Congress on the Fritz, Fritz on the Congress.

“There is a cancer on the body politic: money.” Former Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC) argues for a campaign finance constitutional amendment — Worth reading in its entirety. “[I]n 1998 I had to raise $8.5 million to be elected senator. This meant I had to collect $30,000 a week, each and every week, for six years. I could have raised $3 million in South Carolina. But to get $8.5 million I had to travel to New York, Boston, Chicago, Florida, California, Texas and elsewhere. During every break Congress took, I had to be out hustling money. And when I was in Washington, or back home, my mind was still on money.” …

“What the court did in 1976 was to give the rich, who don’t have to raise money, a big advantage — in effect, a greater degree of freedom of speech than others have. No one can imagine that in drafting the First Amendment to the Constitution, James Madison thought freedom of speech would be measured by wealth. The Supreme Court, which has found constitutional other limits on speech, has rendered Madison’s freedom unequal. Congress must make it equal again.”