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Two years ago, while delivering his State of the Union address, President Obama looked the Supreme Court justices in the face and told them they were wrong to have allowed special interests to spend without limits on campaigns. “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests,” he said. “They should be decided by the American people.”

On Monday, the president abandoned that fundamental principle and gave in to the culture of the Citizens United decision that he once denounced as a “threat to our democracy.”