This article by the Washington Post's Robert Barnes poses the question whether "anything [has] changed in the world of campaign finance that might give pause to the five members of the Supreme Court who decided Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission." The vehicle for considering that question is a decision of the Montana Supreme Court that upheld a state statutory ban on direct corporate political spending. The losers in that case have sought Supreme Court review. Barnes says that the Supreme Court may just summarily reverse the Montana decision on the basis of Citizens United. But that's not stopping a small flood of amicus briefs, including one from Senators John McCain and Sheldon Whithouse, discussed by Barnes:
Those urging the court to grant a full hearing of the Montana case take aim at the most important finding of Citizens United. That was the declaration in Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion that “we now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” “That cannot be so,” the new bipartisan team of Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told the court. “Whether independent expenditures pose dangers of corruption or apparent corruption depends on the actual workings of the electoral system; it is a factual question, not a legal syllogism.”
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