Lying to a committee is a very grave abuse, and there ought to be a clear punishment.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
To be fair, lying is part and parcel of public life. Every politician has lied about something because they are owned by the special interest groups that finance their elections.
I propose a Constitutional Amendment providing that, if any public official, elected or appointed, at any level of government, is caught lying to any member of the public for any reason, the punishment shall be death by public hanging.
The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.
I do love the idea of being able to take an MP to court for lying. There are ways and means of taking an MP to court just now, but it is very difficult.
I - honestly, I don't know of a worse lie one could tell other than a lie to take a country to war. To make up things to take people to war. That's just got to be the most obscene, immoral thing to do.
The power of lying is much less than the power of what is not to be discussed.
Lying under oath, and encouraging lies under oath, does go to the very heart and soul of what courts do. If we say we don't care, let's forget about courts, and we'll just have other ways of figuring out how to handle disputes.
A liar is always lavish of oaths.
Until we totally change the way we elect our leaders, until we remove private money from public campaigns, lying will be the de facto method of governance in this country.