I have a feeling that there is a interpretation bias in favor of corporations over human life.
As for the second point, congress has that power, but not an obligation to do so. Congress could pass a law aimed at ensuring access to clean water, but not every law congress could pass has been passed. If congress passed such a law, a plain reading of that sentence would support the law being constitutional.
There are reasons to be optimistic.
Many people- most, in the early days- had private wells, and do not in any way "get" water from the government at all. It wouldn't make sense for such a thing to be in the Constitution. Even now, the water at my house comes from a well in my basement.
What happened could easily fit under fraud, false advertising or any number of other criminal or civil laws. That's why I'm deeply skeptical of this part of the judgement:
> He also said there was no constitutional right to “truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.”
While technically true, that does not mean the conduct itself was lawful, and I'd expect someone better versed in legalese could explain it.
PS: this case in particular relates to the city of Jackson, a municipal government, not the federal Congress, so the bit about "common defense and general welfare" is not binding to them. That would be the articles the municipality is incorporated under, as defined by the state of Mississippi, which apparently are too loose.
The Citizens United case affirmed that a private group could collectively spend money to produce and distribute a movie attacking Hillary Clinton during her campaign.
The problem is, if you want to stop those people from spending money to influence the outcome of elections, you must also forbid the New York Times from doing so. That means no investigative journalism, no exposés of candidates, no endorsements or political op-eds. Ink and paper cost money, and that money is spent by a corporation.
(And, if you succeed in letting newspapers have a regulatory carve-out, then all you’ve done is make them tasty acquisition targets for those same corporate interests you just tried to restrict.)
I think unlimited spending on political messaging has poisoned our politics and our culture, but I think that’s downstream of a lot of other factors — the loss of social cohesion, weakening of civil society and institutions, and the growth of federal power raising the stakes of elections. Restricting speech won’t solve these issues. I’m not sure what will.
If one person acting alone has a right to speak, how can that same right be denied to a group who have decided to speak together? And since “speech” in this context has always been interpreted to mean any act by which a message is conveyed to other people, it naturally includes applause, sitting quietly, donating money, etc, etc.
Corporations are not people nor behave like individuals. Money is not speech.
> “speech” in this context has always been interpreted to mean any act by which a message is conveyed to other people
Like a bullet? That explains the high murder rate in the USA. Your argument makes no sense and only works if one does not think too much about it.
> has always been interpreted
Saying that it has always been like that does not make it so. Because it was not.
It has always been agreed by everybody that corporations do not have a right to free speech only individual citizens have it.