Things we'd be talking about if the forum wasn't deadFollow

Can you cite the law that allows journalists to legally create false government documents and present them in an official manner?

How about we go the other way? Please list for us the number of journalists charged with using a false ID in the course of their jobs in say the last 50 years? You get that they use false identities all the time, right? I've never heard of someone being charged with using a false ID when they were engaged in an undercover investigation. Have you? Well, except when the target was PP. Unless you're going to try to argue that no reporters have ever used false IDs to gain access to the target of an investigation? Ever.

It's a terrible indictment. Period. Not sure how you can cheerfully defend it. Again, the issue isn't really about PP, or abortion, or human tissue sales. It's about whether we punish people for merely attempting to investigate an organization they believe is engaged in illegal or unethical behavior. It's about the right of the press to do so even when their government wont. Which is a pretty foundational right for a free society to have and to uphold as strongly as possible.

No, your defense is that this is the same protections journalists and whistle blowers have. Please cite this protection. Can you do this? If you can't, you should drop this line of defense because you have no idea what you're talking about.

You completely misunderstand whistle blower protection laws, by the way, which would have virtually no application here. Said laws protect people from being fired/demoted/etc by their jobs, it does not give them protection to break the law. If you break into your boss's locked office and steal the document showing whatever malfeasance, you're still liable to be charged with breaking & entry.

Inventing fraudulent material in an attempt to turn public opinion and cause hundreds of millions in damages is quite specific. Hold up little fella. You don't know those details. All that stuff is either normal procedure that is available in the public domain to look up at any time or reported in the news that you've been so adamantly defending the past week yet gone out of your way to avoid. We know the grand jury was empaneled by the DA. That's why you can indict a ham sandwich: The deck is stacked. We know who oversaw the investigation itself, it was the Harris County DA herself, ordered by the Lt Gov, Gov, and the AG. We have all the information to say to what degree the political affiliation of the DA had to do with the results. You can keep crying about a nefarious liberal conspiracy boogeyman all you want, but the facts simply disprove you. It also doesn't help your case every time you post about rights and freedoms and not knowing a thing about them. For instance: No, CMP isn't being punished for investigating an organization they believed to be engaging in illegal or unethical behavior. They're being punished for releasing fake material to make it appear like there was illegal or unethical behavior when they couldn't find any. And that's an abuse of our rights and freedoms. Not sure how you can cheerfully defend it. Oh wait, contrarian.

So, recording people without their knowledge is illegal in California, for the most part. Certainly recording and disseminating a heavily edited video for purposes of getting them shut down, or at least getting their Federal funding cut, not to mention turning public opinion against them, would be deliberate harm by fraudulent means.

Fair enough. I thought you meant the lawsuit was specifically about the tapes (common misconception I've seen around).

They lasted longer than I thought they would, but it was the eventual conclusion. I sent them a care package with tampons and a dvd of Beaches.

I'm gonna bet at least one of the charges on Cliven is that he was supposed to stay in his little fortress of irony. Fleeing jurisdiction and such.

Looks like that lasted all of a hour too. Good thing he was so determined.

Those two groups have different protections. Just want to make this clear before you immediately go after the least applicable thing I just mentioned for the sake of completeness.



For journalists? The protection (which I thought I mentioned earlier) is that DA's generally do not go out of their way to seek indictment or press charges against journalists for minor violations of the law, if the intent of that violation was to exercise the very well established principle of "freedom of the press". Certainly, a journalist presenting a false ID to someone who is not a member of law enforcement, or a court official, or otherwise engaged in any sort of official legal action, and not to gain some benefit for themselves that they would otherwise be barred from, but rather doing so in order to see if that other private citizen will engage in some form of illegal action, is not likely to be pursued as a criminal act itself.

Using a fake ID to make a member of law enforcement think you are someone else so you can get out of some form of punishment? Illegal. Using a fake ID to enter into a fraudulent legal agreement? Illegal. Using a fake ID to avoid having to pay for damage you caused to someone? Illegal. Using a fake ID to purchase liquor while under aged, or a firearm whilst a felon? Illegal. Using a fake ID to prevent the private citizen you're trying to trick into admitting he violates the law from figuring out you're a journalist? Not generally illegal.

I can't recall a single case where a journalist has been charged with this. Can you?



Yes. I get that. I only mentioned whistle blowers to illustrate the fact that in our society, we tend to support the concept that those who seek to reveal wrongdoing in others should be allowed to do so, and not to suggest that this was a case of whistle blowing. I was also trying to point out that the "harm" concept you are applying here is specifically not considered actionable in the case of a whistle blower. We don't generally allow people to sue someone for harm, if the thing that harmed them was a true statement. So a whistle blower revealing internal documents showing that his company engaged in fraudulent actions isn't actionable as long as the documents were themselves truthful and proved that fraud. Similarly, a journalist may only be sued for slander if what he claims is false. If it's true, he's protected, no matter how harmful that truth is to the other person.

The standard for harm in our law generally does not include harm that results from the revelations of one's own actions. So a video of someone saying something that others may find reprehensible, and thus harms that persons reputation or business, does not meet the standard. But this is precisely the "harm" that this indictment for the felony charge assumes. Obviously, a grand jury can choose to hand up an indictment for anything. But I don't think this one can pass full legal scrutiny. Again, because for it to do so we'd have to chuck out one of the basic concepts we use with regard to harm when considering legal recourse and response to a whole array of other things. Whistle blowing is one of them, as is investigative journalism.

So you can't actually cite any real protections. Just, you know, we'll just say that no one cares.


How many cases of "journalism" wind up before a grand jury? Are you asking if police are randomly picking up journalists on fake ID charges? Probably not. But this case was pushed before a grand jury by the state and investigated. The felony charge is also somewhat unique to Texas state law. So if this is your argument, you need to start listing actual similar cases instead of just demanding that I present your evidence for you. Give me real examples of journalists using fraudulent identification and being part of a grand jury investigation in Texas. Or, you know, just admit that you're talking out of your ass in insisting that this happens all the time.


I honestly and sincerely doubt that this was the case.

Edited, Feb 12th 2016 8:05am by Jophiel

Driving 38 mph in a 35 mph area may not get you pulled over most of the time, but it is still speeding.

Just because someone probably won't get in trouble for showing a fake ID to a regular citizen (regardless of the reason why) doesn't make that fake ID any more legal.

Shame he went through them all that fast, will have to send a bigger care package next time. Wonder what they'll let him have in jail?

Mental health issue? Firearm accessibility? Nope, ISIS.