Citizens United: a crack in the wall?

The U. S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case and thus allowed to stand a District Court decision that upheld the ban on campaign finance spending by non-citizens.  In this case, it was a Canadian citizen who is also a Harvard Law School graduate and lives and works in the United States;  but because he is not a U. S. citizen, he may not vote -- and now it has been clarified that he cannot make monetary contributions in U. S. elections.

Well, yes, I would say that makes sense.   However, how does it square with the SCOTUS' Citizens United decision that allows corporations to make campaign contributions without even being identified?   How do we know that the corporation is not owned by non-citizens?  What if 50.01% of the stock was held by non-citizens?  

It is conceivable that an election could be swayed by foreign nationals hostile to the United States, and we would not even know where the money came from.   Because, at this point, SuperPACs are not required to disclose the source of their contributions.   So a terrorist organization, or a hostile government, could form a U. S. corporation, keep the owners' identity secret, and sway a close election with huge financial contributions to a SuperPac.

This is what Justice Samuel Alito mouthed "Not true" about when President Obama made such a claim in his State of the Union Speech.   But neither Alito nor any of the other Justices have explained why it is "not true."

Retired Justice John Paul Stevens, who strongly opposed the Citizens United decision and voted against it, has since his retirement made it a cause that he speaks about frequently.   This is the troublesome question that he is raising.  How is it possible that Citizens United protects the "campaign speech' (money is defined as speech here) of some non-voters (domestic corporations) more than other non-voters (individual foreign nationals).

His further point is that, in order to explain this, the Justices are going to have to carve out an exception and so state it -- and thus it opens cracks in the wall that could bring the whole thing crumbling down.   But it may take years.

Since they passed up this opportunity with this case of the Canadian Harvard graduate lawyer, they don't seem inclined to revisit the decision.

Too bad.  It was a terrible decision.   And we are seeing the consequences.    It is now estimated that conservative billionaires are amassing a billion dollar war chest to use against Obama.

Ralph