Discussion for article #224192
Now that corporations are people and they and the rich can buy politicians, once lying about anything you want to any venue you want to becomes the law of the land I would think we can disband the Supreme Court and sit back and watch some form of Helter Skelter far different than the one Charles Manson envisioned begin.
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Anti-abortion/anti-contraception extremist zealots want to be able to lie and get away with it. What a surprise.
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Nothing new and we all can guess how the Roberts court will rule.
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“I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.”
-The real Susan B. Anthony
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This whole issue would warm Joseph Goebbles heart, he would be 100% behind these people. Because he is the one who said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the (fill in the blank, Koch brothers, Tea Party, S.B. Anthony, GOP, even Cheney) can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of (fill in the blank, Koch brothers, Tea Party, S.B. Anthony, GOP, even Cheney, oh and I forgot Fox News.”
Of course they would all say that it is Obama that is lying but when did Obama insist that the government regulate women’s bodies, or deny food to children, or look for ways to send our military in to cause death and destruction for the good of the Cheneys and Halliburton. That the Koch brothers only want what is best for themselves and their freedoms to the tune of billions of dollars spent to take over our freedoms and government.
But of course now that the corporations are people they should be able to tell as many lies as the people can swallow, no consequences should be allowed.
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Lying: Isn’t that against one of the rules in that novel they adhere to?
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The courts in California had already said it was ok to lie in Ads. Now we will make it part of free speech, I guess screaming fire in a crowded theater is now could be covered under the constitution. It is confusing to say the least that we could make lying totally legal in the US, except when you do it in court that is.
So it would appear that a billboard campaign saying that the Susan B. Anthony group is really made up of Muslims and are opposing abortion as a way of sneaking Sharia Law into Ohio would be ok?
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“…banning lying violates free speech…”
Therefore Jesus is unconstitutional and unamerican.
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How far does this go? is the oath you take prior to giving testimony a free speech burden? The same for threats of prosecution if you lie on tax forms or in a criminal complaint?
How far does this go? And has anyone else noticed this kind of lunacy is becoming mainstream?
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When any group fight its way to the Supreme Court for the right to LIE in campaign ads anything they say has ZERO credibility.
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As distasteful as I find the Susan B. Anthony List people, I think that trying to ban “lying” in what is unquestionably political speech represents a fundamental threat to the First Amendment.
The Framers came from an era in which candidates and their supporters said astonishingly vile things about their opponents, things that would be slander or libel if uttered outside of the political arena. Today’s political discourse seems downright polite by comparison. Yet they chose to protect free speech, and they didn’t say that speech was protected only as long as it was true.
The difficulty arises when you contemplate who, exactly, is going to define what a “lie” is? Most political speech doesn’t lend itself to simple categorization, to a black-or-white, true-or-false verdict. That’s why people argue with the determinations of even the most nonpartisan fact-checking organizations.
Do we really want every campaign to turn into The Battle of the Competing Injunctions? If your opponent produces advertising that you regard as untrue, you produce your own ad that says, “My opponent is lying about me, and here’s why. What does that tell you about his trustworthiness?” Keep the courts out of it.
We’re not talking about commercial speech, here, which is subject to a different standard (“This product cures cancer!”), nor are we talking about perjury in court testimony or in legal filings. False equivalence.
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So conservatives are now courageously defending the God-given Right to Lie. How inspiring.
Liars (or to be politically correct, “truth challenged persons”) have long been an oppressed minority group.
But – I lie. Truth-challenged persons do quite well in this country. There’s always a job for a good liar with Fox News or Americans for Prosperity
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Well, Marjorie, if what you want to say is true… why do you need to challenge the law?
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Don’t forget talk radio and the WaPo editorial page.
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President Obama should be doing nothing but nominating Federal judges and the Senate nothing but confirming them, until every last vacancy is filled. Otherwise it’ll likely be 50 years, instead of maybe 20, before any of this lunacy starts getting reversed.
The country has reached the level of ass backwardness where it’s necessary to specify whether a person is human or not, in order to think clearly. “Economy of scale” should be redefined to mean when humans incorporate persons big and rich enough to negate the social disadvantages of being a Lying Sack Of Shit.
So many LSOS today are so well shielded behind touch tone tellers, customer service representatives, lawyers, lobbyists and spokespeople, that nobody owns personal responsibility for much of anything, and the moral fabric of society is unraveling fast.
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What ever possessed us to get rid of dueling? Could we at least have some form of combat - two falls, two submissions, or a knockout? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfRkcJ0BLS0
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I think it’s a fine line. On the one hand, First Amendment and a strong bias against prior restraint. On the other hand, elections and a very strong time element, so that almost any post-publication sanction will be considered a cost of doing business. (That, and the controverys itself just gives you free dissemination of whatever lie you’re being dinged for.)
The only way I could see this working would be with much stronger post-publication sanctions. Say, a judge finds temporary-restraining-order evidence that there’s a lie, the candidate favored by the lie will – if they win – not be seated until the case is finished, and if the case is decided that there was a knowing falsehood, the election will be rerun with the officers of the offending organization barred from participating in any advertising. Oh, and being an officer of an organization that knowingly lies is a crime that results in permanent loss of the franchise.
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I think that would simply produce endless litigation, long vacancies in political positions, and some unacceptable chilling effects.
Frankly, I’d rather let the mud be slung. It’s not as if the aggrieved party can’t respond.
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