“Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

These are words we all know mean that if we lie, it is a criminal offense, not protected speech.

If I lie on a resume or job application, that is grounds for dismissal. I can’t lie to a potential customer, because that can be considered fraud. There are countless examples in which lying is not protected speech.

To say, as does the writer of a St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial published by this newspaper (Another View, “Stolen Valor Act gives too much power to the government,” March 1), that “the First Amendment does not specify that only truthful speech is protected from government interference” is not being true to what the First Amendment is all about.

As previously stated, lying in many circumstances has not been protected speech. Slander and libel are two obvious examples, as is lying under oath. If anyone lies in order to commit fraud, that should be a crime and not protected by the First Amendment.

If a politician makes a promise to the electorate with no intention of following through, it is virtually impossible to prove he lied. If he says he was a Medal of Honor winner and he wasn’t, there is proof of lying and it should probably be considered fraud, as the intent seems to be clearly to win votes and defraud the public. That isn’t much different from a reporter or historian who tells a completely fabricated story with no documentation and tries to sell it as the truth, thereby defrauding the public.

All of those cases, I think, are clearly different than someone who writes a historical novel, editorial or work of fiction that some people believed to be true – “The Curious Case of Sid Finch” would be one example.