Do any smart people want to take a stab at explaining why we can't make lying to or deliberately misleading the public by an elected official a criminal offense?

Have any thoughts, @tim4hire.

There might be and in it :)

I see this problem tied to the one we have with the press. A good journalist plays a pivotal role in "good government". A bad journalist undoes all of that. The internet utterly changed the nature of the press - not in a good way.

We haven't compensated yet. And we need to.

At least 10% of my thinking time is devoted to this subject. It takes the form of the question, "How do we guard the objective truth and use it to make decisions?"

It feels like the most important thing in the world to me. But that's my pathological idealism, doubtless.

Maybe the real question is ...

How do we protect the truth? Maybe the answer isn't a legal one. But the problem remains both large and looming.