Keith Olbermann Says The Supreme Court's Free Speech Decision Has Allowed For The "Murder" Of Democracy And Is "Our Dred Scott"

Kieth Olbermann must know nothing about Scott v. Sanford (1857), more commonly known as the Dred Scott case, if he can with a straight face compare last week's Supreme Court decision on corporate free speech rights to that infamous ruling. The Court ruled in that pre-Civil War case that slaves were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States, that they were chattel that could not be taken away from their owners. Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote the majority opinion in Scott which stated that at the time the Constitution was written blacks "were considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them." The Court thought it terrible to think of allowing "persons of the negro race, ...the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ...the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went."

Only a complete ignoramus and hyper-partisan hack like Keith Olbermann could compare the decision in Citizen United v. Federal Election Commission a few days ago to the shameful decision of the Supreme Court in 1857. Tweet