Citizens United was about a small outfit making a Clinton doco, yes. But the trouble was the decision didn't have to be as broad as it was. They could have limited the scope and achieved a similar effect.

Political parties are very interesting in the sense that they are not public; not really at all. (but they should be). That's an argument for stricter laws when specifically dealing with speech and campaigns.

Keep in mind, free speech has limits. Obscenity, classified material, threats of harm ... Free speech in the US, although more complete than many other nations, is still restricted.

>Political parties are very interesting in the sense that they are not public; not really at all. (but they should be).

Please no. At its core, a political party is a group of people with common goals banding together to contest elections. Congress and the elections are the public institutions. How people choose to form alliances and contest those elections is a private matter. The only way to make political parties public is to ban private political parties, which should throw up all sorts of red flags in your head.

As for Citizens United, people forget that it's not just about big for-profit companies spending money. Any non-profit group is a corporation. If you and I share a set of political ideas and want to advocate for them, we'd form a non-profit, print pamphlets, run ads, court donors, rinse and repeat. That's freedom at work. It's totally impractical to run such an operation as a single human being. It's totally irresponsible to set up such a group and then legally run it as a single human being. Incorporation is the legal means for people to embark on common projects.

How do you think the court could have limited the scope while also staying within the confines of not making things up (the court does not legislate).

So in a word where money != speech, speech is impacted negatively?

Citizens United did not say "money == speech." It said that peoples' right to make and distribute movies with core political speech does not disappear just because corporate money is used to do it. If Citizens United had gone the other way, e.g. the government could have banned the Google and Reddit protests against SOPA/PIPA.

There are a variety of anti-Citizens-United positions, but the strongest (and most problematic) one is that corporations are not people, and the Bill of Rights secures rights only to people, therefore the First Amendment is inapplicable to corporations. That would, at the very least, require a revision in important precedents like New York Times Co. v. Sullivan [1], which assume that the First Amendment is applicable to corporations' publishing activities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan

Corporations are people. They are taxed like people, they break laws like people, and they own property like people.

They just can't vote.

In every other way they are not like people. They are neither mortal nor corporeal (in the sense that a human body can be imprisoned or damaged). They can feel no emotion and are not subject to disease. This is important because humans are limited in myriad ways that corporations aren't and by giving corporations human rights the balance of power between actual humans and corporations tilts to the latter.

For example, while they can break the laws like people, corporations are not punished the same. When was the last time a corporation was "executed" (e.g. corporate charter revoked)?

Last one I could find was in California in 1976.

This should certainly be a more common occurrence.

Corporations are shells for human people (!!) to commit criminal acts, but shelter these human people from the legal consequences of these acts.

Very true.

But, in all fairness, that's not their primary purpose, it's merely a side effect of their overall utility. Most people in most corporations are decidedly not criminal, and they don't behave as criminals.

In that world, any publication making or costing money can be considered political speech and censored. The Sierra club newsletter could be considered politically motivated and prevented from publishing articles unless the donors stay within donation caps

Once you give the government a tool to restrict speech / spending, it will be used to cut both ways.

Put it this way, I wouldn't want my donations to <rebellious political candidate du jour> to land me in jail because it wasn't protected speech.

Although donations to the wrong political group can certainly get you in big trouble today (if you're willing to stretch the definition of 'political group'), so...hm.