After Citizens United, Supreme Court looks ready to legalize political bribery...

This absurdly constructed law will not stand much longer.

Though I am not sure that President Obama's nominee will guarantee that result. Very pro business.

The equivalent of Scalia's knife being removed from the national back.

Next up: Gerrymandering and restrictive Voter ID laws declared illegal.

And that will be the end of the GOP, who survives only by such methods. When it's over, they'll have a well-deserved 10% representation in our civil democracy.

May it be so. I sure hope you're right.

and for christsakes overturn the wrongful conviction of Don Siegelman no matter what happens here.

It is only ok to be corrupt if you are a goper

democracy.

Clinton can simply sell access openly.

... a multinational can drive a semi-truck through. More "legal corruption."
That's all we need. When is this ship of state going to go over the cliff? SOS!

Americans are being crushed by the huge mountain of gold heaped up on top of us.

And it doesn't help that all the super-rich assholes are dancing away up on top.

....."Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. expressed disbelief that an official requesting agency action on behalf of a big donor would be a problem."

Seriously????

As modern corruption law developed, the axiom that an official shouldn’t accept gifts for public duties, broadly understood, was a basic feature of American law. The Supreme Court has held that under the Hobbs Act, “the Government need only show that a public official has obtained a payment to which he was not entitled, knowing that the payment was made in return for official acts.”

Otherwise, only the most unsophisticated criminal would ever get caught. A clumsy influence seeker might write an email offering “five diamonds for five votes in Congress,” but the powerful corrupting forces in our society would avoid explicit deals and give lavish gifts tied to meetings and speeches, winking and nodding all the while.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/29/opinion/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-free-rolex.html?emc=edit_th_20160429&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=70251688

Meanwhile, Don Siegelman is still in prison.

The word 'corruption' was in early drafts of the Constitution (Article II, section 4), accompanying treason and bribery as explicit grounds for impeachment of a President, Vice President, and civil officers of the United States.

Concerns were expressed in committee (perhaps, quite reasonable ones) during the Convention that, although 'treason' and 'bribery' were pretty specific, 'corruption' was much less so, and could be used in bad faith to remove political opponents from office through impeachment. Additionally, it was discussed that 'corruption' was included in 'bribery,' as political corruption involves acting on behalf of a party that is providing you with material benefit to do so, which is basically the same thing as bribery. So, corruption was dropped. (And a suggestion to include 'maladministration' never got into a draft.)

This ought to be very, very informative on the concept of Bribery at the time the Constitution was ratified. According to the standards of the 1780s, actual bribery is practiced on a massive scale as everyday business in today's politics, and just about every President and Vice President at least as far back as Reagan/Bush should have been impeached and removed after their first week in office.

Fascinating that someone like Clarence Thomas, (OK, he's a lunatic, but...) who claims to be a strict 'originalist,' (and Scalia, when he was on the Bench), would completely ignore the Constitution's clear proscription against bribery when ruling that parties can use wealth to engage in it on a completely routine basis. There is, by far, a clearer Constitutional proscription against it than, say, a grant of a 'personal right' to bear firearms by way of the Second Amendment, which seems to indicate that the right to bear arms is tied to the maintenance of well-regulated militias. These guys have always been quite OK with bribery, but have completely ignored the 'well-regulated militia' statement of the Second Amendment.

A constitutional Amendment explicitly defining bribery, extending the impeachment power to include Senators and Representatives, and enabling impeachment by State initiative (like the Amendment process), would get things moving in the right direction.

aspect of corruption and bribery.

duplication and redundancy. Which is not what happened. They removed whatever got in their way.

And they absolutely will.

See no worries.