The Denver Post is on my shit list. When Rick Strandlof/Duncan was busted for being a phony a few years back, TSO and I (mostly TSO) helped reporters from the Post track down Strandlof’s lies and involvement with various organizations (IVAW and VoteVets) and political candidates in the previous election. Last year when I asked them to reciprocate on another piece we were working on, suddenly they couldn’t remember that we had helped (in their own article on Strandlof they called us “a group of Washington, DC veterans”) and said that “their policy” precluded collusion with us.
So it’s no surprise to me that their editorial board comes out in defense of lying today;
Sometimes defending the First Amendment involves standing up for miscreants, no matter how distasteful.
And passing yourself off as a war hero, as some have done in recent years, is about as low as you can go. Yet lying isn’t illegal, and Americans who lie about receiving military honors are protected by the Constitution.
There are limits to free speech and the Supreme Court agrees. For example, I can’t tell people I’m a police officer, or that I’m an federal appellate court judge. Or a member of the POS editorial board of the POS Denver Post.
That’s why we opposed the Stolen Valor Act, sponsored by then-Congressman John Salazar of Colorado, and that’s why a federal appeals court this past week upheld a ruling that determined the law, which makes it illegal to lie about receiving military honors, violates free speech.
That’s how the Post tries to protect themselves by coming down on both sides of the issue. Denounce the criminals then denounce the law that makes them criminals.
A free-speech exception for lying would gut the First Amendment. As 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski wrote, “Saints may always tell the truth, but for mortals living means lying.”
“If false factual statements are unprotected, then the government can prosecute not only the man who tells tall tales of winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, but also . . . the dentist who assures you it won’t hurt a bit.”
“Living means lying” is a cop out. Everyone does it so we can’t make it a crime. If a dentist tells me “it won’t hurt” and it does, I won’t ever go back, thus punishing the liar. If I vote for a political candidate based on the recommendation of a phony veteran, I’ll never get that vote back.
The case that was upheld last week involved a California man who pleaded guilty in July 2008 to falsely saying the year before that he had won the Medal of Honor. In Colorado, Rick Strandlof pretended to be a former Marine captain who had won a Purple Heart and a Silver Star, and was convicted under the law.
But last summer a Colorado-based federal court judge decided, and rightly so, that prosecuting Strandlof under the law was an unconstitutional restriction of free speech. It’s important to note Strandlof didn’t financially benefit from the lies. Had he, he could have — and should have — been charged with fraud.
In my example above, VoteVets paid Strandlof to appear in videos supporting a candidate Hal Bidlack who was running for State legislature. Strandlof also appeared as Rick Duncan during the 2008 campaign of Jared Polis who is still serving in Congress. The people who voted on the basis of Strandlof-as-Duncan’s endorsement have been defrauded and they have no recourse, thanks to the Ninth Circuit.
The truly sad part of this, we acknowledge, is that free speech has never been free. It has been achieved by the spilled blood of war heroes — the same people these scoundrels are impersonating.
Yeah, again the Post is having it’s cake and eating it, too. “We hate the lie, but love the liars”.
I submit that there are people who’ve benefited from Strandlof’s lies, the Post among them. The intenet was chocked full of Strandlof interviews that the Post did with Strandlof which bolstered their anti-war opinions. Many of those articles have since disappeared or been buried in the search engines by the stolen valor stories.
VoteVets never admitted their association with Strandlof, in fact, there’s a discussion on VetVoices when readers advised VoteVets to come clean and Brandon Friedman said they were just letting the story go away so they didn’t have to admit to being duped.
Strandlof’s user name on VoteVets was USMCinCO.
VetVoice’s JimStaro, less than a year ago hoped that you had forgotten about Duncan’s affiliation and called him a right-winger.
IVAW has told us that he wasn’t really a member, even though he had a profile on their website and they rushed to take it down that night (but not before I got a screen cap of it).
Anyway, you can see why liars have a vested interest in their lies being classified as “free speech”.
As long as Strandlof-as-Duncan blamed Bush and Chaney for the deaths of his Marines, and as long as he’d admit that he served successfully as a gay Marine captain, the Post, VoteVets, IVAW and all of the rest were in love with him, up until Bush was out of office and Strandlof was exposed. Now, the Post realizes that without liars, they have no credible veterans to push their agenda, so with this editorial, they’re welcoming the liars back into the Post’s dog-crap stained pages.
Given their history of litigation against bloggers, I wonder if the Post will consider republishing their entire editorial for the purpose of criticism, without a link is defended by the First Amendment. Let’s see shall we?
