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

1) Pro says I suggested that proving lying is impossible. I did not. In fact, I gave an example of a proof in which the intent to deceive was disclosed to confidants, who later revealed them. Pro gave another example involving DNA evidence. While not always impossible to prove, the lies of politicians are *usually* impossible to prove because of the requirement to prove deceptive intent at the time the politician made the statement. Proof must be beyond a reasonable doubt, and there is rarely a way to prove that the politician lied rather than later flip-flopped on the issue. I gave the example of Obama promising not to use reconciliation, and then subsequently using it. I challenge Pro to say how intent to deceive could be established. Pro claims that if a politician claims inadequate information, then either he is lying or the former Administration was lying. Not so. Much information is not no known to anyone, and a former Administration is not required to disclose anything to a new Administration. Besides, bureaucrats are not politicians under the definition Pro accepted, so the former Administration bureaucrats are free to lie about anything they like. 2) Pro says, "most judges would be able to tell that the intent here would be to boost morale, not exaggerate the cost of war." However, Pro's resolution is absolute: all lies by politicians are criminal offenses. There is no latitude given for small lies, or lies intended to boost morale, or lies to deceive enemies, or to flatter allies, or for any other reason. Pro wants ordinary civil flattery made criminal. Pro goes on to suppose that a prosecutor would have to show the lie to have bad consequences. Pro said, "In that case the lie would have had a considerable negative impact on the country, and then Obama should be liable." But the resolution says nothing about distinguishing lies with bad consequences from lies with good consequences. All lies are criminal under the resolution. Any attempt to make "bad consequences" illegal would fail, because in the political realm, good and bad are subjective. If a person wants al Qaeda to succeed, boosting troop morale is a bad consequence. 3) Pro did not deny that democratic government would be brought to a halt by criminal prosecutions of politicians by people who want an administration blocked. It is undeniable because among the millions of constituents of a president, there are many with both strong convictions and money. Pro said that lying would be "criminal," which means that a local prosecutor in some district in the domain of the politician can press charges funded by taxpayer money. Separately, civil proceeding could be instituted by anyone in lawsuit alleging the act. Pro said it takes evidence to make charges. If lodged by a prosecutor, the evidence needed is slight to gain an indictment; the strong evidence is needed only to convict. A civil lawsuit can be brought with no initial evidence, only a claim of damages. The defendant must then appear in defense. http://en.wikipedia.org... Only a preponderance of evidence is needed to win the lawsuit. The Palin case is relevant because it shows that weak allegations can produce serious results. Its is as easy to gin up charges of lying as ethics violations. It cost absolutely nothing for a blogger to bring the charges, because under Alaska law a state ethics committee had to do the investigation after the complaint was made. Palin's half million dollar legal bill was widely reported, http://www.adn.com... I'll stipulate that lawyers are often overpaid, but that's what it is. 4) Pro claims, "A lie told by a politician does not need to come from the politician's mouth. It can be said by another agent, the politician's blog, an email to journalists or a sock puppet. If it was unreasonable for the politician to expect privacy in the situation (who'd expect privacy from a spokesperson) then the politician falls [afoul] of the law under my model." This claim fails because Pro offers no way to distinguish a statement accurately repeated from a false repetition. If a politician steps up and admits the sock puppet is correctly reflecting the politician's views, then that would hold, but the politician is never going to do that. There is no question that conversations between staff and politicians are private. That's been upheld by the Supreme Court. http://en.wikipedia.org... The principle is also well establish in common law. http://en.wikipedia.org... Pro acknowledged in his opening case that only statements made in public are subject to the resolution, and such conversations are not made in public. It is reasonable to expect conversations held in private to remain in confidence; only the spokesman's public pronouncements are public. 5) I said that the resolution would override presidential immunity from prosecution. The point is that the reason immunity was orignally put in place was to prevent government from being incapacitated by massive numbers of legal attacks. Hence it's removal would be a disaster as anticipated. 2.1) Pro first claimed that lying was always immoral. He then claimed that a single example is insufficient to disprove his point, because induction requires many examples. Pro is wrong. If one claims that all swans are white, it takes exactly one black swan to disprove the contention. Pro granted that it was not immoral to lie to boost troop morale. . He also implicitly granted that Churchill's lying to the Nazis was not immoral. Pro claimed that Churchill would not be convicted under the resolution, because Churchill could be freed by jury nullification, a check on bad laws. http://en.wikipedia.org... But Pro relies upon the resolution being late nullified, the resolution should not be passed in the first place. 2.2) Pro claims that I did not answer is argument that laws against lying would improve transparency and faith in government. In fact, I said that the resolution would result in a sock puppet government that is less transparent and less trusted. If politicians continued to speak, government would be shut down by endless litigation, so non-politicians, who can lie without penalty would obviously be delegated to do all the speaking. 2.3) Pro says that companies are not permitted to lie about products, and by analogy politicians should not be allowed to lie. Pro's only reference is the unsupported opinion of a blogger. (The blogger also falsely claims that Bush lied about Saddam's WMDs.) Companies make false claims about products all the time, often implicitly rather than explicitly. Consumers are supposed to believe that some fabulous toothpaste or hair care product will make the opposite sex swoon, whereas they in fact do not. There s no law against making the claims. This is exactly comparable to the claims of politicians. As with politicians, the consumer is left to figure out the credibility of the claims. There are some very specific circumstances where lying is punished in the commercial world: financial reports to the Securities Commission, certain product specifications, and support for certain advertising claims. Similarly, certain claims made by politicians are required by law to be truthful: the sources of funding, and some relations with lobbyists. Politicians can also be called to testify under oath in certain circumstances. Had Pro resolved to expand the specific areas of disclosure, I would very likely have supported some of those proposals. However, the resolution as it stands is untenable. 3.1) Pro supposes that conversion to sock puppet democracy would reduce public apathy. Just the opposite would happen because they would rarely hear politicians speak to them directly. 3.2) Authoritarians are never impressed by examples of democracy in any form.