Say It Ain't So Already

“Hillary: The Movie”

January 21, 2010 at 5:59 PM Leave a comment

This is a trailer for “Hillary:  The Movie.”  This is the “movie” at the heart of today’s Supreme Court ruling.

The Supreme Court ruling grew out of a decision the by Federal Election Commission to

block video-on-demand broadcasts of a 90-minute documentary attacking the potential presidential candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The film, “Hillary: The Movie,” was produced by Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit corporation. The group complained that the FEC action was unconstitutional censorship of political speech.

The agency responded that the documentary was similar to a pre-election broadcast attack advertisement and thus could be regulated by the FEC under BCRA.

Citizens United filed suit, arguing before a three-judge panel that the McCain-Feingold law was unconstitutional in the way it was being enforced by the FEC against “Hillary: The Movie.”

The panel disagreed. It ruled that the documentary was the functional equivalent of electioneering and that Citizens United must disclose the documentary’s financial supporters if it wanted to run broadcast ads during election season.

In its ruling on Thursday, the high court upheld the lower court’s ruling on the disclosure issue but reversed on the constitutional challenge.

So watch the trailer.  You tell me if you think this looks like a “documentary,” as its producers claimed, or a political attack ad.  As of a few hours ago,  corporations (and unions*) can spend unlimited amounts of money producing “documentaries” like this  – be they against a candidate/person or a political issue such as the environment, drugs, food safety, etc. –  in order to influence the outcome of our elections:

*  Corporations have far and away more money than unions do so to compare the two is silly.

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