Citizens United - A Primer on the Court Case

Citizens United is a nonprofit corporation and conservative advocacy group that successfully sued the Federal Election Commission in 2008, claiming its campaign finance rules represented unconstitutional restrictions on the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision ruled that the federal government cannot limit corporations  Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã‚  or, for that matter, unions, associations, or individuals  Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã‚  from spending money to influence the outcome of elections. The ruling led to the creation of super PACs. â€Å"If the First Amendment has any force it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech,† Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority. About Citizens United Citizens United describes itself as a being dedicated to the goal of restoring government to U.S. citizens through education, advocacy, and grassroots organization. â€Å"Citizens United seeks to reassert the traditional American values of limited government, freedom of enterprise, strong families, and national sovereignty and security. Citizens Uniteds goal is to restore the founding fathers vision of a free nation, guided by the honesty, common sense, and good will of its citizens,† it states on its website. Origins of Citizens United Case The Citizens United legal case stems from the groups intention to broadcast â€Å"Hillary: The Movie,† a documentary it produced that was critical of then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, who at the time was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. The film examined Clintons record in the Senate and as the first lady to President Bill Clinton. The FEC claimed the documentary represented electioneering communications as defined by the McCain-Feingold law, known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. McCain-Feingold prohibited such communications by broadcast, cable, or satellite within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. Citizens United challenged the decision but was turned away by the District Court for the District of Columbia. The group appealed the case to the Supreme Court. The Decision The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in favor of Citizens United overruled two lower-court rulings. The first was Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a 1990 decision that upheld restrictions on corporate political spending. The second was McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, a 2003 decision that upheld the 2002 McCain-Feingold law banning â€Å"electioneering communications† paid for by corporations. Voting with Kennedy in the majority were Chief Justice John G. Roberts and associate justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. Dissenting were justices John P. Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor. Kennedy, writing for the majority, opined Governments are often hostile to speech, but under our law and our tradition it seems stranger than fiction for our Government to make this political speech a crime. The four dissenting justices described the majority opinion as a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. Opposition President Barack Obama leveled perhaps the most vocal criticism of the Citizens United decision by directly taking on the Supreme Court, saying the five majority justices â€Å"handed a huge victory to the special interests and their lobbyists.† Obama lashed out at the ruling in his 2010 State of the Union address. With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections, Obama said during his address to a joint session of Congress. I dont think American elections should be bankrolled by Americas most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, the president said. And Id urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems. In the 2012 presidential contest, however, Obama softened his stance on super PACs and encouraged his fundraisers to bring in contributions to a super PAC that was supporting his candidacy. Support for the Ruling David N. Bossie, the president of Citizens United, and Theodore B. Olson, who served as the group’s lead counsel against the FEC, described the ruling as striking a blow for freedom of political speech. â€Å"In Citizens United, the court reminded us that when our government seeks ‘to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,’† Bossie and Olson wrote in The Washington Post in January of 2011. â€Å"The government argued in Citizens United that it could ban books advocating the election of a candidate if they were published by a corporation or labor union. Today, thanks to Citizens United, we may celebrate that the First Amendment confirms what our forefathers fought for: ‘the freedom to think for ourselves.’† Sources Bossie, David N. How the Citizens United ruling freed political speech. Theodore B. Olson, The Washington Post, January 20, 2011. Justice Kennedy. Supreme Court of the United States Citizens United, Appellant v. Federal Election Commission. Legal Information Institute. Cornell University Law School, January 21, 2010.   Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address. The White House, January 27, 2010. Who We Are.  Citizens United, 2019, Washington, D.C.

The Greatest Cycling Doping Scheme Fell Apart Around The...

In 2012 the greatest cycling doping scheme fell apart around the ringleader, Lance Armstrong. He was called a cheat, bully, and stripped of all seven of his consecutive Tour De France yellow jerseys. At the heart of all of this was a drug called EPO and a method called blood doping. In an investigation by the International Cycling Union (UCI) they found that the period between 1990 and 2000 to as an â€Å"epo epidemic† (Lodewijkx 3). And even now dozens of professional athletes get banned over the use of this substance every year. After the â€Å"witch-hunt† that was the trial and eventually lifetime banning of Lance Armstrong from professional cycling there is evidence that rHuEPO may not even help these world class athletes perform any better than non-rHuEPO using athletes. The largest problem in cycling today is the instantaneous bans and little investigation that goes along with the use of rHuEPO by the UCI. This essay asserts that the UCI instead of putting these h arsh bans on the athletes should examine: rHuEPO physiologically rather than through speculative models, the extent which a cyclist’s performance is enhanced in a true race environment, and the psychological fallacies that come with rHuEPO use and cyclists who win a lot so they may eliminate rHuEPO use. The critics of these banned or suspended athletes would argue that since rHuEPO does give a significant advantage to the athletes that use it, then in turn they should have a consequence for cheating. Per Jenkins,

Possessed by Radzinsky Essay Example For Students

Possessed by Radzinsky Essay At a postplay discussion following a performance of Russian playwright Edvard Radzinskys An Old Actress in the Role of Dostoevskys Wife running through Nov. 13 at the Jean Cocteau Repertory in New York a woman in the audience wanted to know why she had never heard of the author. How, she wondered, could she be totally unfamiliar with one of Russias most successful playwrights, even though his plays are frequently performed in Europe? Translator Alma H. Law summed it up in the neat phrase name recognition, something which Radzinsky is only now starting to achieve, thanks to the success in the United States of his first book, The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II. Its a telling commentary on the marginal status of theatre in our culture that the few Americans who have ever heard of Radzinsky know him for a bestseller and not for any of his two dozen plays. But at the Cocteau Rep, interest in Radzinskys work is no mere fad. An Old Actress is in fact the fourth Radzinsky play staged at the Cocteau since 1984all directed by Eve Adamson in translations by Law. The Cocteau has proven an ideal environment to nurture this rare relationship between foreign playwright and his American collaborators. Beyond boy-meets-tractor Founded by Adamson in 1971, the theatre has always focused on classical and international repertory using a core ensemble of actors. The resident actors lent the productions significant continuity; longtime company member Craig Smith, for example, played the male leads in each of the four plays. The small size and modest means of the Cocteaus 140-seat Bowerie Lane Theatre seem conducive to Radzinskys work, in contrast to the huge Soviet theatres. When Adamson saw her first Radzinsky play in the Soviet Union, she says, They were trying very hard to make it heavy and realistic, and Radzinsky said, Well, of course this really doesnt work. This should be done in a small theatre with a lot of imagination. And I thought, oh gee, sounds like my kind of playwright. Adamson first traveled to the Soviet Union in 1984the year Andropov died, she rememberswith three other American directors as guests of the Soviet copyright agency. Although the ostensible purpose of the trip was to interest Americans in Soviet playwrights, she admits that at first she found herself despairing over the state of contemporary Socialist drama and its penchant for stories revolving around boy meets tractor. Until she met Radzinsky, that is. What appealed to me about his work when I encountered it in Moscow was its universality. I had no interest in doing anything about collectivization, but here was somebody who was talking about the big stuff. It goes beyond national boundaries. Radzinsky suggested that Adamson, who had only seen his plays in Russian, contact Law, an American Russian scholar who had translated a number of his plays. Co-editor of the journal Russian and Eastern European Performance, Law had first met Radzinsky in 1977, and kept in touch with him over the years, even when travel to the Soviet Union was restricted. I was in Europe fairly often, and if he was somewhere we would meet and talk, or he would call me on the telephone from somewhere, and I would call him back. So over the years we carried on this kind of a dialogue, and I would always tape everything. In the fall of 1984, Adamson collaborated with Law on the first of the Cocteaus Radzinsky productions, Theatre in the Time of Nero and Seneca, part of what the author calls his historical-philosophical trilogy. Despite intense efforts, it was impossible to bring the playwright to the U.S. to take part. However, a grant from the International Theater Institutes Trust for Mutual Understanding enabled Adamson to bring him over in 1985 and 86 for the other two plays in the trilogy, Lunin: Theatre of Death and Socrates: Theatre of Life. .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8 , .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8 .postImageUrl , .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8 , .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8:hover , .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8:visited , .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8:active { border:0!important; } .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8:active , .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8 .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .ue7ad9e289362273332a58e738765b0f8:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Abe's global vision EssayGreeks and others My experience is primarily working with dead playwrights, so Im used to taking tremendous liberties with scripts, Adamson saysbut here her partners shared the task of reshaping the plays for an American audience. Most contemporary Russian plays, in Laws opinion, need cutting, and An Old Actress is no exceptionthe hour-and-a-half Cocteau version is roughly half the length of the Moscow production. For Russian playwrights, as for Russian people, its part of their national character to repeat things at least three times, Law says, They keep recycling, recycling, recycling. Fortunately for Adamson and Law, Radzinsky understands the need to cut his plays for American audiences. He had no qualms at all about our cutting this play, or the other three, Adamson recalls. Hes a very generous playwright. If he trusts you, then he trusts you. Not surprisingly for works written in the late-70s Soviet Union, the plays in the trilogy explore the role of the individual in totalitarian society. Although clearly speaking to contemporary Soviet issues, none of the plays is set in the present. Each focuses on an historical intellectual and his oppressor: the philosopher-playwright Seneca who committed suicide on the order of the emperor-playwright Nero; the Russian intellectual Lunin murdered in prison for his part in the 1825 Decembrist uprising; and the jailed Socrates, abandoned at the end by his friends and disciples. Who are these characters? Written in 1985 under the freer atmosphere of glasnost, An Old Actress can in no way be considered political. Radzinsky seems to be relishing the freedom to be ambiguous, pushing the idea of play-acting to its limits. The plays two characters arent what they first appear. There is the Actress who plays the role of Dostoevskys wife, and who at the same time exists as an an individual, as an actress who unites her life with that of Anna Grigorevnas, Radzinsky elaborates. There is also the madman who presents himself as Dostoevsky. But when I finished the play and reread it, then it became clear to me that I myself wasnt sure who these characters were. Perhaps the confusion of character and author mirrors the confusion of a society where the past has been rejected but the future still seems a long way off. This sense of a displaced present is captured in Radzinskys observation that the Actress in this play doesnt remember the number of the room in which she is living, but she always remembers the number of Dostoevskys apartment. Radzinsky is unique among Soviet playwrights in his ability to keep his finger on the pulse of his culture. He was always a step ahead of everybody else, says Law. He always seemed to know where the society was going, where the situation was headed. Why are his plays so popular? They are such good acting vehiclesaudiences love to go watch good actors and actresses in his plays, Law suggests. She also credits the philosophical texture of his writing: I would characterize him as, at the core, a European, and not a Russian, playwright. The questions he deals with are handled in a more philosophical way, which makes the material easy for audiences in other countries to identify with. Other than the Cocteau, only university theatres have done Radzinskys plays in English, and Laws translations have yet to be published. Name recognition, though, can work wonders. Since his novel hit the bestseller list, Law comments, I have had a lot of phone calls.

Stresses of High School free essay sample

All the shock and confusion that I’ve felt my whole life could not possibly compare to the confusion I felt when I pulled out a small piece of paper from under my pillow with the word â€Å"Dad† written upon it. The confusion grew more when I noticed the youngest of my four brothers come into my bedroom and announce that he had left me a note under my pillow. The implication of the note was staggering. Ever since the accident with my step-father that left him more like a child than a father, I’ve felt that I’ve become more like a father to my brothers than an older brother, but never to this extent. Could my brother have placed the note under my pillow to indicate that this was where daddy slept? Had they been playing a game and I was simply named daddy? Am I their father to them? Am I the one they call dad? My whole life I’ve felt like I grew up without a father, without someone to show me how life worked and how to make it work for you. We will write a custom essay sample on Stresses of High School or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Being alone like that made me withdraw into my own mind and be more quiet towards new people and make it harder for me to trust even the ones I knew. Growing up without a father figure left me introverted and isolated in my room even to this day. I watch my best friend talk with his father and I wonder what that’s like, to have someone like that in your life. Watching them and knowing I don’t have that makes me wonder if I’m going to grow up and be a good father. But being around my brothers proves that I will, I’ve watched them grow and I’ve changed their diapers and been there when they’ve lost their first tooth. I try to be more than a big brother to them, I try to teach them how life works. I want to teach them everything they need to know. I want to take what I do for my brothers and I want to turn that into what I do for everyone. I believe that the hardest time for a person is high school. Between the opposite sex, drugs, money, gangs, and â€Å"who’s got the better car?† it’s the most stressful time of your life. But I also believe it’s the most critical point to make a difference, to take their life and help them turn it around. And not just in the classroom, but also on the football field. To be a football coach is one of my dreams, one of my passions. I want to show kids, that life is just like football. That you should always go into it with your shoulder down and your head up, to put your strong foot forward and look for the hole, and when you go through, you pull your teammate right in with you and you both run for that end zone. I believe I have the talent to stand in front of a class room and teach kids the history of our country and then help them learn how to make their own his tory. I think outside to box; to take what people have taught me and go a different way than the norm, to go different paths than everyone else but still reach the same destination but with more ease and possibly quicker. That is a skill that you teach your self, but I believe that I can help teenagers understand that they have the potential to think outside the norm and become more than what everyone perceives them to be. That is what I try to do for my brothers, to help them succeed where they believe they have failed. To show them that just because you don’t do things they way everyone else does, doesn’t mean your wrong, but maybe everyone else is wrong and you’re the one that’s right. I want to teach them that in life you go into the world with your shoulder down and your head up. And you look for that hole that’s going to bring you to the end zone. I know how to get through life with only your thoughts to keep you company. To get around problems by not pushing through the wall, but instead to look to the side and see the path around. My brothers show me I can do good in life and that’s what I want to do for others. As the American philosopher, Tyron Edwards, once said, â€Å"If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others.†