Who's going to prosecute such a case and what would be the point??
Probably the same people who prosecuted Blago and probably to accomplish the same thing they accomplished by prosecuting Blago.
That is, to deter anybody else from doing the same thing. To put people on notice that the society doesn’t have to put up with that behavior and the damage it does.
As long as we let them do it with impunity, they will keep on sabotaging legitimate government processes with their deliberate lies, and we deserve what we get.
The only way we could have what happened in this past election is if the stars all aligned just right - with government, media, and law enforcement all abdicating their legitimate duties in exchange for corruption. Those are societal foundations, and if they rot the whole building caves in. That’s where we’re at right now.
The well is so poisoned there’s nobody we can trust in any one of those areas. People talk about bailing out the media companies because it’s so vital that we have a vibrant, competetive, free press to inform the public. But what good does a free press do if nobody can believe a word they say? If you don’t have a credible press you have no press at all. Yet nobody seems too worried about that reality today. We’ve got a Chicken Little media; what will happen to us when we need a clear, instant, trustworthy alarm?
I’m not talking about censorship. I’m talking about people knowing that if they deliberately lie about something legally significant they can suffer legal consequences, just as they can suffer legal consequences if they libel somebody, label a product falsely, or raise a false alarm to create a deadly panic.
All we need is the deterrent effect, to keep the press honest. And that’s what my post was intended to be all about.
That was one of the things Scott Brown did right: as soon as the opponent started lying about him he filed a libel lawsuit - took away the dems’ number one weapon. By calling them on their game of “chicken” immediately, he set the race up to be honest, and America can sure use a little honesty these days.
If the government wants their deliberations and decisions to be honest they’re going to have to call the deliberate liars on their game of “chicken” immediately so the dialog can be trusted by people on both sides of a very deep divide.