WarSclerotic

Hillary’s First Priority if She Wins? To Shut up Her Critics, Power Line, John Hinderaker,  July 16, 2016

(What Constitutional authority does a sitting president have to “introduce an amendment” to the Constitution? According to Article 5, that’s up to the Congress and to the States.– DM)

Hillary Clinton is giving a speech today in which she describes one of her top priorities as president:

Hillary Clinton will pledge on Saturday to introduce an amendment to the Constitution to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision within the first 30 days of her administration, an aide said Saturday.

A reader writes:

Global terrorism, coup in Turkey, unrest in USA, cops killed in cold blood by sniper in Dallas. And this is her top priority – silencing the opposition and overturning a case that said the First Amendment allows nonprofit or for profit entities to criticize her and other people running for public office.

The specific holding of Citizens United was that the federal government could not constitutionally ban the showing of a movie that was critical of Hillary Clinton. (You didn’t know that? Go ahead, read the decision for yourself.) It is perhaps understandable that Hillary would want the power to ban criticism of her in movies, magazines, web sites and books–Barack Obama’s Solicitor General specifically stated in oral argument that the administration’s position was that it can constitutionally ban books if they criticize politicians who are running for office–but it is rather shocking that repealing the First Amendment would be one of Hillary’s key objectives as president.

CNN, by the way, does its best to go to bat for Hillary, stating this as a matter of fact:

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.

That characterization is false. But I don’t suppose anyone depends on CNN for legal analysis.

This entry was posted on July 17, 2016 at 12:44 AM and is filed under Citizens United, Hillary Clinton, U.S. Constitution. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Citizens United, U.S. Constitution