No, what I am saying is that most people can't be trusted to elect their representatives when someone tries to actively manipulate them. Since political speech is protected, and TV spots are political speech, there is no way to even hold any of it to "mostly true" standard.

For most people it is very difficult to determine when you are being lied to, when politicians do so under protection of freedom of political speech and then use anonymous money to hammer constituents with it then you have democratic process failing. Voters should be a given a chance to make informed decisions, and Citizens United make informed decision less likely.

US is a Republic for this very reason.

I personally don't see "tangible difference" you mentioned, and harm of increasingly corrupt political system is not in any way abstract. Encouraging and providing anonymous means for politicians to partake at the trough is rather direct harm to democratic process. While we might disagree on "who has rights" issue, we ought not to disagree that Citizens United should fall under "most egregious situations". While both are important, for me democratic process (e.g. voting) is higher order of importance than freedom of speech.

Half of Americans are below average intelligence, by definition. I think that typical American is low-information, one-issue voter that can and does get disproportionally swayed by TV spots. We understand that marketing for unhealthy product works, why do you think that marketing for constituent-unfriendly politicians would not?

Do you think that if you keep slandering someone, armed men from the government would not censor you in a violent manner? (Libertarian-to-English translation: If you keep slandering someone you will go to jail and get censored that way).

Whatever your approach to categorizing speech, all approaches lead to restricting outright harmful speech. Classical example of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater is not protected, should not be protected because minute gain in liberties by far outweigh massive and tangible damage it would cause.
 
The same approach should be used in Citizens United case. Even if you treat money as speech, even if you view all speech in absolute terms, even if you see corporations as persons, you still should realize that whatever gain in liberties there to be had by far offset by massive corrupting effect of unaccountable money in politics.

I will bite, because topic is interesting.

We all understand that all forms of "government sucks!" speech are protected. What if I start engaging in similar speech acts targeted at a private citizen, is this type of speech protected? Well, that depends. Statements of opinion are generally fine. Now, if it turns out to be slander, harassment and so on government can and does step to censor me. So we can see there are some protections of private citizen vs. private citizen speech, but they are nowhere near absolute and government could get involved in censoring some of it. Then there are other protected categories of speech, for example religious, that does not require "targeted at some aspect of government" qualifier. Plus there is whole separate issue of social consequences of speech that in turn can be highly censorious.

With that said, I personally detest all forms of censorship and would like to see speech protections broadened. I still stand by my original definition.

This is open-and-shut case, and the only question is what the settlement and payout to Jonathan Daniel would be.

You fail to understand my "Free Speech Protections have very specific applicability." For example, I as a private citizen, can limit your free speech as long as I have standing. You would be very effectively censored if I were to kick you off my property for expressing opinions. I could also attempt to censor you with other speech (e.g. heckling) in public spaces. None of this would be illegal, because I am not part of the government.

On top of the above freedom of speech is not absolute. False statements of fact, obscenity, fighting words, threats are under various circumstances and conditions excepted.

Oh, just noticed... happy Godwin's law.

I understand and even agree with your point that data-mining by private companies is nearly as dangerous as when government is involved, but in this specific case what would the Big Data do with information that some dude uploaded bunch of pedobear content? Show him more targeted ads for hand lotion?

I don't accept your definition. Your argument could only be true if you consider spending money on politicians as a free speech. Money is property for all definitions of money.

Even if I accept your flawed definition, Free Speech Protections have very specific applicability - it only protect citizens against government limiting their speech targeted at some aspect of government. Strict equivalency to money would be government unable to limit money paid by private citizens to the government. Clearly, we don't have such problem.

You still failed to demonstrate how "we, the people" benefit from allowing anonymous and corporate money influence politics. How is our democratic process is strengthened by SuperPACs trying to buy elections? Sure, at least once it was show to fail. The question is why was this allowed in the first place?

>>>The only way to do that is to elect corrupt politicians. In fact, politicians never have to make that choice, because it's called bribery, quid-pro-quo, and corruption, and it's 100% illegal. As we have shown, many more times than this, the money does not help if you don't have support of the people. Buy all the votes you want, we'll make more.

I am always surprised when faced with cognitive dissonance of this magnitude. In one instance you recognize that "bribery, quid-pro-quo, and corruption" are bad, and in other instance you fail to apply this in coherent manner to the situation we describe.

What do you think happens when bill affecting ABC Inc. that donated substantial amount to a politician's election fund comes on the floor? Conflict of interest happens, where this politician has to potentially choose between representing campaign donors or representing constituents. Sure, some politicians would act honorably and do the right thing, but you can be sure that some will fail. So why create this issue at all? What do, we, the people, gain from allowing anonymous and corporate money into politics? Are we any freer as a result?

Clearly, you can extrapolate from a single data point.

For every Cantor that deservingly got tossed out, there are many that managed to outspend and keep their seats.

What more concerning is that unlimited money could buy unlimited influence. When average candidate has to spend this kind of crazy money to get elected, then donors are in position to dictate policy. Damage of Citizen's United is not money flowing into politics, but giving more opportunities for money to corrupt politics. Why create a situation where politician has to make a choice between voting in the best interest of constituents and keeping re-election funding?

Yes, the are mostly the same voters.

In their defense, Bush Jr. didn't run on the platform of increasing surveillance and decreasing government transparency. For the second term he run on a solid platform of FUD and even many non-GOP voters bought into it.

Further in their defense, TP is a delayed reaction to Bush actions. Sure, it is largely counter-productive, ineffective, lacking concrete goals and so on, but if you are objective you can't claim they are not trying to do something about this.

Human irrationality.

Would you give AT&T signed blank check if they promised they would keep it for you "for security purposes"? Most people would hesitate to do so, but having one of your checks compromised is a lot less damaging that having your identity stolen via SSN compromise.

You average GOP voter strongly values privacy and will not look kindly at this kind of targeted approach.