Supreme Court hearing case today to overturn ban on corporate spending in federal elections

I mentioned this in the open thread, but wanted a longer explanation of today's Supreme Court argument on campaign finance. The justices basically decided to rehear arguments in this case, which was about a movie on Hillary Clinton, to decide if the ban on corporate spending in federal elections was still constitutional. That ban has been in place for decades so the Court will be taking a major step by overturning the precedence. NPR's Nina Totenberg, the guru of all things Supreme Court, has an excellent explanation of the case:

In June, the justices ordered the case re-argued, only this time, they said they wanted the lawyers to focus on whether the Constitution permits any ban on corporate spending in candidate elections. In short, the court said it is considering whether to reverse decades of its own decisions.

There's much at stake with this case, besides overturning decades of precedence:

Campaign reform advocates say that if the court strikes down limits on corporate campaign spending, the whole electoral system will be distorted. Corporations, with billions of dollars in profits each year, will be able to swamp the system, and they will do it using front groups so that voters won't know who is sponsoring the ads they see.

"It's a disaster for democracy," says campaign reform advocate Fred Wertheimer. "It puts corporate money in the driver's seat. It will unleash amounts of money in campaigns that we have never seen before."

The Supreme Court is closely divided on this issue. At the March argument, five justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, appeared hostile to the existing law. For the court, though, the larger question is whether conservatives — Roberts in particular — are prepared to reverse decades of election-law decisions.

At his Senate confirmation hearing in 2005, Roberts said this about reversing precedent: "I do think that it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent. Precedent plays an important role in promoting stability and even-handedness. It is not enough that you may think the prior decision was wrongly decided."

Nothing Roberts said during his confirmation should be taken seriously. The conservatives on the Court have a political agenda -- and overturning the ban on corporate spending would benefit the GOP.