NewsOnDemand & more! - Editorial - A Question for the Presidential Candidates

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A Question for the Candidates - an Editorial by Rich Sayer

* The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States protects the rights of candidates for public office and their organizations to distort, exaggerate, omit, and fabricate the truth and the facts, or in other words "bear false witness" against their opponents during any political campaign without fear of legal repercussion. Aside from the Constitutionally guaranteed Freedom of the Press and the Public's Right to Know as established by the Freedom of Information Act, the last legal remedy for this situation is that each politician must take an Oath of Office prior to occupying that office. My question is, how do you plan to hold yourself accountable for what you say or for what you authorize to be said on your behalf during your campaign?

* Follow-on Questions: How can you as a politician rightfully claim to be a leader of my country, and a religious and moral person, if you consistently break God's Ninth Commandment every day of your campaign? How can you rightfully claim to be my leader, or even my representative? How can any religious leader who supports such a person claim to be my guide in faith! Oh my, what hypocrites do politics make!

* Please check out the following links for more information:
Truth in Political Advertising - There should be a law! Or - maybe not. (FactCheck.org)
When Presidents Lie (by Eric Alterman of The Nation)

* What a shame! - The one thing that I didn't see during any of the recent debates was any real challenge to the statements that any of the candidates made. Sure, the candidates offered their rebuttals, but even they were factually challenged most of the time. To me, the debates seemed to be just simple extensions of the speeches that were made at their respective national conventions, which were geared almost entirely towards propaganda and persuasion. Independently verifiable facts and truth seemed to play little part at all in these extravaganzas. It seems to me that it would have been much better had the moderators been able to challenge the candidates about the alleged facts and statistics that each candidate cited, rather than only being able to ask the opponents about them.
    No wonder the voters are confused! Can you imagine what our friends (and our enemies) outside our borders must think about this silly state of affairs? They might be thinking "what a terrible waste of the democratic process!" How embarrassing for a nation that holds itself up as a bastion of democracy! Well, folks, it's now abundantly clear that it's not about democracy at all. It's really about power, pure and simple.
   For further reference, please click here to view and to hear a commentary by NPR's Connie Rice, entitled "Top 10 Secrets They Don't Want You to Know About the Debates". Also, please click here to read and to hear another critique of the political process within the United States by Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
   The best we can do is to check out the issues for ourselves. That's one of the main reasons that I built this web site. Can we do better in the future? Let's hope so!