Let’s hear the argument for rewriting the First Amendment

Apparently there are a few Republicans who have decided it is time to give the Democrats enough rope to hang themselves.

Twenty Republicans — including Nevada’s junior senator, Dean Heller — joined the Democrats to vote 79-18 to begin debate on a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress and the states to limit how much of one’s own money a person or organization may spend on elections and issues.

That means as much as a week of the two weeks the Senate will be in session before the elections will be spent debating an amendment that has no chance of passing. 

Less time to talk about the budget. Less time to discuss immigration, terrorism and even the things the Democrats want to push, such as the minimum wage, equal pay for women and reforming student aid.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, of course, used the occasion to bash the Koch brothers and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“We’ll vote on a constitutional amendment that would bring sanity back to elections and restore Americans’ confidence in our democracy,” Reid tweeted before the vote.

So, let the Democrats start gabbing about how important it is to protect the stupid voters from being exposed to someone’s ideas because they spend money to get their message out. Of course, the press is exempted because they spend no money and have no agenda. Right?

That is the crux of the argument: Voters are stupid. Well, that may be a given, since they elected these buffoons to the Senate.

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Citizens United v. FEC, which this amendment would overturn, pointed out the wrongness of a law restricting speech by restricting spending:

As a “restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign,” that statute “necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached.” Buckley v. Valeo , 424 U. S. 1, 19 (1976) (per curiam) . Were the Court to uphold these restrictions, the Government could repress speech by silencing certain voices at any of the various points in the speech process. See McConnell , supra , at 251 (opinion of Scalia , J.) (Government could repress speech by “attacking all levels of the production and dissemination of ideas,” for “effective public communication requires the speaker to make use of the services of others”). If §441b applied to individuals, no one would believe that it is merely a time, place, or manner restriction on speech. Its purpose and effect are to silence entities whose voices the Government deems to be suspect.

Reid would like to silence the Koch brothers, while he would still be allowed to rant on the floor of the Senate.

It would be tempting to call for a gag on Reid, but the more he talks, the more he reveals about himself, his motives and his objective to stamp out liberties.