The truth is that the most important line in the decision was not the one overruling Austin. It was this one: “ingratiation and access . . . are not corruption.” For many years, the Court had gradually expanded the corruption rationale to extend beyond quid pro quo corruption (donor dollars for legislative votes). It had licensed Congress to regulate even when the threat was simply that large donors had better access to politicians or that politicians had become “too compliant with the[ir] wishes.” Indeed, at times the Court went so far as to say that even the mere appearance of “undue influence” or the public’s “cynical assumption that large donors call the tune” was enough to justify regulation. “Ingratiation and access,” in other words, were corruption as far as the Court was concerned. Justice Kennedy didn’t say that the Court was overruling these cases. But that’s just what it did.
Listen, you little cynical fuckers! Just because I got my hand down your baby sister’s pants in front of the whole family doesn’t mean I’m diddling her pooter, see?
Screw yer head on straight, you anti-social misanthropes: Just because I’m walking out of the bank with a bag of loot amid a din of alarm bells, waving a gun in a trail of smoke and dead bodies, doesn’t mean I just robbed the joint! Mind your own business, Doubting Thomas!
Get this through your concrete skulls, you derisive and dismissive oil stains: Just because I’m fucking this corpse doesn’t give you the privilege to call it necrophilia.
Sequential Benjamins bulging in my pockets make MY ASS LOOK FAT? I absolutely resent your mocking tone, you scornful, sneering shit bags!
Just shut your contemptuous mouth! There are plenty of good reasons why I would be multiply penetrated by the international banking elite.
Listen up, you alienated fuckwads: Just because I’m beating Anthony Kennedy with a stick, doesn’t mean I’m meaning to do him harm; maybe I’m just lovin’ on him real hard, because I care.
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Intellectual honesty takes on many shapes and forms! Anthony Kennedy is the David Brooks of jurisprudence.
when you started fucking it.
Sorry, I just had to, um, put that in.
Listen up you whiny peasants, if Fat Tony wants to go shooting with Dick Cheney three weeks after we agree to hear Deadeye Dick’s secret Energy Task Force appeal, it doesn’t mean we are shooting ethics in the face.
corruption. Man Oh Man, his law clerk could have done better than that. But I have to admit it sounds nice, and has a cool mumbo jumbo that gives it a kind of jive, hipster, nicotine flavor. I just love these Supremes. They are with it. And those strict constructionists; boy, can they work the English Language, like making mouth wash out of diarhea.