In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a provision in McCain-Feingold that bars companies and unions from paying for ads even mentioning the name of a candidate for federal office in the 60 days before a general election or the 30 days before a primary.

Once again, the court reverses a recent holding. This panel has shown that it has no respect for the notion of stare decisis.

It’s funny how conservatives are concerned about the free speech rights when money and power are involved.

The Supreme Court today loosened the restrictions on what companies and unions can spend on television advertisements just before elections, and in so doing may well have affected the thinking of political strategists for the 2008 elections.

By 5 to 4, the court ruled that an anti-abortion group in Wisconsin should have been allowed to broadcast ads before the 2004 race for the United States Senate in that state. In its ruling today, the high court opened a significant loophole in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, familiarly known as the McCain-Feingold law, to curb donations to campaigns.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that, when regulating what can be said in a campaign and when it may be said, “the First Amendment requires us to err on the side of protecting political speech rather than suppressing it.”