My OP mentions nothing about political differences.
Nor does my comment. This is what I said: "Let's note the underlying assumption of the OP: an elected official of the United States government should be subject to ecclesiastical discipline for taking political positions contrary to what church leaders think he should be doing in the scope of his office." You are proposing that Harry Reid should be ecclesiastically disciplined because church leaders would find his political actions to be sinful.
The OP makes no such "underlying assumption." That would imply a
logical inference made from the propositions and/or arguments in the OP which the body of the claims in the OP cannot support. The OP clearly calls Reid out on what is clearly his grossly immoral, unethical, and un-Christian behavior, not on his political ideology.
You claim that there is an "underlying assumption" in the OP about ecclesiastical discipline related to ideological matters is purely your own concoction, and purely a rhetorical device to create a psychological impression, while circumventing the logical structure of the text.
This is, yet again, a form of argument that works in the courtroom, but not in the real world.
In fact, your rant about life not being a cabaret or a circus tent or whatever is all in the context of what public policies a person supports.
That has nothing to do with Reid's defamation of Romney in claiming him to be a felon, based on an unnamed source within Bain that, if true, would make that source a felon as well and Reid an accomplice in a conspiracy to slander and criminally implicate Romney.
The meaning of what you are saying is that recognizing a person's freedom to make choices you do not agree with is the same as endorsing the choices they make with that freedom. In other words, people only have the right to act in accordance with your cherished beliefs and religious dogma.
I have some books on freshman logic and critical thinking, Darth, that you would do well to take a look at and take seriously. My entire point is that Reid has, ostensibly, if he is found to be lying, involved himself in felonious character assassination involving private, confidential IRS data, data his source at Bain is going to have to explain as to how it fell into his hands. It has nothing to do with his politics, save to the degree that the utter moral corruption of the Democratic party (brought to maturity by the Clintons in the 90s and now ethically normative in that party) and the leftist political ideology to which he subscribes, which is thoroughly Nietzschean and relativist in nature regarding means and ends, has taken possession of him.
Reid is clearly falling-down drunk with his own power and mindless partisanship, and his behavior here is simply the symptom.
You are changing your assertion now. At the beginning of this thread, you claimed that Harry Reid's political speech may be criminal:
No I didn't. You're a liar.
"Reid has committed a serious crime if he is knowingly lying to slander Mitt Romney in public, as is the person at Bain, if such exists."
You're also apparently a witless dolt, so infatuated with what you apparently believe to be your brilliant rhetorical skills that you've given up your reading comprehension and critical thinking abilities as the price you've had to pay for their refinement in the grand trial lawyer tradition. You didn't notice that you've just proven my case for me, even as I type. The OP was about Reid lying, slandering, and implicating Romney in felonious acts, not Reid's political ideology.
Now you've decided that actually Harry Reid committed a tort. This is amusingly ironic, by the way. You have no evidence that Harry Reid's statements are false (because you don't have Mitt Romney's tax records).
There's not a shred of evidence or reason to believe that there is anything amiss in Romney's tax records, or ever were.
Check
So if your assertions about the lawfulness of Harry Reid's statements were correct, then by your own standard Harry Reid could sue you for libel per se.
Reid can't sue me for my opinion about his claims (that they were lies). Romney could sue Reid for defamation based on Reid's claims that Romney actually committed certain criminal actions. Those are not opinions that Romney is a tax criminal, but empirical claims.
The irony of Droopy's OP is compounded because he is arguing that people should be able to go to court to quash political statements
Again, this logical shell game may work in the courtroom to line tort attorney's pockets and legislate through litigation, but in the real marketplace of ideas, where philosophical rigor demands its due and is not curtailed and artificially restricted by rules of evidence or courtroom procedural protocols, Darth can't just brazenly lie like this in broad daylight about a clearly articulated OP that had nothing to do with Reid's politics and mentioned only his behavior, and turn it into a fantasy counter-charge that I want the Church to silence Reid because of his politics.
Reid's moral vacancy is the problem, as my OP makes clear, not his politics (although his extreme leftist politics doubtless do, very much, condition his ethical orientation).
that they don't like, rather than letting political speech stand or fall on its own in the proverbial public square.
Exactly what I want. Stop lying and playing your cute little rhetorical games. Its a self-parody of lawyerly sophistry taken to absurd lengths in an attempt to circumvent the actual argument and release as many red herrings into the water as possible.
That is certainly an odd position to take for someone who is so vehemently opposed to the procedure over substance and Socratic inquiry he facetiously imagines to be the rule in a courtroom. Hardly the position we would expect from a self-styled conservative.
As you've concocted this cartoon caricature of my position out of your own imagination - an imagination quite obviously as morally handicapped as Reid's - we can just move along...
But in what I'm sure is a surprising turn of events for readers of this board, Droopy's assertions are not correct. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment protects even false, defamatory statements about public figures. For a public figure to prevail in a defamation case, it is not sufficient to show merely that the statements are false and defamatory per se (i.e., stating that someone has engaged in criminal conduct). The public figure must also show that the speaker acted with actual malice.
In Reid's case, that would doubtless be the least of the hurdles Romney would face in any legal action.