Following up on the White House's silliness with the Onion, I decided to look up the relevant U.S. Code section. I don't know if The Onion is really in violation of this (I could see arguments either way), but I did find a very interesting bit:
(a) Whoever knowingly displays any printed or other likeness of the great seal of the United States, or of the seals of the President or the Vice President of the United States, or the seal of the United States Senate, or the seal of the United States House of Representatives, or the seal of the United States Congress, or any facsimile thereof, in, or in connection with, any advertisement, poster, circular, book, pamphlet, or other publication, public meeting, play, motion picture, telecast, or other production, or on any building, monument, or stationery, for the purpose of conveying, or in a manner reasonably calculated to convey, a false impression of sponsorship or approval by the Government of the United States or by any department, agency, or instrumentality thereof, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both. [emphasis added]And I got to wondering: couldn't you apply this to campaign appearances? Sure, there's a built-in layer of plausible deniability there, but really now: does anyone truly believe that when Bush would land at some campaign stop in Air Force One, and emerge from the plane to smile and wave, he wasn't using the Presidential Seal to convey "a false impression of...approval by the Government of the United States"?
Every president running for re-election uses the trappings of office, beginning with the Seal (but certainly not ending there); I'm not seriously suggesting that Bush be prosecuted for it. (Bush--or more properly Rove--did raise the invention of pseudo-official events that were de facto campaign stops to a high art form. But everybody does do it, to some degree.) The point here is that given their own probable violation of the law, it takes a helluva lot of nerve for this White House to try to nail The Onion for a possible technical violation of the same law.
But then nerve is pretty much all they've got going for them at this point.
Update: Praxxus reminds me that Nero's Fiddle was probably illegal under this statute.
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