Just as former Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) labeled potential liberal threats “dirty communists,” James Bopp, a conservative litigator from podunk Indiana, calls opponents to his conservative agenda “socialists.” Like a priest leading his congregation in prayer, Bopp begins many of his speeches by reading the First Amendment aloud, but Bopp confuses his championing of free speech with his propagation of slander and libel. He is, after all, a lawyer.

Bopp’s career began in the late ’60s at Indiana University, where he became enamored of Bill Buckley’s, DC ’50, conservative rhetoric. Since then, he has worked diligently for the conservative right, most importantly on the “voter guides” of the 1980 presidential race, which, some say, led to Reagan’s election. But let’s not give credit where it isn’t due: Reagan won that election with the help of the Democrats’ capitulation of the South.

Over the past 10 years, Bopp has almost exclusivey been a go-to lawyer for Christian fundamentalists. I imagine Bopp as a lonely lawyer masturbating in his office to talk shows hosted by Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, lamenting the fact that he has found little support from the conservative right and even less success in advancing his idiotic and pernicious project.

That is, until recently. This past week, he won his biggest victory to date in a decision issued by the Supreme Court, which states that corporations, unions, and nonprofit groups have the right to spend as much as they want in support of—or in opposition to—the election of a candidate.

When I voted for Obama, I hoped that he would cut political ties to big corporations, like the insurance companies and their powerful lobbyists who scurry through the dark corridors of the Hill. Obama’s healthcare reform bill has shown he is unwilling to do that—just look at the meager provisions for persons with preexisting conditions. (Don’t even get me started on his inability to stand up to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and push through a public option that would have forced insurance companies to actually compete.)

Bopp’s win in the Supreme Court, however, was only made possible by the appointment of Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., LAW ’75, not because of his agility as a lawyer, which Bopp likens to the art of Picasso, Van Gogh, and Michelangelo. Furthermore, the win underscores Obama’s failure to sever ties with corporations that are willing to spend millions of dollars to advance self-serving legislation that enhances their ability to continue manipulating incumbents, with huge donations to their already bloated war chests. Money over morality, marketing over moxie.

As if this weren’t enough, Bopp, who speaks only in groundless hyperbole, asserts that Obama is leading an effort “that will guarantee… the literal—not just virtual— destruction of the country as we know it.” He now wants to roll back campaign disclosure rules claiming—again under the familiar guise of free speech—that “groups have to be relieved of reporting their donors if lifting the prohibition on their political speech is going to have any meaning.”

In reality, Bopp is catering to bought-off politicians who do not want to be held accountable by their constituents for the benefits they receive. Bopp’s deceitful rhetoric reeks of the muck in which he wallows, and too few people are willing to rake it and expose him for the swine he is.

But this should surprise no one. Since his victory last week, the court has agreed to hear another of Bopp’s cases, an appeal that would prevent the public release of the names of people who signed a Washington State petition opposing same-sex marriage, on the grounds that gay rights supporters might harass them. This statement operates on the insulting assumption that social liberals are not capable of rational discourse in a political arena.

Just as the repeal of disclosure regulations would reduce accountability for politicians, this appeal would effectively halt intellectual debate on the issue of gay rights because proponents of same-sex marriage would be forced to fight an amorphous, nameless group.

While Mr. Bopp may profess to be a champion of the First Amendment, he is in reality an enemy of the freedom of information essential to authenticity in the political process. His agenda continues to forfeit political authority to the big corporations that commission pawns like him as their unapologetic whores and mercenaries.

If Obama is a socialist for wanting bigger government and government-regulated healthcare, then Bopp and his ilk are corporate monarchists, and a danger to democracy.