Investigating Exxon over climate wrongthink just the start: “Democratic congressmen California Rep. Ted Lieu, alongside Vermont Rep. Peter Welch and Pennsylvania Rep. Matt Cartwright, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch urging the country’s top attorney open an investigation of Shell’s history regarding climate change.” They claim the tobacco episode furnishes a precedent for prosecuting businesses “for colluding within their industry to deliberately mislead the public.” [Chris White, Daily Caller] Ten years ago in this space, we deplored as dangerous to free speech the Department of Justice’s embrace of the position that it could charge businesses with racketeering for taking what it called “false and misleading positions on issues.” [emphasis added].
5 Comments
Let’s see if I understand this First Amendment thingie?
If I wear the uniform of a military service in which I’ve never served, grant myself a rank I never was promoted to, and wear medals, badges and ribbons showing valor and honorable service which I never performed, the First Amendment protects me against prosecution.
However, if I note that the computer programs relied upon by the IPCC provide results wildly at variance from reality, reveal that data from ice cores covering several hundred thousand years shows that the variation in the climate now being experienced is well within norms, discuss that the slight warming since the Little Ice Age and increase in atmospheric CO2 has resulted in longer growing seasons and crop yields of 10% to 20%+, or state that the current average temperature now being experienced is slightly below the average for the Holocene epoch — all of which are objectively verifiable facts — I can be prosecuted for having the wrong position on the issues.
We must be having a “Failure to Communicate” moment.
Wfjag,
I believe that if you “found” the opposite from what you stated (read: guessed/modeled/pulled-out-of-your-nether-regions) and then made the above statements anyway, they may try it. Nay, Nay…they would definitely try it.
If Justice assents, this will complete the transformation of the Justice Dep’t into a wing of the Democratic party.
I doubt that even Lynch will obey the request…but the message to Exxon is clear.
You can’t claim your product causes no harm if it does cause harm and you know it causes harm, right?
If it can be proven that they were saying things they *knew* were false to put their product in a positive light, then that would at the least be false advertising. But if we cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they knew they were wrong, then we should not prosecute.
David,
Forget proving beyond a reasonable doubt that they knew they were wrong. Proving beyond a reasonable doubt that they were wrong would be impossible.