Benjamin Hodge writes at Race42012.com:

Perhaps it’s that eminent domain abuse so much more clearly, more entirely, and more immediately takes away freedom from an individual private citizen, when compared to the much more complex negative effects of Big Government (which both redistributes and causes opportunity costs for the private economy in ways that are difficult-to-clearly define). (more…)

Amen.

Wall Street Journal editorial:

With Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Alito has previously taken a cautious, piecemeal approach to campaign finance law. But as the current case shows, McCain-Feingold is a blunt instrument that gives federal bureaucrats the power to decide what kind of campaign advertising is allowed during an election. If “Hillary: the Movie” isn’t allowed, then Michael Moore’s documentaries should be banned, and newspaper endorsements would also be suspect despite a specific carve-out in the law. If newspapers didn’t have that carve-out, then maybe so many editors wouldn’t cheerlead for this kind of law.

McCain-Feingold is a frontal assault on political speech, and President Bush’s decision to sign it while claiming to dislike it was one of the worst moments of his eight years in office. Citizens United gives the Justices a new opportunity to chip away at this attack on the First Amendment, and even better if they use it to declare the whole thing unconstitutional.

Thomas Mitchell:

Reading the 68-page transcript of this past week’s Supreme Court arguments over whether spending for promotion of “Hillary: The Movie” violated the McCain-Feingold Act was like watching 11 people debate whether the ship they are on should sink bow-first or stern-first. They kept arguing about whether the movie was covered by the scope of the law and only occasionally raised the question of whether the law itself violated the Constitution, specifically the First Amendment prohibition against government abridgement of free speech.

At the heart of the case is a 90-minute, limited-release movie created by Citizens United, which was largely critical of Hillary Clinton during her 2008 Democratic presidential primary bid. The Federal Election Commission ruled that, under McCain-Feingold, corporate money could not be spent to promote the movie on a video-on-demand cable channel.

You see, McCain-Feingold was passed by Congress — and fundamentally twice upheld by the Supreme Court, though it chipped away at some aspects — under the rotten rubric that the people are just too gosh darned gullible to be exposed to the corrupting influence of campaign messages financed by wealthy corporations and unions. (Wealthy political action committees and individuals are another matter.)