Re: [EL] FW: Floyd Abrams & Citzens United

	Whenever someone argues that the pro-speech-regulation theories would equally apply to the media, and would allow the government to suppress speech in newspapers, books, and the like, the response is generally "Of course not" -- no-one (perhaps with the exception of a very few people) is claiming that such restrictions on the media would be constitutional.  Yet the next day or the next week up comes yet another argument that, if accepted, would do precisely what the pro-speech-regulation advocates say isn't happening: allow the government to suppress speech in newspapers, books, and the like.

	We see this perfectly here.  There aren't any originalist or textualist arguments that the drafters of the First Amendment were speaking about media corporations, or unions, or MCFL corporations, either.  So if the argument is that because the drafters weren't talking about business corporations, business corporations' speech is unprotected, then likewise media corporations' speech, unions' speech, and various nonprofit advocacy groups' speech would be unprotected as well.

	It seems to me that protecting speech and press rights includes within it the speech and press rights of people who pool their resources together, including using forms that hadn't been invented at the time (the corporation operating under a general incorporation statute), or that had been invented but wasn't being used enough for the Framers to focus on it.  (Recall that the Framers weren't even fully settled on whether the First Amendment did more than barring prior restraints; they just didn't spend much time focusing on the exact meaning of the freedom of speech or of the press.)  That is a perfectly good explanation for why media corporations should have First Amendment rights.  But that applies equally to nonmedia corporations as well.

	Eugene