[dragonwriter]

By whom are laws enforced, and by whom are those people appointed and to whom do they answer?

Or, to take another angle, why don't the prohibitions in FISA effectively stop the government from abusing foreign intelligence apparatus for domestic spying?

[g-b-r]

Because the US are messed up on so many levels.

Of course the judicial, legislative and executive branches should be independent and they're not that much right now.

In any case, even in such a system the proposal might have more positive than negative effects, and maybe lead to gradual improvements to everything else.

[HideousKojima]

Or it might make things even worse. After all,the FISA court system itself was created in response to abuses by the CIA and FBI (and others) as a way to check their power. Instead, it became a (secret and opaque) rubber stamp that approves over 99% of all warrant applications.

[g-b-r]

No one is proposing anything secret and opaque

[HideousKojima]

Yes, you're just proposing making it a crime for politicians to lie without addressing who/what will determine that they're lying and how, and can't seem to see any possible problems or abuses of your proposed system.

[g-b-r]

Your issue seems to be with enforcing any rule or law on politicians, rather than with my sketch of proposal.

If you instead only think that politicians should be subject to different judicial procedures than normal people, that's something we might agree; I don't see additional problems with including lying to the public to the crimes addressed through them.

Such procedures are actually often flawed, so the effectiveness of the rule might be diminished, but I don't see it as increasing the risk of political prosecution.

It's just a further crime, and you would need a reasonable threshold to initiate investigations or indictments, so, yes, I don't see big risks about it.

I do see how democracy has a very hard time instead when its voters are drown in lies.

[HideousKojima]

Let me make this as simple for you as I can. Are the following statements truthful statements or lies (or something else entirely)?

Trans women are real women.

Climate change isn't real.

White people are more likely to commit violent crime than black people.

Black people are more likely to commit violent crime than white people.

Black people and white people are equally likely to commit violent crimes.

Men are more likely to commit violent crimes than women.

Fermented grapes drinks aren't champagne unless they come from the Champagne region of France.

Air-cured meat products aren't Biltong unless they were made in South Africa.

Chinese corporations steal IP from Western corporations on a massive scale.

Chinese corporations don't steal IP from anyone.

And so on and so on. If telling lies is now a crime (whether for everyone or just for politicians is largely irrelevant here) then who gets to determine which of the statements above are truth or lies or neither? Who gets to determine whether to prosecute or not? What standards of proof will be required for the judge, jury, etc.?

And most important of all, what protections are in place to keep entryists from taking control of the institutions that make these decisions, now that you've given them a galaxy-sized incentive to do so as a way to control and attack their political enemies?