And the complicity of the media here is also fucking disgusting. A former senator getting a job at Violating Privacy Inc. after opposing the Violating Your Privacy law, Jesus fuck.
He's free to accuse whoever of whatever (as though we could stop him anyway) but if not implied in the original comment, this should be subject to being proven to be lies. And I think similar to libel, it should be a decently high bar to clear in terms of "this person knew what they were saying was bullshit," insofar as it's able to be proven in court what someone or some entity knew at a given time.
That's not a great idea. In fact, that's why it's explicitly disallowed[0] by the US Constitution.
If you think that should be changed, you just need to convince 2/3 of each house of Congress and 3/4 of the legislatures of the several states to officially agree with you[1]. Good luck with that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_or_Debate_Clause
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Five_of_the_United_Sta...
Assuming you grew up in the US, your middle school social studies teachers should be ashamed of themselves.
Or didn't you pay attention to US history/civics in K-12?
My takeaway is I'm a bit embarrassed. I don't know if I'd expect others to be though.
That being said it still doesn't seem unreasonable nor impossible given the clause for Congress to limit itself. In fact that does happen with things like censures. Sure there's no literal punishment but there are standards of speech which have been used in the past(many times for questionable reasons).
Apologies. My intent wasn't to embarrass you. Rather to take your K-12 teachers to task.
I do get that, especially since 1979 (when CSPAN started, not to mention the demagoguery of Joe McCarthy[0] back in the 1950s, but that was something of an aberration until the 1980s or so), that much of what's said on the House/Senate floors is pure hyperbole and intended as outrage bait for the party faithful.
But the Debate Clause (as you're now aware) was specifically added to ensure that members of Congress could, barring criminal acts, say exactly what was on their minds without fear of retribution.
Which is, on the whole, a good thing IMNSHO.
Then again, it is quite nauseating and disappointing to hear our elected representatives consistently dissemble and obfuscate just for personal and political advantage. And more's the pity.
All that said, the alternative (having the executive and/or judicial branches, not to mention majorities in either or both houses of Congress assail, investigate and prosecute members of either house for their speech) is even more galling and antithetical to our de jure system of government, even if things have, de facto, gotten somewhat out of hand.
Thanks for some solid responses!
Let people lie. However, if they're arguing politics then they have to provide equal time to the opposition. Bring back the fair-time rules and make them apply beyond radio.
While that seems like it might be a good idea, there are those of us who remember watching late-night TV and seeing those "equal time" segments at 0400, just before the channel signed off until 0600. I'd expect that except for drunk/high people and insomniacs, no one saw those segments.
Which significantly limited the usefulness of such rules.
All that said, the world has changed since then. There are plenty of places for anyone that wants to share their opinions to do so. And that's good for all of us.
What's more important isn't (as you correctly point out) restricting speech, but rather restricting the amount of money that's allowed to be used for political "speech."
What's more, we should have publicly funded sites where anyone can express their political opinions that are not curated, but can be scraped and curated by others in very specific ways only.
There are a raft of other ways to maintain freedom of expression while limiting the power of money to corrupt the political process. Limiting such activities/expenditures, whether that be directly, via ad/marketing campaigns, payments/salaries to insiders to advocate for monied interests with our elected officials or engagement maximizing algorithms designed to increase corporate profits and other mechanisms should be a top priority.
Well I don’t want to argue too much since you’re right.
But if you say own the Washington Post is it “money in politics”? I’m assuming when Trump when on Dave Ramsey’s podcast neither of them were compensated so is it “money in politics”? I’m all for undoing citizens united but i don’t want loopholes to pop up.