In an opinion piece published yesterday in The New York Times, Ellen Weintraub, a member of the Federal Election Commission, suggests a way to “blunt the impact” of Citizens United v. FEC. There are reasons to question the propriety of a federal officer attempting to “blunt” a First Amendment ruling against her agency, and I am unaware of another federal entity whose commissioners routinely take to the pages of major newspapers to decry binding Supreme Court precedent. But no matter how attractive you find her proposed “zero-tolerance standard,” under which any corporation with even a single foreign shareholder could be barred from any political activity, her proposal relies on a number of fatal legal errors.