Please also see :

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Wikipedia on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

and

White House weekly address for 18 September 2010

White House weekly address for 21 August 2010

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In a Democracy ~ to the extent we still and will have one ~ citizens are responsible to apply their/our common sense .

We should know that when a political ad appears over and again in expensive slots, there is money behind it .

And that this money may have come from where so much of the money in this world goes :

large, amoral corporations and interest groups ; with their associated aristocracy .

If the ad is designed to get regular guy&gal voters upset about taxes ,

to blame government regulation for lost jobs ,

to dismiss government efforts which cost money ,

to call into question the very practice of government ;

It could be because its sponsors are worried about their taxes ,

see government regulation as a barrier to their power ,

are hostile to national projects for the common good ,

and wish a government which serves as their vassal .

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To advertising that would attempt to deflect anger away from wealth and the ethos of I ,

and instead project it onto the government and the ethos of we ;

to appeal to that part of each one of us which holds some pricey dream ,

that we don't want messed with if it ever comes true, i answer :

It's not coming true .

It's coming false for a great many people .

If this continues we will enslave one another, or destroy ourselves .

Only a government can reign in the ambitions of corporations when they become dangerous to the public good .

Only government intervention, and its protection of the right of workers to organize,

can redistribute wealth on a sufficient scale to both keep society stable,

and move it toward a functioning equality, over the long term .

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The aristocracy and corporations can and already do give voluntarily, to some extent,

to causes they choose or which are favored in their social circles ;

Including :

those, (often distant), so helpless before their hardships, or noble in them, that the donor is moved by empathy or admiration ;

art, artists, and cultural causes ~ the symbiosis between wealth and art can be lucrative, but i find it ironic ;

other greater-good institutes & institutions such as schools, hospitals and libraries ;

animal and natural beauty causes ; beautification projects ~ Central Park was built by wealth ;

to the furtherance of the donor's religious and political beliefs ....

It's not that the way wealth shares is in most cases useless or destructive ; but that what's needed goes this much deeper :

Only a democratic government can make the wealthy share with common, sometimes ugly, sometimes uncouth, people in the street .

And i think it is because they know this that some of the wealthy are trying to incite these people against our government .

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The deeper threat of the Citizens United ruling, in my own opinion :

Is that it offers the mainstream media 'detergent' for the laundering of corporate election fraud, (which i expect) .

I'm tired of believing that the media is disengaged from the possibility our elections are tampered with .

I smell complicity .

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This is or would be much more dangerous than advertisements, because people know an advertisement is a push ;

but we often believe and trust our sources : our newscasters, magazines and papers, our personalities, experts and websites, our politicians .

We resist the thought that these people will lie to us, or knowingly exclude vital information .

Thus by not mentioning something, it can become unnews in the minds of an audience, their audience .

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By blaming a sudden, apparent and rightward, election day shift on late advertisement, (which i again expect) ;

and by grooming the analysis of exit poll data to match official returns before releasing it, (withholding raw data) ;

the members of the National Election Pool : ABC News, the Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News,

with, (currently), Edison Media Research , whom they have contracted to, "make projections and provide exit poll analysis,"

( this is a company whose Wikipedia page stands deleted as an, "Article about a non-notable [...] entity," as of September 2010 ),

can or could deflect attention from whether the country's vote is accurately, or honestly, archived and counted by those entrusted to do so .

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The Pontius Pilate Limit :

There is a point beyond which those having, or in a position of, public trust and authority,

can not pass their responsibility, to decide and to act on their decision, to third parties .

Please also see :

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The Massachusetts Special Election for US Senate, (Election Defense Alliance)

2010 General Election , Preliminary Assessment, (Election Defense Alliance)

and

Black Box Voting (.com)

Black Box Voting (.org)

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There is constitutional ground, as i see it, for Federal intervention in the means by which State elections are held :

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Article IV, Section 4

The United states shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government,

and shall protect each of them against invasion,

and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened),

against domestic violence.

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I argue that we are collectively in a circumstance where one cannot be certain that our national legislature,

(based upon the will of the majority of the voters of their States), has been convened .

If a large enough number of United States Congress are not the actual choice of their people,

then under present circumstances, the legislature as it is constitutionally intended will have been prevented from convening .

. .

The power of application would thus pass to the executive ;

provided that executive is in office based on the will of the majority of the voters of the country,

as i believe Barack Obama is .

. .

I argue also that if a legislature, (so compromised), has confirmed nominations to the Supreme Court sufficient to be decisive,

put forward by a President who was (also) not in office by the will of the majority of voters,

the Court likewise will have been prevented from convening, (in that form Constitutionally intended) .

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Some words from Lincoln :

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" Whatever concerns the whole, should be confided to the whole --- to the general government ;

while, whatever concerns only the State, should be left exclusively to the State .

This is all there is of original principle about it .

Whether the National Constitution, in defining boundaries between the two,

has applied the principle with exact accuracy, is not to be questioned .

We are all bound by that defining, without question . "

( 4 July 1861, Special Message to Congress )

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As Senators and Representatives from the States determine to a large extent the direction of the whole (nation),

the honest and accurate conduct of elections to national (and to district-drawing) offices by the states

"concerns the whole, and should be confided to the whole --- to the general government" .

This would be my reinterpretation. . President Lincoln's might have differed .

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In the same message he also said this :

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" The Constitution provides, and all the States have accepted the provision,

that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government."

But, if a State may lawfully go out of the Union,

having done so, it may also discard the republican form of government;

so that to prevent its going out, is an indispensable means , to the end, of maintaining the guaranty mentioned;

and when an end is lawful and obligatory, the indispensable means to it, are also lawful, and obligatory. "

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To my mind, the constitutional duty of the Federal Government to guarantee to every state, "a republican form of government",

has priority over the constitutional rights of States to determine the manner in which their elections are held, archived, counted, confirmed and reported .

. .

In Lincoln's time, meeting secession on its home ground, and overpowering it there by force of arms, was the indispensable means .

Today, direct Federal intervention in the election processes of the States appears to be the same .

The question of whether this would bring a Second Civil War should be tempered

by consideration of the character our Union has grown (and would further grow) into,

should no (or insufficient) action be taken .

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" It is the inherent vice of half-way measures that they create as many difficulties as they remove. "

( 13 September 1862, Reply to Emancipation Memorial )

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PostScript 3 : Regarding the law and the President's ability to use the military within the country's borders

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For what it's worth, here is a rope and a rationale by which a President & Commander in Chief might try to cross the chasm :

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Effect the confiscation and lock-down of our nation's entire electronic voting infrastructure .

Have printed, paper ballots of counterfeit resistance similar to that used for currency ; and manufactured, tamper resistant ballot boxes .

These each could be very nice looking ~ care in the workmanship and design ~ becoming, one hopes, a source of civic pride .

Have elections conducted using military security, in which all people willing to vote are entitled to cast a vote ;

and wherein the votes are counted by juries of the public ~ on paper, by hand, on camera and in public .

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There are laws in place which oppose the use of the military in the polling place.   Please see :

The Posse Comitatus Act ; (Military Law Review, Vol. 175, 2003)

The authors argue, persuasively, that the law has been interpreted ~ with action ~ more than once in the past,

as not limiting the President's power to order the military to enforce laws within the nation's borders .

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"

While the Act itself did not apply to the Navy, in October 1878, the
Attorney General appeared to repudiate the Cushing Doctrine formally,
accepting the broader argument that the marshals’ implied authority to call
out any part of the armed forces as a posse comitatus did not exist. In
other words, the marshal was only prohibited under pain of criminal penalty
from ordering out the Army as a posse comitatus; however, he had no
legal authority to order out sailors and marines into the posse.
President Hayes concurred that the Act limited the marshal’s authority
over the Army, but he did not believe that the law applied to the President.
A few months after signing the bill into law, he signed a broad
proclamation concerning the generally lawless situation in the New Mexico
Territory. He then deployed troops in a seventeen-month military
intervention to enforce judicial process and enforce the law. A great
deal can be learned about the Act from this troop deployment since it
occurred while the law’s limit on the expenditure of federal funds was in
place and the authors were still in Congress.

Except for the initial presidential proclamation and the location of the
disturbances, it is difficult to distinguish significantly the long-term use of
troops in the New Mexico territory from the earlier actions taken in the
South during the Reconstruction period. The level of violence and general
lawlessness in New Mexico, while directed at whites, was really no worse
than in many parts of the former Confederacy. Yet Congress did not object,
showing that the Act’s primary purpose was to limit the authority of local
army commanders to cooperate directly with the marshals and other local
law enforcement officials. Presidential involvement with the decision to
use troops in a law enforcement role appeared to be the only real limit
imposed by the Act.

Skeptical that such a contentious law accomplished so little, President
Chester Arthur initially felt that the Act severely restrained his ability to
respond to a similar lawless situation in the Arizona territory a few years
later. He, therefore, requested that Congress amend the Act in December
1881 and again in April 1882. In reply to the second request, a unanimous
1882 Senate Judiciary Committee report confirmed that the primary
evil addressed by the Posse Comitatus Act was the marshal’s power to call
out and control the Army.

The posse comitatus clause referred to arose out of an implied
authority to the marshals and their subordinates executing the
laws to call upon the Army just as they would upon bystanders
who, if the Army responded, would have command of the Army
or so much of it as they had, just as they would of the bystanders,
and would direct them what to do.

With respect to the lawless situation in the Arizona territory and the
President’s request for relief from the limitations imposed by the Act,
the same Senate Judiciary Committee said:

In all these cases the President of the United States having the
power of employing any part of the Army from three soldiers to
three thousand to assist in the execution of the laws in the Territory
of Arizona, retains the dominion over this Army himself and
the soldiers under command of their own officers to aid the civil
authority, instead of being under the command of the marshal of
the Territory. . . . The technical posse comitatus which is not
expressly authorized by law can be dispensed with, the President,
as is perhaps best in these far-off places, retaining the command
of the troops by his own officers, who are perhaps quite as
safe a depository of such power as the marshal himself. He
directs them to resist all this unlawfulness, merely first giving
notice to these people that there is not going to be any more of it
allowed. So we think that the President is armed with ample
power for this emergency already, and that it is not necessary that
legislation should be had.

The Act clearly did not end Army involvement in domestic legal
affairs. Initially, the key difference from the Reconstruction period was
that the President approved or ratified most actions; some sort of proclamation
complying with RS 5300 was normally, but not always, issued
before troops intervened; and the Army stayed out of the South. The
federal response to the Chicago Pullman strikes in 1894, however, highlighted
the Act’s negligible impact on the almost unchecked scope of presidential
authority as Commander in Chief.

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However, the polling place is restricted from military involvement by other law :

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A number of federal election laws, the weakened descendants of an
1865 civil rights law and the 1870 enforcement act, strictly limit actions by
all military personnel near polling places and in elections. Originally, RS
2002 prohibited any person in the military, naval, or civil service of the
United States from bringing troops or armed men to the place of an election
in any state . Revised Statute 5528 imposed criminal sanctions of up to
five years’ imprisonment at hard labor for violations. Both laws, however,
contained exceptions that permitted troops or naval forces at polling
places if necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States or to keep
the peace at the polls. Ironically, some of the most passionate debate in
support of the Posse Comitatus Act centered on President Grant’s use of
troops at some Southern polling places to prevent voter intimidation and
fraud during the 1876 election. The practice, however, was not actually
prohibited until thirty-one years after passage of the Act, when a 1909 revision
of the penal code removed the exception from RS 2002 and 5528 permitting
the use of the military or naval forces to keep the peace at polling places.

This twentieth century prohibition, along with related laws from the
Civil War era that prohibit Army and Navy officers from interfering with
elections, remains in place today. While these laws have been virtually
invisible, they prohibit one of the primary “evils” cited by supporters of
the Posse Comitatus Act: keeping the armed forces out of the electoral
process. This is probably the most significant statutory restriction imposed
by Congress since it enhances civilian control over the armed forces.
Alexander Hamilton said it best when he wrote:

Independent of all other reasonings upon the subject, it is a full
answer to those who require a more peremptory provision
against military establishments in time of peace to say that the
whole power of the proposed government is to be in the hands of
the representatives of the people. This is the essential, and after
all, the only efficacious security for the rights and privileges of
the people which is attainable in civil society.

The Cushing Doctrine violated this important principle by permitting
minor, unelected civilian officials to control parts of the standing army and
spend federal funds contrary to congressional instructions without even the
elected Commander in Chief’s knowledge. The revocation of the Cushing
Doctrine via passage of the Posse Comitatus Act reinvigorated elected
civilian control over the armed forces. Federal election law keeps the
armed forces from turning civilian control into a mere formality.

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I appreciate the validity of their point, but consider the situation to be outside what the founders could have anticipated .

. .

Speaking directly to Revised Statutes 2002 and 5528 :

Keeping the peace at the polls rests on the assumption that there is a poll, not a charade of a poll.

If one accepts that logic, maintaining the integrity of the polling process, (from start to finish), becomes an integral part of keeping this peace .

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In 1909, the polling place exception for "keeping the peace" was deleted.   I don't know the details .

In response i ask that the reader go through enough of the linked document to get an overview of the inhumanity with which the old order

within the former Confederate States was (largely) re-established following the Civil War, stripping rights and effective freedom from Negro people ;

(i believe, ultimately, reducing the condition of many Caucasians as well) ;

and the war fatigue, ambivalence and sometimes hypocrisy of Northern States toward it .

Much was cemented by 1909, and could only have affected the makeup of State governments and their Federal delegations .

Stripping the military exception for keeping the peace of the polls from RS 2002 and 5528,

reinforced or stood ready to reinforce a pattern of broad, deep disfranchisement ;

by placing a legal barrier between the Federal Government, (which had acted in the past), and remedy of the situation through the ballot box .

. .

I see it as unconstitutional in genesis ; as many delegations were, already and by intent, not close to representative of the whole of the people

who were constitutionally entitled, and presumably willing if allowed, to vote .

It can also be argued that because regular legislation is subordinate to the Constitution ;

where the effect of a law is to prevent the Federal Government from exercising its constitutional duties

to uphold the, (also constitutional), rights of the people or to preserve the form of government, the law must cede priority .

In my opinion, either of the above could also be applied to the Posse Comitatus Act .

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I consider these words from Lincoln :

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Soon after the first call for militia, it was considered a duty to authorize the Commanding General,

in proper cases, according to his discretion, to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus ;

or, in other words, to arrest, and detain, without resort to the ordinary processes and forms of law,

such individuals as he might deem dangerous to the public safety .

This authority has purposely been exercised but very sparingly .

Nevertheless, the legality and propriety of what has been done under it, are questioned ;

and the attention of the country has been called to the proposition that one who is sworn to

"take care that the laws be faithfully executed," should not himself violate them .

Of course some consideration was given to the questions of power, and propriety, before this matter was acted upon .

The whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed, were being resisted,

and failing of execution, in nearly one-third of the States .

Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear,

that by the use of the means necessary to their execution, some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen's liberty,

that practically, it relieves more of the guilty, than of the innocent, should, to a very limited extent, be violated ?

To state the question more directly, are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated ?

Even in such a case, would not the official oath be broken, if the government should be overthrown,

when it was believed that disregarding the single law, would tend to preserve it ?

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Special Message to Congress ; July 4, 1861