The US Constitution Is Losing Its Appeal

The Article: ‘We The People’ Loses Its Appeal With People Around The World by Adam Liptak in the New York Times.

The Text: The Constitution has seen better days.

Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.

In 1987, on the Constitution’s bicentennial, Time magazine calculated that “of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”

A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. “The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.

The study, to be published in June in The New York University Law Review, bristles with data. Its authors coded and analyzed the provisions of 729 constitutions adopted by 188 countries from 1946 to 2006, and they considered 237 variables regarding various rights and ways to enforce them.

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What Wikipedia Won’t Tell You

The Article: What Wikipedia Won’t Tell You by Cary Sherman in the New York Times.

The Text: The digital tsunami that swept over the Capitol last month, forcing Congress to set aside legislation to combat the online piracy of American music, movies, books and other creative works, raised questions about how the democratic process functions in the digital age.

Policy makers had recognized a constitutional (and economic) imperative to protect American property from theft, to shield consumers from counterfeit products and fraud, and to combat foreign criminals who exploit technology to steal American ingenuity and jobs. They knew that music sales in the United States are less than half of what they were in 1999, when the file-sharing site Napster emerged, and that direct employment in the industry had fallen by more than half since then, to less than 10,000. They studied the problem in all its dimensions, through multiple hearings.

While no legislation is perfect, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (or PIPA) was carefully devised, with nearly unanimous bipartisan support in the Senate, and its House counterpart, the Stop Online Piracy Act (or SOPA), was based on existing statutes and Supreme Court precedents. But at the 11th hour, a flood of e-mails and phone calls to Congress stopped the legislation in its tracks. Was this the result of democracy, or demagoguery?

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Who’s Behind The Super PAC Explosion

The Article: The “People” Behind The Super PAC Explosion by Gavin Aronsen and Dave Gilson on Mother Jones.

The Text: Since last January, super-PACs have raised nearly $93 million in preparation for the 2012 election. Of that, more than 35 percent was donated by corporations, unions, and nonprofits—or, as we’ve come to know them in the post-Citizens United era, people. Though non-people people have not dominated super-PAC giving (for now), their strong showing in the recent round of financial disclosures lends credence to campaign finance reformers’ concerns that super-PACs enable cash-flush organizations to buy outsized influence over elections and candidates. The average corporate or union super-PAC donation was more than $62,000; in contrast, the average individual donation was around $23,500.

Of the $22.4 million collectively raised by the biggest 20 corporate and union super-PAC donors, 37 percent was from labor groups, which contributed to both liberal super-PACs and their own super-PACs. The rest was largely corporate donations to conservative super-PACs and groups supporting (but officially unconnected to) Republican presidential candidates. See the next page for a list of the biggest human donors to super-PACs—some of whose companies also appear on the list below.

Top 20 “People”* Giving to PACs

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Mitt Romney’s Own Solyndra Problem

The Article: Mitt’s Solyndra? He handed out renewable energy subsidies, too by Darren Samuelsohn on Politico.

The Text: Republicans are pounding Barack Obama on Solyndra, but it may be a complicated argument for their front-runner to maintain: While Mitt Romney was governor, Massachusetts also picked some winners and losers with energy subsidies.

And like Obama, some of the companies Romney’s state invested in came out on the losing end.

The scale is dramatically different: While the Obama administration dumped $535 million alone into Solyndra — the California solar panel company that subsequently filed for bankruptcy protection — the energy loans, grants and other financial help Romney distributed during four years as governor add up to just a fraction of that amount.

But Democrats — and even some Republicans — say the core issue is the same: If the federal government shouldn’t be betting on one company rather than the other, then neither should the state of Massachusetts.

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Why The Susan G. Komen Backlash Worked

The Article: Damage Control: Why the Backlash Against the Komen Foundation Succeeded by Nona Willis Aronowitz in Good News.

The Text: On Tuesday, the anti-breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen For The Cure announced it was pulling funds that it had previously provided Planned Parenthood for breast exams. And today, after a hailstorm of protest on Twitter, Facebook, and Susan G. Komen’s message boards, the charity announced that it would be restoring Planned Parenthood’s grants.

Folks across the Internet are attributing this victory to, well, the Internet. Yay, social media! But it’s worth asking why this particular attack on women’s health prompted such a deafening outcry. After all, just one year ago the House of Representatives voted to defund Planned Parenthood outright. Conservative legislators rail against the HPV vaccine, which also prevents women from getting life-threatening cancer. Neither case prompted a fraction of the ire. What exactly got us so riled up this time?

It’s partly about the politics of breast cancer itself, or lack thereof. Breast cancer is one of the few nonpartisan women’s health issues. For those of us irritated by Komen’s pinkwashing or the foundation’s petty lawsuits against smaller charities, this may have also been an opportunity to vent our disgust. Mainly, though, the difference lies in the money: We expect to have a say in where our donations go.

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