No, I'm playing the game of actually knowing what the laws that govern speech are, and how they determine what is and is not speech.
Well, nobody was arguing that the resulting movie from Citizens United wasn't speech, the argument is that it was an 'electioneering communication' which obviously took money to make and was therefore capable of being banned by the government. The Supreme Court rightly said, "You're allowed to make the movie"
The Citizens United decision and previous ones (notably Buckley v Valeo) that equated the spending of money with speech are a direct contradiction of those laws. Our laws should not have competing definitions of what is or is not speech.
No, they're not. They didn't make this up one day. There were previous attempt to do similar things and Citizens United is well founded on First National Bank v Belotti (except there instead of the FEC it was the State of Massachussets): "wanted to
spend money to publicize their views opposing a referendum proposal to amend the Massachusetts Constitution to authorize the legislature to enact a graduated personal income tax." -- of course that action was contrary to a Massachussets state law (an amendment to the Mass Constitution no less), that prevented the EXPENDITURE itself. And that was found to violate the I Amendment.
You do understand that there is a very wide middle ground between "the first amendment doesn't protect that" and "it should be banned", right?
No, there isn't, either the government is constitutionally restricted from banning it or its up to the government's prerogative to ban it. In other words either your freedom of speech is a fundamental right or it is a statutory right. Its is obviously the former, and if it were the latter, then your right to speech is simply subject to congressional will. CAN'T be banned and CAN BAN BUT WON'T is a MAJOR difference
in particular when we're discussing criticism of the government itself.
And as I keep trying to explain, the first amendment doesn't protect the spending of money.
Yes, it does, because when you attack the expenditure with a less than content neutral statute (electioneering communications) you are then expressing an unconstitutional censorial motive, it is unconstitutional and unquestionably so.
Buying a computer is not protected speech under the first amendment. That is literally an insane thing to say.
General vs differential treatment. Short and sweet, if the government imposes a 7% sales tax on everything, including the computer, you're fine, but if the government imposes a $3,000 tax on computer,
specifically, with the intent to stifle the internet access of poor people, that would be 'differential treatment' violating the I Amendment.
That concept is illuminated in the Minnesota Star Tribune case, I can't look it up right now, bottom line the state imposed a DISTINCT tax that wasn't one of general applicability and the fact that they FOCUSED in on Minnesota's Star Tribune's use of newspaper and ink was enough to trigger scrutiny under the I Amendment.
What's even very illuminating in that case is that there wasn't any
facial evidence of a censorial motive; whereas in the case of Citizens United, there is a specific censorial motive.