That it should be a criminal offence for a politician to lie

My opponent is new to ddo, and I welcome him to the site. According to his profile, he has the greatest disagreement with me the ddo issues of anyone on the site, at least that I can recall. That's good, because it shows potential for debates. Pro did not define "politician" or "lie." According to the dictionary, a politician is "a person who holds a political office." http://dictionary.reference.com... Since Pro mentioned the lies of candidates, I think he means "a person who holds or seeks political office," so I'll assume that definition. A lie is "a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood." http://dictionary.reference.com... 1. Lies are usually immoral, but not always. In everyday life, a small lie told as flattery is accepted as moral by most. That would be something along the lines of, "I like that plan," when you really mean, "I'd rather so something different, but it isn't important enough to start an argument about it, so I'll just go along." There are parallels to that on the diplomatic front, both internationally and in domestic politics. There are also strategic lies that are justified. During World War II, the Allies leaked false information that an in would take place in Belgium, rather than Normandy where it actually occurred. Saying nothing would have avoided the lie, but the misdirection worked ad was clearly justified. I grant that most of the lies that politicians tell are not justified, but Pro makes no distinction between justified lies and unjustified lies. Thus under Pro's resolution, Churchill could have been convicted of a crime for lying to the Nazis. 2. Most lies are impossible to prove. To prove that a politician lied, one must prove that he had a deliberate intent to deceive, not merely that he did not live up to his promises. The politician can always argue, "When I got into office a learned new information that caused me to change my mind about the subject. What I said during the campaign was an accurate expression of my feelings and intent at the time, but based on information I have now, I have changed my mind. There was no intent to deceive." Another variation is, "I said that I never saw document x, but it has since been shown that I had initialed the document. I had no recollection of having seen or initialed the document, so there was no intent to deceive. I have to approve thousands of documents, so it is essential that I rely upon staff to review them." About the only way to prove a lie beyond reasonable doubt is if the politician confides to someone, "I will have to lie about that." Even in those circumstances, there better be multiple witnesses or a recording to prove the politician said it. That was the case with Churchill lying to the Nazis. It was an agreed-upon deception. During the recent US presidential campaign, candidate Obama pledged he would govern by bipartisan consensus, and in particular that he would never use the reconciliation process, a parliamentary maneuver in Congress that avoids bipartisanship. Subsequently, he was elected and used the reconciliation process to pass legislation he wanted without a single vote from the Republicans. It was within his power to keep his promise by vetoing the legislation, or by threatening a veto of anything not having bipartisan support. So, could Obama be convicted of lying? No, he would simply say, "I was sincere at the time. I pledged bipartisanship, but I subsequently learned how nasty the opposition was, so I changed my mind." The intent to deceive could not be proved. Consequently, very little lying would be prevented by Pro's resolution, because it is almost always impossible to prove. Pro made an error in his Google search. Doing it the way he did, he got six million hits, but that includes getting just some of the words in a document, but not necessarily all of them adjacent and in the right order. If the search is done with quotes around the phrase, the result is ten hits. I'm not claiming that politicians rarely lie, but what I'm claiming it is so hard to prove there are few actionable examples. 3. While lying is nearly impossible to prove, there are no serious obstacles to pressing charges of lying. Consider a few lines from President Obama's recent Iraq speech, ""We have spent a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits," ... The troops in Iraq "have met every test that they faced," Obama said. "Now, it is our turn. Now, it is our responsibility to honor them by coming together, all of us, and working to secure the dream that so many generations have fought for -- the dream that a better life awaits anyone who is willing to work for it and reach for it". Obama knows that it really isn't a trillion dollars, it is closer to $900 billion. It was not often financed by overseas borrowing, it was usually by having the Treasury print money. The troops in Iraq met most of the tests they faced, but Obama knows they did not meet every one of them. Obama knows there is no responsibility to honor troops because the Constitution allows free speech, and people may choose not to honor them. So in just a few sentences, there are grounds for filing four separate criminal charges. Would any of the charges result in convictions? Possibly, if the venue were chosen carefully, but I doubt it. However, the President would have to answer each charge in court proceedings. Opponents of the President could tie his Administration in knots defending countless accusations. We have a recent similar situation demonstrating how this works. In Alaska, any citizen can file charges of an ethics violation against the governor. Opponents of Sarah Palin, when Palin was governor, filed more than twenty such charges. Most of them are attributed to one blogger. This caused Palin to run up about $500,000 in legal fees defending herself. All of the charges were bogus, and were eventually dismissed. Perhaps if a person does not like Palin, they might think it was a great strategy, but they have to understand that the strategy of unending attack can and would be used against anyone if the resolution were adopted. 4. It would not take long for politicians to figure out that they ought to say nothing. Instead, they would have to let surrogates speak in their stead. What would have to happen is that a non-politician, someone not in public office or seeking public office would have to speak on the issues. Moreover, the speaker could not quote the politician directly, but would have to say things like, "I'm just speaking for myself, but I'm under the impression that that the President thinks that the troops ought to be honored..." Maybe the spokesman is lying and he really is directly quoting the President, but that's okay. Not being a politician, the spokesman is not accountable under the law for lying. I call this "sock puppet government." The politician never says anything, but his sock puppet does. In some monarchies, there is upon occasion something similar to what Pro recommends. "A speech from the throne (or throne speech) is an event in certain monarchies in which the reigning sovereign (or a representative) reads a prepared speech to a complete session of parliament, outlining the government's agenda for the coming session." http://en.wikipedia.org... The disadvantages of this are that there no less lying, and it gives politicians a screen to hide behind. The current sock puppet can say that the last sock puppet had totally misinterpreted the politician. Aware of the problem of frivolous attacks crippling an Administration, the U.S. Constitution provides that the President cannot be charged of a crime except by impeachment. The resolution undoes that. It would be a disaster. The resolution is negated.