Wondering how corporations have "the rights of personhood" but don't ever, you know, go to prison? Kate Cox at The Consumerist will explain it to you. The first part takes a historical perspective; the second part discusses the landmark (and nefarious) Citizens United and Hobby Lobby cases; and the third part instructs us about the conditions under which a corporation can be prosecuted for individual actions. From there we tabulate the deleterious effects of corporate "personhood" with which we are so familiar.
In a related note, David Sirota catches the Obama Administration trying to waive some of the criminal sanctions against Credit Suisse, a corporation actually convicted of a felony. So much for law and order! Three salient facts: one, contemplating the "collateral damage" of punishment (i.e., that it might affect the economy negatively) is a terrible excuse for failing to do the moral thing; two, precisely 27 of 27 corporations that have applied for such waivers have received them; three, Credit Suisse just so happens to have contributed over $350,000 to Mr. Obama's various campaigns. I'd be a schmuck to decide that was all just coincidence.
Neshaminy (PA) High School suspends the student editor (along with the faculty advisor) of the school's paper, the Playwickian, because the paper refuses to print the name of the school's sports teams, which is "Redskins," an epithet for which a certain Washington, D.C. NFL team has also caught a lot of flack lately. Schools have a long-established right to censor student paper content if they find it to be inappropriately disruptive, but all they're teaching by suspending this editor is how to be an asshole, and kids get that lesson often enough from adults.
Charlie Savage at the New York Times suggests that Congress's inaction over President Obama's airstrikes in Iraq could "create a precedent leaving the executive branch with greater war-making powers." But that requires us to believe that Constitutional tools rust from inaction, or that Congressional inaction itself confers "Constitutionality" on unconstitutional acts. I mean, we don't assume burglary is actually legal now if your local police were to develop a habit of looking the other way.
Finally, the execrable Tony Perkins instructs us that Muslim-Americans shouldn't have the same religious freedoms as the rest of us. Why? Because, according to Mr. Perkins, folks like the members of ISIS are the "real" Muslims, and their violence demonstrates that Islam "tears at the fabric of society," and thus your "unreal" Muslim friends and neighbors don't deserve the same right to religious freedom as the rest of us. Like how he wants you to think of your Muslim friends and neighbors as both "fake" and dangerous? Boy would he get his shorts in a bunch right quick if we all decided Christians don't deserve Constitutional protections because the Ku Klux Klan are the "real" Christians.
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