I may, on occasion, be intellectually lazy, though I certainly try not to be. That’s not what happened here, though: what I was referring to, and what Mr. Alito was reacting to as well,as far as I know, was not any suggestion on Mr. Obama’s part that the decision itself was wrong, but rather his remarks about the involvement of foreign corporations, and in particular about “overturning a century of law”.

As for the court’s ruling, I am inclined to agree with the majority, but not strongly so; I can see that both sides have some traction here, and I’ve been meaning to read the full opinions.

Again, do forgive me for misplacing your comment for so long. We may disagree about this and that, but one can’t learn anything if one isn’t willing to listen — and so I never block civil and thoughtful comments, which yours generally are.

Regarding the Supreme Court decision. Bad decision, even if it was constitutionally the right one. It could have declined to take on the case, and it should have declined. That said, your statement that Obama was “wrong” because Alito said he was is, well, fine as far as it goes, since Alito was on the majority opinion of the court. But there was also a minority opinion on the court that did not feel so sanguine about the consequences of the majority’s decision as regards foreign corporations. In as much as majorities and minorities are dictated by the politics of the Presidents who appoint them and the Congresses who approve them, majority and minority opinions ought to be judged with close to the same respect: in this case, almost half of the justices believe that there might be a problem. If some do, then others might, and if they do, it will be a problem. See how that works?

We can look at the minority opinion to see the statements pertaining to it:

If taken seriously, our colleagues’ assumption that the identity of a speaker has no relevance to the Government’s ability to regulate political speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions. Such an assumption would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by
“Tokyo Rose” during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders. More pertinently, it would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans: To do otherwise, after all, could “ ‘enhance the relative voice’ ” of some (i.e., humans) over others (i.e.,
nonhumans). Ante, at 33 (quoting Buckley, 424 U. S.

In state elections, even domestic corporations may be “foreign”­
controlled in the sense that they are incorporated in another jurisdic­tion and primarily owned and operated by out-of-state residents.

Given these statements, you might be right to call out Obama for making a claim that is not disputed, but to claim that Obama was wrong, or that he was lying, is not only intellectually lazy (and you friend have gotten lazier with age), but its dishonest as well.

As for calling out the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court is just another branch of government, one of three equals. I suspect that a lot of people found it shocking because they were told it was shocking. I know a lot of people agreed with Obama.