One has to wonder whether the five conservative judges on the US Supreme Court ever stop to think about what they said in congressional hearings prior to their appointment.
The five conservative judges that decided the the 2000 presidential election were "state's rights" jurists when they appeared before Congress because at that time states rights meant that states were entitled to determine their own voting procedures. However, in the case of the 2000 election, they flip-flopped and reversed the opinion of the Supreme Court of the State of Florida, awarding the election to George W. Bush. Their political persuasion was more important than their professed belief in states' rights.
Now again, in 2010, the five conservative justices ( yes, you can read that as "Republican") who went on in great length in their congressional hearings railing against the danger of "activist" judges have indeed become activist judges in overturning a hundred years of opinions that said corporations did not possess the same right to free speech that individual citizens were entitled to by the First Amendment. Now corporations and unions can spend as much money as they wish in their efforts to influence an election. And they can do this without even consulting their shareholders and members.
Wow! No wonder countries around the world question our democracy, and suggest it is in fact plutocracy..
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