A small opening for campaign finance law given the SCOTUS ruling: make it strict-scrutiny compliant.

[backscatter712]

What is strict scrutiny? It's the standard used in case law that has been upheld over and over and over in the Supreme Court, that draws the line with legal restrictions that bump into First Amendment and other Bill of Rights issues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny

There are three criteria for strict scrutiny to ensure a law remains constitutional:

It must be justified by a compelling government interest. I don't know about you, but I think that having lawmakers be able to create laws without the constant conflicts of interest, ethical issues, and TV attack ad blackmail is pretty damned compelling. Without protections, the legislative process gets distorted and corrupted.

It must be narrowly tailored to achieve that goal. That means that banning all corporate donations may not be possible, but it may be possible to restrict donations from companies directly affected by legislation under consideration by Congresscritters, or require Congresscritters to return donations from donors that have a direct interest in a piece of legislation they're working on. Similarly, banning all attack ads may be unconstitutional, but banning particular ads that are aired in a situation that prevents legislators from doing their jobs objectively could meet constitutional muster.

Last, it must be the least restrictive means for achieving that interest. Banning all political advertising doesn't meet this criterion, but restricting deceptive or misleading ads might be doable.

IANAL, and IANACS (I am not a Constitutional Scholar), but could this be used to engineer new campaign finance reform law that has a better chance when challenged in court (yes, I know, the Righttard Five in the SCOTUS are likely to shoot these laws down no matter how sound they are. Still, if the law is engineered to follow the strict scrutiny standard, Roberts, Scalia & co. will have to perform enormous amounts of legal gymnastics to invent a way to strike it in the face of decades of previous SCOTUS decisions...)

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Share your idea with some folks who could try to implement it!!!

[elleng]

2. Haven't read entire decision yet,

but I think they applied 'strict scrutiny.'

I like Barney's suggestion. Amend CORP-laws, instead of elect-financing.