Libel warning: 

As much as this campaign welcomes publicity, we welcome TRUTH more.  Truth makes our discourse better and ultimately uplifts this nation.  Falsity distracts readers and hurts the person unjustly defamed.  When falsities are published with animosity, the publisher should be considered EVIL.

 

The Resistance, and any political campaign affiliated with The Resistance  takes libel seriously.  Authors and publishers have the right to their opinions, even vile ones.  They do NOT have the right to lie, or deliberately disregard the truth.  

 

If you are reading this on a campaign site, you are on a site affiliated with a Resistance campaign. 

 

You are hereby warned:

We will pursue you for defamation.

 

Publishing includes sending an email to even one other person.  It includes a single tweet, blog post, or FB entry.  It includes re-tweeting the falsity.  So please beware.

 

Your care is making a better world for candidates, voters, discourse, and decency.  This in no way attempts to abrogate NY Times v Sullivan.  It does seek to have  Sullivan enforced the way the Supreme Court intended.  That means there is high liability for publishing falsities about public officials "with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth".

 

Though many candidates are not yet public officials, the extension is reasonable.  Times vs, Sullivan gave broad protections to publishers, but not unlimited protections (otherwise why have a standard in the first place?)  In the years since Sullivan few courts have found such disregard, even in egregious cases.  THAT needs to change.  Good people are libeled and have no real recourse; evil people take this permissiveness to keep destroying reputations.   Courts need to find "reckless disregard" when the average person would not be so careless.  

 

So let this impel some courts to do so, and let attorneys bring suit to both reward victims, and deter evildoers:

 

The value of a Resistance candidate's political reputation is potentially in the billions.  You who maliciously or recklessly destroy it are on the hook.

 

"Billions" is a reasonable estimate.  The success of any one Resistance candidate in even a local race could propel him to the presidency (where spending now exceeds $2,000,000,000).  The disparagement of one disparages The Resistance, and every candidate within.  So what may seem like a relatively small falsity has colossal consequences.

 

Avoiding falsities is not hard.  It takes willfulness to repeat an obvious untruth; for a professional journalist, steeped in fact-checking, it takes just a modicum of professionalism to keep you and your publisher in the clear.

 

We look forward to fewer falsities.  But should the malicious among you pursue falsity or eschew truth to defame others, we look forward to lawsuits that shut you down and fund our future campaigns.

 

You've been warned.  Now do the right thing.