Clinton’s Constitutional Contempt

Clinton’s Constitutional Contempt

Donald Trump claims he has read the Constitution. If so, he did not retain much.

As a Yale Law School graduate, Hillary Clinton presumably has a better idea of what the Constitution says. But as she showed in her debate with Trump last week, that does not mean she cares.

Clinton promised her Supreme Court nominees “will stand up and say no” to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. As usual when she discusses the case, Clinton neglected to mention that it involved suppression of a movie that made her look bad.

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court concluded that a conservative group organized as a nonprofit corporation had a First Amendment right to present Hillary: The Movie on pay-per-view TV while Clinton was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. Her determination to overturn that decision by appointing justices who agree with her that blocking the movie was consistent with freedom of speech—or, failing that, by pushing a constitutional amendment that blesses such self-serving censorship—looks no less petty and constitutionally insensitive than Trump’s ambition to “open up our libel laws” so he can more easily use the legal system to punish and silence his critics.

Clinton’s eagerness to suppress speech that offends her is also apparent in her history of supporting laws that the Supreme Court later found to be inconsistent with the First Amendment, including the Communications Decency Act, the Child Online Protection Act, and restrictions on the sale of violent video games. She even tried to ban flag burning after the Court had deemed such laws unconstitutional.

Read more at Reason.com