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Politics

Chris Christie – Very Unhappy with Supreme Court’s Ruling on DOMA

Chris Christie is not too happy with the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage.

“I don’t think the ruling was appropriate,” said Christie, who is running for reelection in a blue state, one in which Democrats have hailed the SCOTUS decision on gay marriage.
“I think it was wrong,” Christie continued, calling it “typical of the problem we see” in New Jersey’s own Supreme Court.

He blasted the U.S. Supremes for substituting “their own judgment for the judgment of a Republican Congress and a Democratic President. In the Republican Congress in the ‘90s and Bill Clinton. I thought that Justice Kennedy’s opinion was, in many respects, incredibly insulting to those people, 340-some members of Congress who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, and Bill Clinton.”

“He basically said that the only reason to pass that bill was to demean people. That’s heck of a thing to say about Bill Clinton and about the Republican Congress back in the ‘90s. And it’s just another example of judicial supremacy, rather than having the government run by the people we actually vote for,” said Christie, who recently appeared with Clinton at a Clinton Global Initiative conference.

Clinton himself has walked away from the signing of DOMA, and in a statement said he was pleased with the court’s ruling.

Christie is polling as a top prospect for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, and a number of evangelical leaders made clear after the SCOTUS ruling that the base of the party will remain opposed to same-sex marriage.

Yet, Christie is running in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, and wooing Democrats has been a huge part of a strategy aimed at driving up his margin of victory, should he win over rival Barbara Buono.

Categories
Citizens United Politics

Ex Supreme Court Judge Criticizes Citizens United Ruling – Corporations Are Not People My Friends

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens leveled new criticism on Wednesday against the court’s landmark 2010 ruling on campaign financing, saying it had allowed corporations to ramp up spending and non-voters to influence the outcome of elections.

Stevens, who dissented from the “Citizens United” ruling, said it had increased the importance of cash in contested elections, opened the floodgates for foreign campaign spending and put corporations or other out-of-state speakers ahead of voters interested in local issues.

The Supreme Court split along conservative-liberal ideological lines in making the 5-4 ruling in 2010, giving corporations the constitutional free-speech right to spend freely to support or oppose candidates in federal elections.

The ruling triggered a massive increase in spending by wealthy individuals and corporations in federal campaigns ahead of this year’s November 6 presidential and congressional elections.

[Yahoo News]

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