here comes the judge

Is there a chance that Justice Sotomayor might do more to jump start real progress in our political system than our weak, wimpy, timid, and status-quo-loving President Obama?

In a word, yeah, there is.

I picked this up at a blog called Bitch, Ph.D. (see left sidebar), who got it from a blog called Lawyers, Guns, and Money, who got it from an article by Jess Bravin in the Wall Street Journal.

In her maiden Supreme Court appearance last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a provocative comment that probed the foundations of corporate law.

During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court's majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.

But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."

Uh, yeah again. Since about 90 percent of the political backwardness in this country stems from the twin judicial fictions that corporations are people and money is speech, I'm really glad to hear somebody finally say this out loud, especially somebody who also happens to be a Supreme Court Justice.

So how long before that dildo Tony Kennedy retires? Obama himself may be a dud, but if he appoints a couple more like this we might finally have something going.

Apropos of nothing at all, I also have to say that the WSJ editorial page sucks big time, but the paper often has some excellent reporting.