Ted Rall for July 06, 2012

What’s poor taste is killing millions of innocent Iraqis for their oil…

Given the leaning of the majority of the court, are you really surprised that they would support the "right to lie’?

Reminds me of an old Perry Mason episode where Perry lied to a cop during an investigation. When called on it, he said simply “I wasn’t under oath.” Plain and simple fact. Of course, these days he’d be charged with obstruction or impeding an investigation. Guess it depends on who you lie to.

I agree with rightisright on this one; this one is a slam dunk. Of course lying is protected by the First Amendment. If you’re lying while under oath (perjury) or falsifying an official form (fraud), then you can be prosecuted, but we’ve always had laws against those, and those still stand.

Pretending to be a veteran when you aren’t is no different than pretending you’ve been to college when you haven’t, and claiming to be a decorated war hero (“Stolen Valor”) is no different than claiming you graduated cum laude from Harvard.

If we’re talking about lying on a job application or something like that, the person who was lied to has certain recourses if the truth is discovered, but it’s rarely (if ever) a criminal matter, and the person who was lied to has both an interest in and an obligation to VERIFY the information before the fact.

Jackie Vernon’s favorite pickup line: Is that my Congressional Medal of Honor under your barstool?

FRAUD, is still illegal. If all the “wannabes” who claim to have received the Medal of Honor ( the point of the law) or performed other “heroic acts” were jailed, we’d be building a lot more jails. Real combat veterans quickly spot the phonies, and they ARE disgusting, but unless they attempt to defraud for gain, it’s just disgusting, not illegal.

BTW, many, if not most, actual combat veterans ARE “anti-war”, but not pacifists. Even Colin Powell, and a number of other generals, over many years, have pointed out that their REAL job is to secure PEACE, not just wage war.

Which is exactly why chickenhawks out to START wars (for profit), are so offensive to us.

“Excuse me, I am not an American, how can you verify the information? … So the only way to verify it would be with the army, and they can’t give you anything because of privacy concerns (if I’m not mistaken). So, again, how do you verify?”

Some things can be verified, and some things can’t. The example you gave above was giving a guy a job because he is (or claims) to be a veteran. If you go to the Army, they may not be able to release his entire service record, but they can confirm (or deny) that he served, they may be able to tell you whether he was discharged honorably or dishonorably, and if your guy claimed to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’d probably be able to tell you that. Again, it’s like a University degree; they don’t keep their lists of graduates (distinguished or otherwise) a secret, but they may not release all of his records. And again, if somebody lies on his resume to get a job, and the truth comes out after the fact, it is grounds for dismissal, and there may be some civil recourse available to you, but it isn’t a criminal offense.

“If lying verbally and on an application form is not criminal, then lying on any form of paper, i.e. falsifying a document, must be alright too, correct?”

There are many things which I don’t think are OK, but which I still don’t believe should be illegal. Adultery, for instance. If your spouse cheats on you, it’s grounds for divorce, but it isn’t a criminal offense nor should it be. Perhaps flag-burning is an appropriate parallel; I don’t approve of it, but making it illegal would be an offense against the very liberties it’s supposed to represent. As far as falsifying a document goes, it depends on the document. You can’t falsify a birth certificate, or a driver’s license, or a Social Security card, because those are official means of identification; they have the weight of authority. But if you make up a fake diploma from Harvard, I don’t believe that is, in itself, a criminal act.

PS: I don’t mean to be rude, but if you’re in the habit of hiring people on the basis of information that can’t be verified (or that you don’t bother to verify), you may want to reconsider that policy.

I’m surprised there are no comments on the theme of this cartoon or that the logo under the name of the bar says it all when it comes to the essence of politics in this country. Nice one, Ted.

free speech in the german constitution does not protect lying. this is how they are able to prevent publication of books denying the holocaust. were our 1st amendment to be revised along these lines, we could prevent access to the public by fox.

Again, not to defend lying, but to outlaw it would seem to me to be like outlawing sneezing. Humans learn to lie as soon as they learn to talk. “Timmy, did you eat your brother’s cookie?” “No.” If our ability to reason is what separates us from the beasts, it is our ability to say things that aren’t true that separates us from the machines.

Besides, how would you even write that law? The Puritans (and even their precursors) condemned the writing of fiction, and the performance of plays, on the grounds that they were acts of deception, they represented things that weren’t factually true, i.e. they were lies. Even if you granted an exemption for clearly-labeled entertainment fiction, what about satire or exaggeration? What about saying/broadcasting/publishing something that some people believe is true but other people do not? Who has the burden of proof? What if what you say is absolutely true, but it misleads because of equally true things you DON’T say?

Again, we already have laws against libel, slander, and fraud. There are standards of proof, not only in terms of what is admissibly true and admissibly false, but in terms of who benefits and who is harmed. I haven’t heard that this decision invalidates any of them.