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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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politics
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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.