Hillary 451

Here's hoping the long-overdue death of McCain-Feingold is on the horizon. The US Supreme Court has scheduled new oral argument in the case involving the trite and mediocre "Hillary: The Movie" hatchet job. The turning point may have been this:

At the first Supreme Court argument in March, a government lawyer, answering a hypothetical question, said the government could also make it a crime to distribute books advocating the election or defeat of political candidates so long as they were paid for by corporations and not their political action committees.

That position seemed to astound several of the more conservative justices, and there were gasps in the courtroom.

“That’s pretty incredible,” said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

The discussion of book banning may have helped prompt the request for re-argument. In addition, some of the broader issues implicated by the case were only glancingly discussed in the first round of briefs, and some justices may have felt reluctant to take a major step without fuller consideration.

Not only incredible, but utterly unnecessary, given that the relevant statute does not apply to books. So it was either a stupid answer, or one designed to force the justices' hands to finally deal with the real constitutional issue. I sincerely hope they go far enough to eliminate this deep affront to our liberties.

p.s. In unrelated civil liberties news, the Fourth Amendment got a boost when the Ninth Circuit forced the government to waive the "plain view doctrine" as it applies to computers. This sounds abstruse, but matters a lot. Given that more and more of our records are electronic, forcing the government to get search warrants that list the contents of the computer they actually want, rather than getting a free-for-all once they're into your computer, is vitally important. Ok, soap box mode off. Time to go enjoy a sunny Sunday in August.