The Supreme Court rules for free speech*

*if you're rich that is. Today the court restricted the right of expression for high school kids, while essentially eviscerating the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation.

In the first case, the conservative majority:

"gave public schools new authority to regulate what students say, allowing principals to punish speech or demonstrations that may "reasonably be viewed" as promoting illegal drug use.
In its most significant ruling on student speech in almost two decades, the court said that the principal of a high school in Juneau, Alaska, did not violate senior Joseph Frederick's constitutional right to free speech when she suspended him for unfurling a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" as students waited for the Olympic torch relay to pass their school in 2002. A bong is a water pipe commonly used to smoke marijuana."

Thanks for defining "bong" Washington Post!

For his part, "Frederick had insisted the slogan meant nothing specific and was not advocating drug use." Yeahhhh, sure it did buddy.

In the second case, the court took on the issue of "express advocacy." Basically, the court had earlier ruled that ads that called on voters to support a specific candidate could be restricted. The way to get around this was through so-called "issue ads" where you ostensibly focus on an issue (say an ad opposing the Iraq war, in a liberal district) but connect that to a candidate (i.e., "Hillary Clinton voted for the war"). Since this kind of advertising was unrestricted, it was a good way for wealthy donors, corporations, and unions to funnel a whole bunch of cash into the campaign while evading contribution limits.

McCain-Feingold tried to close that loophole by banning any issue ads that even mentioned the name of a candidate within a certain period of time before an election. Today, the Court ruled on a Wisconsin Right-to-life ad which

mentioned Senators Russell D. Feingold and Herb Kohl, both Wisconsin Democrats, and urged viewers to contact them and urge them to oppose their Democratic colleagues’ opposition to some of President Bush’s judicial nominees. The ads directed viewers to a Web site critical of Mr. Feingold, who was up for re-election.

The 5-4 conservative majority somehow found that this didn't violate McCain-Feingold.

The upshot is that now there is a whole new way (or rather, an old way that is now available again) for wealthy donors to exercise their "free speech" on all the rest of us. What would bong-hitting Jesus do?