I think because there’s a difference between informing the public and nitpicking. If news outlets want to describe the discrepancy, great. If they don’t, nobody is actually missing any important facts that impact the story in a substantive way.
Who knows if there are other ways to nitpick Rob Goldstone’s emails. I can say that when President Trump says substantively flat out false things, the right wingers get all upset that the media bothers to correct the record on things that do matter (e.g.; “I never supported the war in Iraq.”)
There are differences; a key one is that “speech intended to immediately acquire controlled substances” has extremely weak First Amendment protections to begin with, but “speech to assist a US political campaign” has extremely strong First Amendment protection. That’s why I started by reminding you that First Amendment protection varies by the type of speech involved.
If the First Amendment analysis simply stopped with “it’s an element of the crime,” then a moment’s thought would reveal that any First Amendment protection would be eviscerated. A law that criminalized criticizing the mayor in the town park would of course make “speech in the park critical of the mayor” an element of the crime – right?
In my explanations above, I tried to highlight BOTH that the speech to acquire controlled substances is an element of the crime AND that speech to acquire controlled substances does not fall into the category of strongly protected speech. In doing so, I may have left you with the impression that speech to acquire controlled substances does not fall into the category of strongly protected speech BECAUSE speech to acquire controlled substances is an element of a crime.
That’s not the case.
Speech to acquire controlled substances does not fall into the category of strongly protected speech because (at best) it’s commercial speech, not political, expressive speech. The courts have long drawn lines between those types of speech (see e.g.Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission of New York, holding that the Constitution accords a lesser protection to commercial speech than to other constitutionally guaranteed expression).
In your reply, you are weighing both political speech and speech to acquire controlled substances equally, but that’s not how the correct analysis is done.
While it might be nice for news sources to spend an extra two sentences pointing out the correct nomenclature for Russian prosecutors, it’s not really relevant to any issue in debate. It’s not like Don Jr can say, “The law clearly immunizes my conduct: I was dealing with a crown prosecutor, after all!”
The title of the Russian source has no relevance that I can see.
I’m writing this post separately because it’s a great illustration (if you’re a law geek, anyway) of how First Amendment political speech analysis works.
Back in 1966, at an anti-war rally, a young man named Watts announced, “They always holler at us to get an education. And now I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J.” (referring to then-President Lyndon Baines Johnson).
He was arrested and convicted for threatening to kill the President.
But the Supreme Court overturned his conviction. They did not overturn the law prohibiting threats against the President, but they found that this law, as applied to Watts, violated the First Amendment.
Why?
They go on to explain that when political speech is involved:
There was someone else in the room too. Does this change anything?
From the article.
“WASHINGTON — The Russian lawyer who met with the Trump team after a promise of compromising material on Hillary Clinton was accompanied by a Russian-American lobbyist — a former Soviet counter intelligence officer who is suspected by some U.S. officials of having ongoing ties to Russian intelligence, NBC News has learned.”
One wonders what it would take to make you concerned. We don’t have a smoking gun, it’s a smoking cannon. But then some would get hung up on definitions- it’s not really a cannon, it’s a howitzer. It’s not smoking, it’s emitting fumes. And it may not have been fired. Someone else fired it. But it missed anyway. And so on…
Oh, that’s easy. The litmus test for him to consider something a scandal is whether a Clinton was involved. Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic – any of those people are needed for a scandal.
And would you also expect a newspaper to point out that Japan has ken, not prefectures? There is a position that is roughly analogous in the US, the UK, and Russia. In the US, it’s called a district attorney. In the UK, it’s called a crown prosecutor. In Russia, it’s called… Well, I’m not sure what it’s called in Russia, because I don’t speak Russian, but it’s called something in Russian. The translation of that word Russian word in American English would be “district attorney”, and the translation in British English would be “crown prosecutor”. All that happened here is that some translator translated into the wrong dialect of English.
Speaking only for myself, this Russia information is only mildly concerning.
When a man is drowning in the ocean, does pouring a teacup of water on his head greatly concern him?
If I were to learn today that the whole Russia story was a massive fraud, that Trump’s campaign in no way did a thing even slightly questionable with anyone Russian . . . we’d still be facing a President who is so far outside the bounds of political norms as to be historically aberrant, so crude and unlettered and crass as to have bragged about grabbing genitals because he’s wealthy and famous, so dismissive of truth that he contradicts himself with a straight face on TV, so unconcerned with anything except advancing his brand at the expense of the national interest, so . . .
Well, you get the idea. The Russia stories bear investigation, and I think (as always) it’s important to distinguish hyperbole from reality when it comes to legal issues. But I won’t think much worse of him if they’re true and I won’t think any better of him if they’re false. So my concern is slight. Trump needs to go, for many good and valuable reasons. Russia isn’t in my top five.
My problem with this sentiment is that it’s the same sort of reasoning that Trump leveraged when he attacked Clinton for e-mails. Clinton’s e-mail judgement may not have been the best, but her conduct was not criminal. One of the many reasons I opposed Trump was his cynical willingness to use innuendo against Clinton and chant “Lock her up,” when he knew, or should have known, that she was not guilty of any crimes, a point I made forcefully here during the campaign.
I certainly approve of investigations continuing, in an effort to confirm or dispel the notion of criminal wrong-doing. I do NOT approve of the willingness to use innuendo and suggest, without accuracy, criminal guilt before the investigation uncovers it. (I admit there’s a certain “sauce for the goose,” retribution aspect that isn’t completely unpleasing, but still).
That’s a perfectly reasonable position to take. I happen to think that the Russia probe has potential to uncover criminal if not treasonous activity and if it puts these guys behind bars, great. My fear is that there is so much stuff to investigate now that the time required to do a thorough job may take us beyond 2020, by which time who cares?
I wish to acknowledge and applaud your willingness to go against Don the Con despite the fact that he is leading your preferred party. I hope that I shall be as principled as you should an equally unqualified and ethically bankrupt Democrat ever earn the presidency.
No, I doubt the British translation would insert the word “crown” into the job title. Looking around, I see no reason for news outlets to take the email’s description of her at face value.
I am not sure of your doubt. The term Crown prosecutor was used. It was used by a british citizen, in speaking about a russian position. It would be like if you referred to a prosecutor in england as a district attorney.
This was not some translation service, this was some guy relating information in the context in which he knew.
Yes, and your article points out that she has a long relationship with that prosecutor-general. If you only nit is about the use of the wrong term, you are about 3 Kevin Bacon’s away from the actual person who used it.
I share the view that whether Trump committed a crime related to Russia collusion or not doesn’t have much impact on my view of Trump, and that we don’t know which one is the case yet.
But in my view this story is more about political norms and political accountability, as well as the real world consequences of Trump’s behavior with regard to Russia.
It should not be politically acceptable to encourage, know about, and benefit from a hostile nation’s crimes against your political opponents in order to get elected. If we do nothing effective to try to enforce that norm, things are only going to get much worse. I genuinely fear for the legitimacy of our elections if all bets are off in terms of welcoming foreign manipulation.
The foreign policy aspects are also very troubling. Already we know allies are refusing to share intelligence information with us as a result of Trump’s relationship with Russia. And I think it’s fair to suspect that NATO is weaker now than when Trump came into office as a result of his foreign policy toward NATO and Russia.
I would like to see us get a lot less focused on criminal law and a lot more focused on what is acceptable as a matter of electoral norms and foreign policy. It may be that the GOP Congress is uninterested in either of them if it means damaging Trump, but if so, then that’s something the voters should know going into 2018.
My “nit” is that you guys are defending sloppy reporting about a rather important detail. I am not defending Trump at all, but some of you are happy to toss around that she is a government lawyer or a Crown prosecutor because then her links to the Russian government make a tidy sound bite. But while I have little doubt she was there to represent government interests, the direct line to Putin is a little murkier than that. Most of her career has been in business disputes.
Yes, I’m sure it is better to read foreign news sources to get real reporting. Surprised you choose the National Post but good for you. But that doesn’t mean the nits aren’t in the American press and doesn’t explain why people here are defending the practice no matter how common it is or isn’t.
Eta: and I will still say, this may be my ignorance of the Russian systems, but how many State Prosecuters spend their entire career involved in business disputes?