Giving money or paying for a dinner doesn't seem like "assembly and petitioning".
It is illegal to bribe a cop. It doesn't seem like "a clever loophole" to buy the police department new equipment - it still seems like a bribe to me.
There's no legal reason we can't craft law to be different than it currently is, closing these "loopholes". Campaign finance reform (publicly financing campaigns and limiting campaign spending) would be a great step.
> There's no legal reason we can't craft law to be different than it currently is,
Of course. I didn't say differently. But lots of people don't understand the conceptual relationship to "lobbying" and the 1st amendment and I thought it was worth pointing that out.
It is illegal to bribe a cop. It doesn't seem like "a clever loophole" to buy the police department new equipment - it still seems like a bribe to me.
There's no legal reason we can't craft law to be different than it currently is, closing these "loopholes". Campaign finance reform (publicly financing campaigns and limiting campaign spending) would be a great step.