Im not going to pretend to really understand this yet but I know that this needs to be paid attention to.
It started with a clip from the PBS Newshour from yesterday April 27 2011.
The U.S. Supreme Court considered today when lawmakers should recuse themselves from voting on official business. A city councilman in Reno, Nev., had voted on a casino project, even though his campaign manager served as a consultant for it. An ethics commission censured the councilman, but the state Supreme Court ruled the ethics law violated his free speech rights.
I remember that Citizens United started off as some unheard of small case that nobody cared about. The justices seemed to be on the right side until suddenly they greatly expanded the case and decided that "it was wrong to not allow corporations to 'speak' as much as they are financially capable of".
This case seems to suggest that ethics rules that prohibit elected officials from favoring entities that either paid them or may improve their financial status would actually be an infringement upon their free speech rights.
In other words, politicans have the right to break the law becasue to not allow it would infringe upon their freedom of speech.
absurdity. I hope Im misunderstanding this.
I think the justices on the US Supreme Court are mostly thinking Ok so far but they were at the beginning of Citizens United as I recall.
see this link at SCOTUS blog