Liz Cheney wants us to question the values of lawyers who would represent terrorist suspects at trial.  She wants us to question the Department of Justice that employs them and its credibility in the area of Justice if it is in the practice of hiring people who defend the guilty.

This is, aside from being idiotic, thoroughly unAmerican.

What does it mean to be American?  An American is not someone born here.  An American is not someone with a particular religion or one of a specific set of last names.  We are Americans because we subscribe to a particular form of government: A government of laws, not men; based on Freedom, Justice, and Equality; and deriving its just power from the consent of the governed.  This is not possible if anyone is presumed guilty until proven innocent or denied due process.  To assert that some are not entitled to due process is objectively to be unAmerican.

The court has touted the decision as a victory for Freedom of Speech in a disgusting perversion of everything America stands for.  The Court has removed even a hint of an attempt to insulate the political process from the profit motive.  The market has triumphed over the Republic.  Democracy is no longer one-man-one-vote, but rather one-dollar-one-vote.

What’s good for the profit maximizing autocracy that is the modern American corporation is clearly now good for us all.  If you don’t like a multi-national, billion-dollar corporation spewing toxic waste into your back yard, well, I suppose it’s time for you to incorporate a business, raise capital, and buy a political campaign.  It’s now the American way.

What do we gain if we expand the freedom of speech for corporations, handing them megaphones, without similarly augmenting the voice of the individual?  This is not equality of outcome and neither is it equality of opportunity.  It is a shameless erosion of the political process that takes power from the poor and even the well-off individual and hands it to the corporation.

At this point, it seems there is some room for Congress to act by legislating restrictions other than bans on corporate purchase of elections.  A petition is available to sign at Organizing for America.  I’d sign it myself, but the corporate firewall blocks the site–an irony I assure you is not lost on me.

Read more at The New York Times: Editorial – The Court’s Blow to Democracy or Supreme Court Blocks Ban on Corporate Political Spending.