Super PACS have contributed millions of dollars to shape the 2012 presidential election. The "Citizens United" Supreme Court case paved the way for them. David Bossie, president of the conservative advocacy group Citizens United, speaks with host Michel Martin about how Super PACS could even the playing field. 
 

Click here to listen to the interview. 

A frequent criticism of the Conservative Political Action Conference is its supposed lack of attention to pro-life issues. However, by the second day of the event, which draws over 11,000 conservative activists, it was clear right to life issues were not forgotten by key speakers or lost on attendees.



Friday kicked off with pro-life Governor Mike Huckabee, who also attended CPAC in order to attend a screening of his documentary “The Gift of Life.”


Following the film, a panel featured pro-life leaders, which gathered to discuss current pro-life issues The panel, moderated by Lila Rose, included Carol Tobias, President of National Right to Life, Charmaine Yoest, President of Americans United for Life, Kristan Hawkins, Executive Director of Students for Life of America and pro-life speaker Rebecca Kiessling.



The panel delved into issues ranging from Susan G. Komen and Planned Parenthood to the recent fight over conscience rights. The headline of the discussion was “Advancing the Pro-Life Movement in the Media” and each of the speakers commented on the importance of using social media to share the pro-life message. Outlets like Facebook and Twitter give pro-life advocates the chance to operate outside of the restraints of the biased mainstream media. This technology gives pro-lifers the chance to engage their peers and share the truth about abortion across a wider network than ever before.


Read more  here  

Rebecca Kiessling is a wife and mother of five, plus an attorney who testifies before state legislatures for Personhood USA, a group seeking to protect all unborn persons with legal declarations of personhood in answer to Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun’s opinion of Roe v. Wade. She’s featured in the new Citizens United DVD “The Gift of Life,” which is narrated by Mike Huckabee.


A screening of “Gift” was held in Iowa prior to the caucuses, and all of the GOP candidates were invited. Yet only four attended: Rep. Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Gov. Rick Perry and Rick Santorum. Kiessling had a backstage pass and used it to thank Bachmann and Santorum for being “100-percent pro-life.” She also used it to question Perry and Gingrich on why they thought abortion is acceptable for unborn babies conceived during rape and incest.

Read more  here  

Gov. Mike Huckabee, who also addressed the students, said younger generations must be taught to respect human life. 

“Young people nowadays are more pro-life than their mothers and grandmothers. They will change the country for the better,” he said as he introduced the short documentary “The Gift of Life.” “Nothing is more offensive to my Christian faith and my American spirit than that some people are valued more than others.” 

 Read more here. 

Students cheered with enthusiasm at the arrival of Mike Huckabee, who praised the energy of the crowd before a screening of his pro-life documentary, “The Gift of Life.” “People in my generation have fumbled the ball,” he said. “You’re not going to.”

The former Arkansas governor also disclosed one of the evening’s biggest surprises: Kourtney Blythe Gordon, the Students for Life staffer who tragically lost her life with unborn daughter Sophy in an October car accident, had been filmed for the documentary watching an ultrasound image of Sophy only one week before their deaths. Kourtney’s parents agreed to allow the footage to stay in the film.  

“I wanted to be a millionaire,” says Everett on the trailer to The Gift of Life. “And the way for me to be a millionaire was to do 40,000 abortions a year.”

Everett’s story is one of several on the new documentary, hosted by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, which also explores the testimony of several individuals who were nearly the victims of an abortion, but were spared. 



 Read more  here. 

From Trevor Burrus, a legal associate at the Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies:

Sen. Sanders and Mr. Weissman thus demonstrate a crucial fact: many who oppose Citizens United do so because they want to silence speech that promotes policies they oppose. They want to silence it because they think it is bad speech that gives a disproportionate influence to bad ideas. Yet there can be no greater violation of the First Amendment than to act with this motive.

Critics of the decision cite the "undue influence" corporations can have on elections through such mechanisms as "drowning out [candidates'] messages" with "misleading negative ads." Sean Siperstein writes about a new campaign by Public Citizen to expose the "mega-corporations" that are most "responsible for greedy, disastrously short-sighted policies, to the detriment of the rest of us."

These critiques blur the line between one type of influence that the Supreme Court has acknowledged should be stopped -- outright candidate bribery -- and other types of influence that are strongly protected by the First Amendment -- such as affecting the national debate or influencing candidates' policies by making both them and the public aware of issues. Critics of Citizens United often conflate these two types of political spending, regarding all corporate spending as either corrupting the national debate through disproportionate influence, or corrupting politicians through something tantamount to bribery.


... 
The First Amendment does not allow anyone to pursue his vision of a better world through censorship. Although we'd all love the liars and shouters to be silenced, the First Amendment forbids such censorship precisely because there is no way to agree on who is a liar and who is "too loud." Those determinations are too intertwined with our ideological commitments. 
Although I agree with Sen. Sanders and Mr. Weissman that money may have too much influence on politics, perhaps we should address this problem by creating a government that lacks the power to reward undue influence -- that is, a limited government that cannot determine whether someone succeeds or fails in life -- and not by stifling free speech. 

 Read more  here. 
 

The State of the Union is tonight (of course). Over the past 222 years of speeches, there have been lots of great moments. Here are the most memorable ones captured on video.  
* Alito’s “Not true”  
— In 2010, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito mouthed his dissent as President Obama critiqued the Citizens United decision. A few months later, he said it was awkward to sit at “very political events” like the “proverbial potted plant.” The next year, Alito did not attend.  
 Read more  here. 
 

While President Obama and other pro-abortion zealots celebrate the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it is important to remember the true face of “choice”: the 54 million unborn souls killed by abortion.  It is a tragedy that respect for innocent human life has become so degraded in our society that an abortion takes place at an average of one every 26 seconds.  But out of this culture of death springs new hope. 

I had the pleasure of presenting, with Governor Mike Huckabee, the film The Gift Of Life this weekend at the Students for Life of America national conference.  Two thousand pro-life leaders of the next generation sat in rapt attention, moved and motivated by the documentary’s message of the precious gift of life.  On Monday, hundreds of thousands marched for life in the freezing DC rain, an overwhelming number of them young students from kindergarten to graduate school.  These youth inspire me and give me optimism for the future of the pro-life movement. 

 Read more at Cagle here. 

The Gift Of Life cast member Rebecca Kiessling was on Huckabee this weekend to share her story.  Watch this powerful testimonial:

Ironically, Colorado Common Cause and others are simultaneously advocating free speech by opposing the SOPA internet restriction bill, and advocating censorship of corporate speech. For example, in a Tweet today Common Cause promoted a "Musical Attack on #SOPA & #CitizensUnited." See also the linked And yet the voices against SOPA included many of America's most prominent corporations.  Wikipedia led the charge -- you know, the free online encyclopedia owned by Wikimedia Foundation, Incorporated. The for-profit corporations Facebook and Google also came out strongly against SOPA. Even the Vibram shoe company came out against SOPA.

Does the American left really want to get in the businesses of imposing government censorship on corporations? As Eugene Volokh sensibly reasons: "Say that Congress concludes that it's unfair for Google to be able to speak so broadly, in a way that ordinary Americans (including ordinary Congressmen) generally can't. Congress therefore enacts a statute banning all corporations from spending their money -- and therefore banning them from speaking -- in support of or opposition to any statute. What would you say about such a statute?"

If censorship is "what democracy looks like," then I for one will fight for the preservation of the First Amendment and our Constitutional republic.
 Read more  here.