercise their speech rights, business corporations, at least, were plainly not seen as facilitating such associational or expressive ends. Even "the notion that business corporations could invoke the First Amendment would probably have been quite a novelty,"given that "at the time, the legitimacy of every corporate activity was thought to rest entirely in a concession of the sovereign."
He goes on to say:
In light of these background practices and understandings, it seems to me implausible that the Framers believed "the freedom of speech" would extend equally to all corporate speakers, much less that it would preclude legislatures from taking limited measures to guard against corporate capture of elections.
It's a travesty that Justice Stevens' opinion wasn't shared by the majority right wing activist justices nor the ACLU. (I never thought the day would come when I'd be using that phrase.)
Justice Steven's entire opinion deserves to be read. I hope that many of you will take the time to do so.
I leave you with this video from FreeSpeechforPeople.org:
Update: As much as I tend to respect their opinions, Glenn Greenwald and Eliot Spitzer really need to read Justice Stevens' opinion more closely and reassess their support of this decision.
Update #2: In response to those who feel that corporations should be afforded unlimited First Amendment rights, Justice Stevens had an excellent response (bolding added by myself):
If taken seriously, our colleagues’ assumption that the identity of a speaker has no relevance to the Government’s ability to regulate political speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions. Such an assumption would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by "Tokyo Rose" during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders. More pertinently, it would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans: To do otherwise, after all, could "‘enhance the relative voice’" of some (i.e., humans) over others (i.e., nonhumans). Ante, at 33 (quoting Buckley, 424 U. S., at 49). Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech.