Tasty Tidbits 8/25/11

1. The Germ of Citizens United.
2. Michelle Bachmann is no Hillaire Belloc.
3. Ron Paul, jailer of women.
4. Hissy-fit at Washington Post.
5. Bipartisan Bank Bilge.
6. Microcosm.
7. Worth driving an extra 120 miles for.

1

There’s lots of justifiable handwringing over the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision on corporate contributions to political causes. Linda Greenhouse, left-leaning court observer, illuminatingly unearths the 1978 antecedent case.

“If the speakers here were not corporations, no one would suggest that the state could silence their proposed speech,” the majority observed, insisting that speech did not lose its constitutional protection “simply because its source is a corporation.” The vote was 5 to 4. What gripped me — what made me feel like an archeologist unearthing the artifacts of a vanished civilization — was one of the dissenting opinions.

This dissenting justice did not take issue with a corporation’s status as a “person” in the eyes of the law (as Mitt Romney recently reminded a heckler at the Iowa State Fair). But corporate personhood was “artificial,” not “natural,” the justice observed. A corporation’s rights were not boundless but, rather, limited, and the place of “the right of political expression” on the list of corporate rights was highly questionable. “A state grants to a business corporation the blessings of potentially perpetual life and limited liability to enhance its efficiency as an economic entity,” the dissenting opinion continued. “It might reasonably be concluded that those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere … Indeed, the states might reasonably fear that the corporation would use its economic power to obtain further benefits beyond those already bestowed.”

Noting that most states, along with the federal government, had placed limits on the ability of corporations to participate in politics, the dissenting justice concluded: “The judgment of such a broad consensus of governmental bodies expressed over a period of many decades is entitled to considerable deference from this Court.”

The dissenter was Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist. What a difference three decades makes.

(Emphasis added) This is really good stuff, in my opinion.

2

Peter Berger at The American Interest blogs on the ease with which Michelle Bachmann dropped her Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod membership days before declaring for President. He then continues, publicizing the WELS’s conviction that, to all appearances, it is Christ’s True Church, and that the Pope is antiChrist — a very common Reformation belief.

I’ve lamented the Evangelical (in the American sense of that word) tendency to paper over difference in favor of diffuse bonhomie, so you’ve got to sit up and give at least a moment of respectful attention to the Wisconsin Evangelical (in the European sense) Lutheran Church’s implausible claim. Apparently, they take ecclesiology seriously.

Back to Bachmann. It’s a mark against her, in my book, that she should so casually drop a Church whose tenets might draw some unwanted attention. It certainly is a mark that she takes ecclesiology somewhat less seriously than does her former Church home.

Better than Bachmann’s quiet divorce or JFK’s “Aw shucks! It’s just an ‘accident of birth'” is Hillaire Belloc’s defiance of anti-Catholics as he ran for office:

This is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me for this I shall thank God that he has spared me the ignominy of representing you in Parliament.

Any questions?

3

It’s nice to see Ron Paul taken seriously enough that progressives will throw in preposterous lies like that he’s “loudly trumpeting his plan to impose criminal penalties on women who terminate their pregnancies.”

Where does he trumpet that? Here.

Don’t see it? Like I say, “preposterous lies.”

(HT Anne Althouse)

4

Jonathan Capehart at Washington Post throws one of his periodic hissy fits, this time at Rick Perry. It includes the “homophobe” canard and laments that the Perry campaign isn’t returning his calls.

I wouldn’t return them, either. Nothing short of surrender will silence Capehart on this topic. Anything less you give him will be twisted and distorted.

For the record: There is nothing beyond the pale about Perry’s quoted position. Capehart may not like it, but analogizing homosexuality with alcoholism is pretty tame, and quite in line with the sober-if-excoriated Roman Catholic position that homosexuality is “objectively disordered.”

Capehart’s participation in the campaign to shout down dissident opinion is shameful.

5

Doug Masson blogs on Matt Tabbai of Rolling Stone’s excoriation of the Obama administration, which is trying to get the bankers behind much of the mortgage bust slapped on the wrist and released.

It’s too easy, for me at least, to say “Away with with them all. Government promoted subprime mortgages under successive administrations of both parties. Of course they can’t prosecute vigorously now.”

But in fairness, the government did not promote, to my knowledge:

• Liar Loans.
• Robosigning.
• Securitization of crappy mortgages with promises that so doing eliminated risk.

But at least the Administration’s squishy-softness underlines that the corruption is bipartisan, as I’ve been saying for a while.

It’s hard to disagree with those who want to rebuild the wall between commercial banking and investment banking. I think that was part of one of the Glass-Steagall Acts. Even that may not be enough. Why should options, shorting the market and such be allowed? That’s not investment, but gambling.

Well: off to buy my state-run lottery ticket.

I’m on faculty for a two-day seminar in October. I normally would stay overnight, having dinner with colleagues. But I’ve got an Esperanza Spalding Purdue Convocations ticket. I saw her there as an “emerging artist” a few years ago, and boy, has she ever emerged!

If you haven’t heard her, it worth trying to score a ticket or two of your own.

* * * * *

If you’re missing political rants, I’m sorry, but I was giving the impression that I cared, so I stopped blogging politics. Today is a bit of an exception, but it’s more about how others are treating politics.

“They” are all idiots except for the ones who are rogues. But RogerWmBennett Tweets about politics and stuff over in the right-hand column. I generally agree with the guy.

Tipsy

Bon appetit!