I am so sick of this lying garbage, all of it. There needs to be significant consequences for their actions and words.
The reason that it is presumed that there will be no consequences for "this lying garbage” is the 1964 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision of the Warren Court. That decision was unanimous, with enthusiastic concurrences wishing to go further.It was unanimous, but any court on which Antonin Scalia wasn’t sitting is capable of unanimous error - and Scalia didn’t write his first SCOTUS opinion until 1988. In his renowned 1988 Morrison v. Olson solo dissent, Scalia famously asserted that
“"Frequently an issue of this sort will come before the Court clad, so to speak, in sheep's clothing: the potential of the asserted principle to effect important change in the equilibrium of power is not immediately evident, and must be discerned by a careful and perceptive analysis. But this wolf comes as a wolf.”History promptly overtook the eight-justice majority decision , and no lawyer would now dare to use it to support his case. And Scalia wanted to overturn Sullivan. The reason he adduced is powerful, IMHO - the fact is that Sullivan stretches 1A to the breaking point. Sullivan asserted that". . . libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment”. . . which sounds good to Americans who love us some freedom of speech and press - and yet it was a completely novel claim in 1964. No court prior to that had ever suggested that 1A touched libel law. At all. Just like 1A didn’t touch pornography law.The reason is that “the” freedom of the press refers to freedom of the press as it already existed (and already was limited) in 1788.
The Federalists never wanted to insert a bill of rights in the Constitution in the first place; they were forced to promise one by amendment in order to get Antifederalist acquiesce to the ratification of the Constitution. Their problem was that existing rights were Common Law, nowhere comprehensively codified in one place. So it wasn’t reasonable to expect anyone to be able to do that in a bill of rights in the Constitution. The solution was to enumerate rights (in the first eight amendments) which historically had been abused/denied by tyrants. The Ninth Amendment,
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.then covers the entire waterfront of rights. The one thing you don’t want when doing this is to give an opening for opponents to arouse controversy over any of the first eight amendments. And denigrating the right not to be libeled would have been controversial. After all, one of the Ten Commandments prohibits bearing false witness, and that is what libel (and slander) are. So even if the Federalists would have liked to denigrate the right to sue for libel - a fact not in evidence - they wouldn’t have dared try to do it in 1A. They were all about getting universal acceptance of the Constitution, and that would have been a possible show-stopper.Consequently Sullivan, unanimous decision or no, is bad law. As Scalia knew, and as Thomas knows. Not that you could trust Roberts to vote the right way . . .