The decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was, with apologies to Vice Presidents, a big freaking deal. When the US Supreme Court said corporations can spend unlimited amounts to support politicians, that you can't put limits on the amount corporations use for political campaigns, they relied, in part, on a statement of fact.

When you're changing what it takes to campaign, you're messing with democracy itself. Your reasoning had better be compelling and the facts had better back you up.

The idea behind restrictions on corporate and union campaigning was to combat corruption of democracy. That's pretty compelling.

But a majority of five all agreed on this key finding:

...this Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy.

This was an extraordinary decision. It overturned enough precedent for Chief Justice John Roberts to defend overturning established law. After all, the minimum wage would be illegal and segregation in schools would still be the law if respect for precedent went to extremes.

But it was the facts on which the case rested that seemed a bit weird. Unlimited anonymous financial backing would not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That was akin to watching one cigarette executive after another testify before Congress, the American viewing audience, and the Lord God of all, that tobacco is positively not addictive.

It was like the arguments of conservatives that Photo IDs must replace traditional identification in order to prevent massive voter fraud. That such cases, nationwide, number literally in the tens, while the number of legitimate votes who would be denied their right to vote would number in multiple millions is simply not worthy of consideration. So it seemed with the corrupting influence of a tsunami of corporate cash.

There was another case in the courts concerning cash in campaigns. The Montana Supreme Court in the last few days of December looked to its own history and found a set of facts truer than what the US Supreme Court viewed through a glass darkly.

At issue was a Montana law that told corporations they could not use their funds to influence elections by spending on behalf of political campaigns. The law is a hundred years old. The Montana law was challenged, and the state Supreme Court took into consideration a set of facts not considered by the US Supreme Court.

The Montana "Copper Kings" of the gilded age made democracy in Montana into a shell game. Mark Twain once wrote about just one of the small group of wealthy manipulators, William A. Clark.

He is said to have bought legislatures and judges as other men buy food and raiment. By his example he has so excused and so sweetened corruption that in Montana it no longer has has an offensive smell. His history is known to everybody; he is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary, with a ball and chain on his legs. To my mind he is the most disgusting creature that the republic has produced since Tweed's time.

Clark eventually went so far as to order his state legislators to elect him to the United States Senate. About a century ago he became Senator Clark.

Two United States Supreme Court Justices last week overruled the Montana Supreme Court. For the first time in a hundred years, corporations in Montana can go back to their old practices. But, as critics of the Montana law pointed out, you can't just ignore established national law, regardless of the facts supporting the logic.

The two Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, pointed out that US law must prevail. But they also took note of the facts that the Montana courts had taken into account. Montana's gilded age corruption seems to be replicating itself across the nation. This year, a year less than two months old, seems already to have borne out the simple observation that the massive tidal amount of anonymous cash does less to inform than it does to deafen. Money is already corrupting democracy.

Sometimes legalese is obscure, considered even by Republicans to be too remote for anyone except a new credit card applicant looking through a finance interest agreement. One suggestion, that the United Supreme Court should revisit the Citizens United case and the facts, produced uncommonly understandable dialogue. Translated into standard English, the response of Justices Ginsburg and Breyer to that suggestion was "Well, duh yeah!"