Thanks, Citizens United, for This Campaign Finance Mess We're In

ADAM SKAGGS

 

 

Apologists for this damaging Supreme Court decision are wrong on the facts and the law.

Before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday, the Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro became the latest to come out swinging against critics of Citizens United, testifying that the case is one of the most misunderstood high court decisions ever and claiming that "it doesn't stand for half of what many people say it does." Shapiro joins a chorus of Citizens United defenders, including First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams and his son Dan -- the latter of whom has railed against what he calls the media's "shameful, inexcusable distortion" of the case -- as well as the New York Times Magazine's chief political correspondent, Matt Bai, who recently wrote that liberal criticism of the decision is "just plain wrong."