Supreme Court Rejects Campaign-Finance Limits

Just as President Obama gears up to take on the big banks, the Supreme Court has added a weapon back to the big banks’ arsenal: It voted on Thursday to allow corporations to spend freely in presidential and congressional campaigns. The court overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations could be prohibited from spending money from their general treasuries to pay for their own campaign ads; they’ll still be prohibited from direct contributions to candidates. "The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in the majority opinion, which included the court’s conservatives. The Court’s four liberals dissented, with John Paul Stevens writing, “The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation.”