Counteracting the recent US Supreme Court decision to let US big corporations pour as much money they want during every single US political election as to elect their candidates that would promote their exclusive business interests even at the expense of the American people.

The Edwards amendment will ensure that Congress and the states may prohibit corporations from spending their funds for political activity.

Twelve days ago, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling striking at the heart of our democracy. The Court disregarded more than a century of precedent and ruled that our Constitution prevents the American people from regulating corporate money in our elections and politics. That’s wrong and we don’t buy it.

And twelve days ago, we stood up to fight back. Thousands of you joined us in our call for a constitutional amendment to defend our democracy and to restore the First Amendment to its intended purpose: to protect people, not corporations.

Friends- some of you may not be aware of this, but these brave young people have been treesitting on Coal River Mtn for about a week now, putting up with freezing temps, loud horn noisemakers kept on all night to try to make them leave the trees, lack of food because resupply efforts have been halted etc. -- here's the main website that you can find the updates on:

Climate Ground Zero

A few of you i'm writing to have even sat in trees for forest protection yourself in the past, or supported such actions, and now is the time to step up and support *these* courageous folks for the fight of this moment, the effort to save beautiful mountain ranges in Appalachia from being blown up into rubble, to get in the cheapest way what amounts to only 5% of the US supply of coal (of course, i don't really support coal mining anyway, but at least subsurface mining using individual miners creates more jobs, and leaves the Earth's surface intact, and a majority of WV residents oppose MTR, as well).

“If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”

The words are those of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in last week’s landmark Supreme Court decision marking some sort of culmination in the long corporate trek to personhood. It’s the word “simply” that gets to me: Exxon-Pinocchio is a real boy now, and has his opinions, and the government has no right to stop him from “simply engaging in political speech.”

What a cheap cover story; it’s up there with “bringing democracy to Iraq” in its tawdry manipulation of iconic national values to justify a raw power grab. The 5-4 decision in the long-awaited Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case overturns restrictions on corporate spending to influence election results, giving entities with millions (in some cases, billions) of dollars at their disposal unlimited license to electioneer for the candidate with the friendliest attitude toward their interests.

Those are the words used in Article II Section 3 of the US Constitution. The president is also to "recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Why does this not come up in Article I with all the other supreme powers of our Commander in Chief? Well, because only the military has one of those, and Article I is devoted to the most powerful branch of our government, the Congress.

The president is supposed to inform Congress on how things are going in his work of executing the laws they pass. We didn't hear much of that on Wednesday. President Obama did not mention his ban on prosecuting torture, his advisors' claims that he has the power to torture, his use of rendition, his removal from the Constitution of the right to habeas corpus, his list of Americans to be assassinated, his warrantless spying, his protection of Bush, Cheney, and gang from exposure or prosecution, his continuation of illegal wars, his use of unmanned drones to assassinate and slaughter, or his assertion of the power of aggressive war in a Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. All of that went without saying.

Wow, I was gone less than a week to the Conch Republic, and now return to a nation in which I would heartily recommend to any city, county, or state that it follow the example of the Florida Keys and secede from the so-called union.

We now have an official presidential list of Americans to be assassinated -- by America's government. A pollster says Fox News is the most trusted news source in the United States. The Supreme Court says corporations are people and bribery is speech; and people like Jonathan Turley and Glenn Greenwald, not to mention the AFL-CIO, support this insanity.