You may have thought that today we'd be talking about former Representative Massa and his
tickle fights, after he appeared on Glen Beck and Larry King last night admitting, "Not only did I grope him (his aide), I tickled him until he couldn't breath."  Alas, I believe that Massa has made it pretty clear that he has lost his mind, and the real story is that he engaged in inappropriate conduct and was the architect of his own fall from power.

Time to move onto bigger and better things in my opinion, which means that today we're going to revisit something that bothers me, and should bother everyone else.  It was when the Supreme Court of the United States overturned key election finance regulations in the Citizens United case, allowing unlimited funding for campaigns by corporations. 

It was shortly after the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people under the law, allowed to spend as much as they want on whomever they want, that the President held his first State of the Union.  It was here that President Obama broke with tradition and criticized the Supreme Court for its decision. Also breaking with tradition, Justice Alito appeared to mouth the words "not true" during a standing ovation from Democrats.

Now, the Supreme Court's top Justice has come out publicly criticizing the President during a talk at the University of Alabama, saying that it was "very troubling" that the President criticized the Court and went so far as to say that the State of the Union was nothing more than "a political pep rally."

The reason I say that Justice Roberts needs to check his head is that members of the Court cannot be seen or heard getting involved in the political mess that is government.  By doing so you erode the veil of impartiality that all courts must preserve to function properly, even if it's an illusion in reality.  The President had every right to criticize the court for overturning decades of precedence restricting the amount of money corporations can legally spend on political candidates.  Last year had the most money ever spent by lobbyists, and the last Presidential election had ridiculously huge amounts of money donated to both campaigns.  It is within this context that the President asked the logical question, how do individuals compete in practice with the sheer amount of capital a given corporation can muster in the political process?

The decision by the Supreme Court was in effect an activist decision, and because of that it was a political one.  As much as they want to say it's merely a small theoretical matter, they fail to recognize the entirely too real effects it is already having on elections, especially when by all accounts most analysts believe the November mid term elections will break records for money spent.  It's because of all of this that when I look at John Roberts I see a man who is very proud to be on the Court, but with his recent comments he exposed not only his own politicization, but that of the court.  He really needs to check his head.