For those of you without paid subscriptions, here are some excerpts:
Mr. Baquet makes the Times sound like an advocacy organization working against Mr. Trump’s re-election. Such organizations are regulated by campaign-finance statutes. So are other corporations, for-profit or nonprofit, that engage in electioneering speech. But those laws exempt media organizations, provided they are not owned by a political party, committee or candidate. […]
Like the prerevolutionary French aristocracy, media institutions enjoy legal privileges whose rationale expired long ago. As a result, their exemption from campaign-finance law is vulnerable to constitutional challenge. “We have consistently rejected the proposition that the institutional press has any constitutional privilege beyond that of other speakers,” the Citizens United court declared.
This might sound pretty far-fetched. On the other hand, a generation or two ago, so would have restoring the original meaning of the Second Amendment.
For those of you without paid subscriptions, here are some excerpts:
This might sound pretty far-fetched. On the other hand, a generation or two ago, so would have restoring the original meaning of the Second Amendment.
But along came Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment, 82 Mich. L. Rev. 204 (1983), and then The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L.J. 637 (1989), which laid the foundation for Heller. (Whether Heller was as broad as it could or should have been, and whether it has been faithfully followed by lower courts are different questions, of course.)
Maybe the same thing can happen here to rein in our favorite #mediajackals. GoFundMe, anyone?