ITV: Impeachment Television

I was wondering that, too. I don’t see why some childish shit like that should be allowed.

Then again, I don’t understand how Nunes is allowed to just lie and spout conspiracy theories in a Congressional hearing, either.

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They got caught!

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I think the consistution lets congress critters say whatever they want

The boy who is suing a fake cow is talking about credibility.

gotta be hard for schiff to just sit there and listen to this shit

Lol what? Nude photos?

Holllllly shit. So much projection

Ms. Hill? Get fucked Nunes.

Yeah this shit coming out of Nunes’s mouth should expose him to some kind of legal jeopardy. Lately I’ve started to have serious doubts about whether the first amendment doesn’t need to be abridged in a pretty significant way. I’m sorry but being allowed to spread straight up disinformation isn’t something that should be enshrined in the law. This goes beyond ‘but I don’t agree with what people are saying so I’m going to use the government to stop them’… this is people doing stuff like claiming that climate change isn’t real, cigarettes aren’t harmful, and other weaponized disinformation that has caused real public harm in my lifetime.

If there’s one thing from my economics education that has hardened into a core belief that is closing in on unshakeable it’s diminishing returns. The more of something you have the less it’s worth on a per unit basis, and there’s a moment where one additional unit of it can go from being positive to negative. I think with modern communications technology we are way way way past diminishing returns on the first Amendment.

I mean as I said earlier in this or another thread (I can’t remember) we’re effectively poisoning the information flow of 40% of the country to optimize the profits of a company that’s total asset value is <1 day of US GDP. The fact that Fox News is legal is a sign that we’re in a very bad place with the first amendment, and I don’t know if it’s compatible with Democracy in it’s current form at our current technological level.

We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of lives lost and trillions of dollars in economic damage. We’re at a point where the libertarian arguments about how abridging people’s freedoms could have unintended consequences are mostly about theoretical harm we could suffer that I’m very doubtful could be close to as harmful as disinformation is.

To be clear I’m defining disinformation as spreading stuff that has no basis in scientific fact, and is directly contrary to scientific fact, spread for the benefit of some private interest. Nunes has been giving a clinic on making statements that are just straight up factually not true for five days straight, and I don’t know of any consequences he’ll suffer whatsoever. These kinds of misinformation campaigns are all over American public life and are causing real harm minute by minute to our democracy, our health, and our very future viability as a species. It’s kind of crazy.

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Lol took less than 10 minutes to get to the shenanigans.

Anyone have a stream for this that will overlay on mobile? The WaPo one doesn’t work for me

New Android update allows you to use other apps while keeping youtube open in a smaller window, so any youtube feed of the hearing should work

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Am I the only one who thinks Schiff is incorrect when he says, “The microphones are sensitive, so be sure you speak directly into them?”

It seems that he means that “aren’t sensitive.” If they were sensitive, they could pick up sounds from farther away.

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what a horrendous idea. Who decides what disinformation is so bad that the viewpoint needs to be erased? The government? Jesus christ. What could possibly go wrong.

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This is a controversial point but I’m sympathetic. I think there should be something like a loose “good faith” requirement for speech. The exact line would be hard to draw, but first amendment jurisprudence under the Constitution didn’t really get rolling until the early 20th century. Prior to that speech was not infrequently stifled, but it didn’t raise too much concern because it was generally local and communication methods were slow and primitive. Again, I’m not saying aggressively regulate speech, but there should be a way to regulate intentional disinformation, at least by organizations.

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Drug deal!

They got caught!

Poisoned the fanatics!

So the entire GOP defense is “I’m rubber, you’re glue…”

With every witness having to spend 10-15 min explaining how they have served both Republican and Democratic presidents, it’s occurred to me if Trump wins in 2020 he’s going to fire anyone that served Clinton or Obama.

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I think we’re well into the point where the alternative option has caused so much damage some pain on the other side could be tolerable. Dude we are facing some borderline apocalyptic stuff here. We have 10 years to get everyone moving in the right direction on climate change, and the disinformation still being spread on that issue is potentially going to end the world as we know it.

‘Free speech’ is a nice idea, but like anything you can have too much of it and it can utterly defy common sense.

This is really all I’m advocating for. I’m totally fine with it being primarily civil in nature. You should be able to be sued in the courts for spreading misinformation at a minimum. I also think that if your disinformation causes people to get hurt you should probably be criminally liable. The cigarette company executives should have gone to prison. The opioid people should as well.

At a minimum Fox News should not have a viable business model. Instead they are quite profitable.

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Well is the Ariciebo radio telescope sensitive? It can only see a tiny fraction of the sky but it is very sensitive. So perhaps Schiff means that the microphones are sensitive but fairly directional.

Not to get too far into this, but last week Popehat (don’t regulate) and Eli Mystal (regulate more) had a debate regarding “What Does the First Amendment Protect?” at Berkeley Law School.

I haven’t watched it yet, but it should be interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEqiEpOf9VU

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