Retired Justice John Paul Stevens ripped John Roberts and his Supreme Court's campaign finance law decisions which he says have given way too much influence for those holding all the money in this country. Who can argue with that?
Retired Justice John Paul Stevens is taking aim at the Supreme Court's recent 5-4 decision to eliminate the limit on a person's aggregate expenditures to political candidates and committees in an election cycle.
"The voter is less important than the man who provides money to the candidate," he told theNew York Times, criticizing what he views as the premise of Chief Justice John Roberts' controlling opinion. "It's really wrong."
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Stevens told the Times' Adam Liptak that the very first sentence of Roberts' opinion -- "There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders." -- was misleading. "The first sentence here is not really about what the case is about," the former justice said.
--Stevens tore into Roberts and the Supreme Court's conservative tilt in a separate interview withNew Yorker legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.
"Sam Alito replacing Justice O’Connor was a very significant change," he told the magazine in an article for its forthcoming issue. "He is much more conservative. And, as for John Roberts, he is much more in the direction of protecting the rights of very rich people to donate money to campaigns than [former Chief Justice] Bill Rehnquist ever was."
Wealthy GOP donors and voters sure got their money's worth when George Bush appointed Roberts as the Chief Justice!
