Listening to NPR, if you read outside the liberal bubble, is a bit like visiting an alternate reality where everything is upside-down or retold backwards. For example, the press and Democrats are now applying the term "judicial activism" to the practice of deciding the case on the basis of the law itself: as if "activism."

For example, today Patrick Leahy complained (and NPR repeated, over and over in their coverage today):

It is essential that judicial nominees understand that, as judges, they are not members of an administration. The courts are not subsidiaries of any political party or interest group, and our judges should not be partisans. That is why the Supreme Court's intervention in the 2000 presidential election in Bush v. Gore was so jarring and wrong. That is why the Supreme Court's recent decision in Citizens United, in which five conservative Justices rejected the Court's own precedent, the bipartisan law enacted by Congress, and 100 years of legal developments in order to open the door for massive corporate spending on elections, was such a jolt to the system.

And Schumer echoes:

Among the Democrats to second this theme, with more biting rhetoric, were Senator Charles Schumer of New York. Accusing the Court's conservatives of "judicial activism to pull the law to the right," Schumer likened the court's conservatives to the reactionary majority that, Schumer said, helped bring about "the age of the robber barons" in the early 20th century by striking down labor-protection laws and other regulations.

Here's Leahy's earlier statement on the same ruling:

The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision last week in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission threatens to allow corporations to drown out the individual voices of hardworking Americans in our elections. By overturning years of work in Congress to pass bipartisan campaign finance laws, and by reversing a century of its own precedent, the conservative, activist bloc on the Supreme Court reached an unnecessary and improper decision that will distort future elections....

I fail to understand the rhetoric. Contrary to the "century of precedent" argument, the case overturns parts of McCain-Feingold, which was signed into law in 2002, not a century ago. (And even at the time, many observers said it was clearly unconstitutional.) Paul Sherman explains more:

Although corporations have been prohibited from giving money directly to candidates since 1907, bans on independent corporate spending in elections did not go before the U.S. Supreme Court until 1990 in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce — a mere 20 years ago. The Court upheld the prohibition by a narrow 5-4 vote, but Austin was hardly a bedrock of constitutional law — indeed, it was the first case in Supreme Court history to uphold a limit on independent political speech, which the Court in Citizens United correctly recognized as "a significant departure from ancient First Amendment principles." By reversing Austin, the Court has now corrected its error and brought the regulation of corporate and union speech in line with the rest of First Amendment doctrine.

If you disagree with or reverse an activist court, you are now, weirdly, an "activist." Because real non-activism consists of going along with activists. To fail to be an activist is, in itself, activism. Got that?

One commentator notes:

The government argued in Citizens United that it had the power to outlaw books and movies produced by unions and corporations, both non-profit and for-profit, if they included even a single line addressing an election or a political issue.

(What's wrong with that? Shouldn't the government censor all political speech by any group of citizens? Isn't that what the first amendment is all about?)

Ed Whelan also notes:

As Chief Justice Roberts pointed out, the theory of the First Amendment advocated by Kagan on behalf of the Obama administration "would empower the Government to prohibit newspapers from running editorials or opinion pieces supporting or opposing candidates for office, so long as the newspapers were owned by corporations — as the major ones are."

Why is the left upset about this? Let's let Al Franken explain (bold added):

I am more worried about how this decision is going to affect our communities — and our ability to run those communities without a permission slip from big business...

Ah: there's the problem. Franken apparently thinks he's a king, not a representative. He seems to think his job is not to represent his community, but to run it — and speech by "big business" (or any group, really) interferes with that.