Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt 26z
It's a slippery slope. Do you really want to regulate what citizens can say about candidates?
I think groups telling lies need to be held accountable in court. Those behind the Swiftboat campaign that destroyed Kerry should have been held responsible for their deception.
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You are right, it is a slippery slope. Still, you can't run into a crowded theater and yell fire and not be held accountable. The problem is that suing these guys doesn't always help. Sure you can get some damages and demand an apology etc, but by then the damage is done and what they said may have cost you the election.
Take this as an example. Say you and I are running against each other and I once gave a speech about violence in a 3rd world country where I said, " there are some people that think killing kids is good because it controls the population. We are not those people." That is a pretty clear statement. But you hate me so your group gets together several million and you launch a campaign against me and in it the commercials have me quoted as saying, "...killing kids is good because it controls the population." Now I have to spend the time and money to defend myself. Since it wasn't you that said I can't confront you about it and you can deny any involvement. Many people won't ever see my defense or any apology that might be made and something like that could cost me a lot of votes. It is irresponsible speech.
I think there should be some kind of a committee that pre-screens all political ads and commercials of any type and approves them. The only criteria that must be met is that everything in them is truthful and if you take something out of context you must explain where it came from. People could still spend their money and say what they wanted, they would just have to have make sure they spoke the truth.