Shouldn't There Be A Price For Lies?

There was an editorial in the N.Y. Times today about Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. It seems he's very concerned that a bill to be considered will endanger many corporations. Not from  angry stockholders or customers, but from the President. The ideas is that this law would require all donations for political attack ads would have to be made public. So a major corporation couldn't donate a couple million for an ad that lies about the president or his opponent unless they admitted they paid for the ad. Is that a bad thing? I mean, lets face it, nearly all attack ads are at least party untrue. It doesn't matter which party or candidate the ad is attacking. Maybe he would prefer the ads be true. Well that's against the law. As we know, there is a fundamental right to lie. But should a person or corporation, which is to say, a person, be able to tell these lies anonymously? What if all that corporation's customers are fans of the person being lied about. Shouldn't they have the right to know their favorite shoe maker is telling lies about their favorite candidate? Or maybe its the bank you have your life savings with? What if you're considering asking his daughter to marry you. What then? Or maybe he's asking your daughter. Shouldn't you have the right to know? Well, Sen. McConnell thinks it would curtail those corporate donor's right to free speech. What kind of speech is secret? And by the way, that corporation can speechify all it wants, just do it in public. I'm not against free speech. I'm not against private speech. I'm not against political donations. But when the election determines the way I'll be governed, I want to know who's paying for the lies being told.