politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Yes, that ridiculous exemption. If you can't make your political point without literal slander and fraud, you shouldn't get special treatment for making it where that kind of thing is at its most destructive to society and the population as a whole.
How would you change this protection in order to address your concerns while still serving the important purpose of protecting legislators from retaliation?
I would remove it.
You still have to prove intention and that it unfairly harms or enriches someone, which means that good faith errors and differences of opinion are already legally protected just like with everyone else.
As for politicians and their supporters using unwinnable lawsuits to harass and damage their opponents, that's what anti-SLAPP laws are for.
Tl;Dr: there's no valid justification for letting politicians say and do what would be against the law for regular people.
Historically, this protection was a necessary limit on the prosecutorial power of the executive/king.
Simply throwing it out seems like an over reaction that doesn't take into account the actual justifications for its existence.
That's not necessary now that there's no king and a politically independent justice department. If either of THOSE things stop being the case, we have much bigger problems than politicians not being allowed to enrich themselves and destroy each other by lying.
Scrapping a rule that causes more harm than good in a modern country with weaponized media is just common sense.
The "actual justifications" are invalid as they don't apply to current reality and in fact that exemption has played a big in enabling the kind of demagoguery that makes an octogenarian who entered politics before the invention of the pocket calculator and thinks the solution to police brutality is to throw money at cops by far the LEAST bad realistic option for president.
Ever hear of the Pentagon Papers?
In what ways does it cause more harm than good?
Yes. Pretty typical Pentagon and presidential behaviour that should come to no surprise to anyone who's paying attention.
In what ways DOESN'T it? If I had a dollar for every American who died as a result of politics based on one or more politicians deliberate lying, I'd be able to buy the Eiffel tower. If you included every American trapped in avoidable poverty, I'd be able to put in a fair bid for all of France.
As for the protection of honest speech, everyone has that without giving the already powerful and notoriously dishonest special lie allowance privileges.
...exposed by a Senator reading classified documents into the Congressional record, thus entering them into the public record and being immune from prosecution.
Also, that's not how Americans spell "behavior" ;)
There's already whistle-blower protections for that. Granted, the exceedingly authoritative government shits all over such laws when it's not one of their fellow rich and/or powerful people doing it, but that's not the fault of the law.
Also, it's no secret that I'm not an American and I will spell words however the fuck I want.
Congress isn't covered by whistle-blower protection laws, and such laws generally only protect disclosure to the proper authorities rather than to the public. This also ignores the case when the "proper authorities" may be the very people being reported on.
I'm still interested in knowing what actual harms you're alleging the speech and debate clause causes. You pointed to lying, but that's generally legal anyway and not really enabled by the S&D clause.
Willfully and maliciously lying to harm the reputation of someone else and/or to exploit others financially is called slander and fraud. Both are usually illegal and this is the last time I'll try to get it through to you that demagogues having carte blanche to slander and defraud people took the point of passing legislation based on said fraud ans slander is a bad thing with often catastrophic consequences.
I really don't understand how that isn't obvious to you. Unless you've been wasting my time arguing in bad faith this entire time, of course..
I'm actually being sincere. Something that you clearly don't understand or appreciate.
You're right. I don't understand nor appreciate how someone could fail to see the problem with some of the most powerful people in the world, the ones that shape the rules of an entire country, just being allowed to make shit up as they go along out of spite and greed.
Especially not when living in a country with only two major parties, one of which has lied their way into inspiring a global resurgence of fascism and the leadership of BOTH parties continue to pretend that a bribe isn't a bribe unless you specifically annonce that you're bribing someone and for which specific purpose!
That's mind-boggingly obtuse and evidence of some SERIOUS propaganda and/or unearned trust in authority figures. Extremely fucked up either way.