On Friday, I appeared on Bill Moyers Journal with Harvard law prof and cyberspace theorist Lawrence Lessig to discuss the whys and wherefores of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. From the show’s writeup:

The Supreme Court’s January 2010 decision of the Citizen’s United v. Federal Election Commission on campaign finance regulations has caused a stir around the political spectrum. A poll from Angus Reid Public Opinion found that 65 percent of people surveyed disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision — 67 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Republicans, and 72 percent of independents.

Libertarian journalist Nick Gillespie says all that worry is misplaced in a much-watched video “Three Reasons Not to Sweat Citizens United.” “If you want to get bent out of shape about something, direct your ire at a massive and constantly growing government that has its hands in virtually every aspect of economic and social life in America,” Says Gillespie.

Harvard legal scholar Lawrence Lessig disagrees, viewing the ruling as a another step in the takeover of democracy by big money. In an article for THE NATION entitled “How to Get Our Democracy Back: If You Want Change, You Have to Change Congress,” Lessig calls for a constitutional convention to make public financing of campaigns the law of the land, “What both sides must come to see is that the reform of neither is possible until we solve our first problem first — the dependency of the Fundraising Congress.”

As you might guess, we didn’t agree on much, but it was a spirited and civil conversation well worth having. A full transcript is available, along with video of the segment and links to related materials, by clicking on the image below.

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No recent Supreme Court ruling have evoked more liberal fury than Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a campaign-finance case involving government censorship of a political documentary called Hillary: The Movie. The Federal Election Commission prevented the anti-Hillary Clinton film from being shown on television just before the 2008 Democratic primaries, a decision that was upheld by lower courts. Siding with The First Amendment, the Court struck down laws regulating independent political advertising by for-profit and non-profit corporations before an election even as they reaffirmed rules about disclosure and disclosures for ads and against direct corporate giving to candidates.

Critics fear that corporations will now overwhelm the political marketplace with commercials and advertisements that will program citizens to vote for whatever agenda “the corprations” want at a given moment.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann railed against the decision, calling it “a Supreme Court-sanctioned murder of what little democracy is left in this democracy” and comparing it to the notorious Dred Scott decision, which ruled that  had no rights under the Constitution. His fellow corporate media host at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, exclaimed, “If you are a regular person who has ever made a campaign donation before, forget about ever having to do that again. What’s the point?”

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