A.M. Links: White House Still Trying to Minimize Surveillance News, President Names Medal of Freedom Honorees, Fatal Miami Tasing to Be Probed

• 

  Credit: Vaguely Artistic / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

  The White House's latest response to the latest report that the National Security Agency is accessing e-mail contents without a warrant is to insist it's only a small percentage of Internet traffic and to repeat that the average American's emails are "not being read." Note that this phrasing does not mean that the contents are not being accessed, indexed or documented. Just not "read."

• Former Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee, who oversaw coverage of the Watergate scandal, will be receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Presumably this is so President Barack Obama can laugh directly in his face. Oh, and Oprah Winfrey's getting one, too.
• The fatal police Tasing of a teen in Miami Beach is being probed by the city and the state.
• Two young women from London who were volunteering as teachers in Zanzibar had acid thrown in their faces.
• Two Congressmen in Chicago have been connected to an illegal lobbying scheme that was part of an effort to eliminate sanctions against Zimbabwe. Neither have been charged with anything, but two other Chicagoans have been charged with accepting millions in illegal payments.
• A Florida man apparently shot his wife dead at their home and then posted a picture of her body on Facebook.

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Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

Two Congressmen in Chicago have been connected to an illegal lobbying scheme that was part of an effort to eliminate sanctions against Zimbabwe.

Unprecedented tainting of both places' politics.

[invisible furry hand]

Hospitals in Zimbabwe charge women in labour $5 per scream. See what happens when you don't have Obamacare. Or does it mean Zimbabwe is secretly run by Scientologists?

[Gbob]

I charge women the same in my bedroom.

[T]

So, it's free for them?

[Render Unto Caesar]

Nice.

[Scooby]

Just use one of these to buy 20 trillion screams up front.

[Marc F Cheney]

Haha. I saw this and my first thought was "Bobby Rush? It's Bobby Rush, isn't it? It's Bobby Rush."

And I was right, but my second thought should have been Danny Davis.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

"A Florida man apparently shot his wife dead at their home and then posted a picture of her body on Facebook."

OJ SIMPSON likes this.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Facebook is becoming law enforcement's more powerful investigative tool. You can probe crimes while on your ass eating a donut.

[Live Free or Diet]

YouTube likewise.

[edcoast]

Donut suppository!

[Brett L]

Oh, Floroida Man. Nobody mentions that he claims that she was armed with a knife and given that both were apparently South Miami idiots, I hope he gets no more than the required 20 years.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Pro Liberate?

[Brett L]

Nah, he's a Tampa guy. I don't know if we have any Miamians.

[Floridian]

I'm in Orlando, originally from Jax, so not my kill.

[Andrew S.]

I'm probably closest (Fort Lauderdale), but I have an alibi.

[carol]

I'm between Tampa and Bradenton and my ex-husband is still alive. I swear.

[Pro Libertate]

Does he know you're shopping at the outlets?

[Pro Libertate]

I'm very happily married and not insane, thanks.

[Almanian!]

"not insane" - we'll be the judge of that. And we find you guilty.

[Pro Libertate]

Not that kind of insane, then.

[Brett L]

This guy fucked his chances on that by putting, "I'm going to prison for life for killng my wife" in his post. Dumbass. He obviously understood the consequences.

[WTF]

"A Florida man apparently shot his wife dead at their home and then posted a picture of her body on Facebook."

Derek Medina has changed his status to 'Single'.

[DontShootMe]

+1 golf clap

[Gbob]

The easiest job in the world has to be a detective in Florida. In my younger days when i was hitch hiking around, I wound up staying with this girl in Orlando who was living in a trailer owned by a guy who was currently in jail. He returned from jail, and that same night went out and robbed the convenience store around the corner from his trailer park...a store he had gone to since he was a kid, and who he used to work for years earlier. He was very surprised when the police showed up a few minutes after.

I went to the holding facility with my friend to visit him. Hanging around with the friends of other convicts, I figured I had a great, funny story to tell them. I told of his arrest expecting a laugh or two over his stupidity. Instead the slack jawed yokels looked at me and asked "well how did he get caught?".

God damn dumbest state in the Union.

[Floridian]

We the large influx from the north you might be right.

[db]

I tried not to look at this but what appeared to be the picture was on Google News's front page. It was a little bit heartbreaking. Regardless of whether she was abusing him and he shot in self defense, it's a tragedy when someone is killed.

One has to question the sanity of a person who would post a corpse picture of someone they had just killed, no matter the situation.

[Zakalwe]

it's a tragedy when someone is killed.

"Shriek is dead and SugarFree is going to prison for murder."

I challenge you to find anything tragic or sad about that sentence.

[Brett L]

Besides the fact that Epi's non-masturbatory hand was the one that was permanently damaged when SF shot his sockpuppet?

[Bobarian]

Why's it got to be his non-masturbatory hand?

Epi's probably ambidextrous.

[invisible furry hand]

He uses hands? I thought he masturbated with his mind rays

[Lord Humungus]

I'm having a wiener roast and you're all invited.

Fire breaks out at nudist camp near Grand Rapids

[gaijin]

Nudist Camp + Grand Rapids = DOES NOT COMPUTE

[The DerpRider]

Yeah, I imagine it's a lot like a bad episode of Naked and Afraid. Very afraid.

[Live Free or Diet]

I do not understand the appeal of that show. Of course, I'm the same way about The Office.

[Live Free or Diet]

I'm surprised they didn't make the firemen disrobe before entering the area.

But really, one girlfriend was a nudist. I visited a couple nudist parks with her and was surprised how very prudish most of them were. Mennonites could have taught these people something about how to cut loose.

[KMA Too]

Yeah...anyone brave enough for a "pics, or it didn't happen" request on this little news gem?

/totally not interested in the pics. For real!

[The DerpRider]

Lot of turtling with our current weather.

[Kaptious Kristen]

Turtling must mean something different to me, because it doesn't have much to do with weather...

[The DerpRider]

Sorry. Shrinkage.

[Clich? Bandit]

You referenced a line in Rat Race didn't you. One of the unsung greats of comedy.

[Kaptious Kristen]

Nope...never seen it. Just somehow always called a certain urgent bodily function "turtling" or "turtle heading".

[Fist of Etiquette]

...insist it's only a small percentage of Internet traffic and to repeat that the average American's emails are "not being read."

That will once again be later revised like last month's jobs numbers.

[Ted S.]

Unexpectedly, of course.

[Lord Humungus]

Wedding venue turns away same-sex couple

After the Hotel Pattee closed, an Iowa couple scrambled to find a new place for their wedding. They thought Gortz Haus in Grimes was the place, until they said the owners found out they were a same-sex couple.

"It's not from an angry place," said Betty Odgaard, owner of Gortz Haus.

Odgaard said she is a Mennonite. She said telling Lee and Jared they would not be able to wed at the business she and her husband operate was a stand on religious principles.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

And now we have the "vaunted" ACLU weighing in against property rights. Quelle surprise:

http://www.kcci.com/news/centr.....z2bLRrXq3R

[Eduard van Haalen]

ACLdouche says: "They are not serving a private club, closed group of people. They actually invite the public to come in and take advantage of their services for a fee. Any place that does that is a public accommodation".

So, what if they become a membership organization like Costco, where you have to show your membership card at the door? Oh, I bet that will turn out not to be what he meant. He meant FYTW.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

I know that as a result of smoking bans a lot of places became "private clubs". To be clear, I think religion is generally silly and sometimes outright dangerous, but Property Rights Uber Alles.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Dangerous? They're *Mennonites!* Are you scared they'd *pray* you to death?

[Almanian!]

Have you seen what Ninja Mennonite women can do with their bonnets!

*SCARY*

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

I also like how the news article calls her the "owner". Ha ha. Not here in America, sweetie. No one owns a goddamn thing.

[DontShootMe]

She didn't build that.

[Slammer]

Waaaahhh!!! Tough Nyers cry over pizza rankings.

Man, I live in a world of pussies.

[Jordan]

Maybe Nanny Bloomberg will save them.

[WTF]

Oh, for fuck's sake, it's TripAdvisor - their ratings are pretty suspect.

[Live Free or Diet]

Waaaahhh!!! Tough Nyers cry over pizza rankings.

I wasted a lot of time looking for that legendary NYC pizza. Found better on a trip to Cincinnati.

[wwhorton]

New York invented everything and does it all better than anywhere else in the world, according to some New Yorkers. It's just one of the many endearing traits of stereotypical NYC residents that makes them beloved around the world, especially in the DMV (where I live) and points south.

My dad took my ex-step-mother to the Bama to meet our extended family. Apparently they asked her if she was from New York. When she said, "No, I'm from DC," they all smiled and let her come into the house. DC is still yankee to my Bama family, but at least it's not New York.

[DEG]

New York invented everything

Nah. Massachusetts invented America. I saw it on a T-shirt at a rest stop on the Massachusetts Turnpike last night. Therefore, it must be true.

[Doctor Whom]

Call me a heretic, but I don't like NY-style pizza.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

Best pizza I have ever had was at a place called Grandes Pizza in Binghamton, NY. Delicious sauce.

[Clich? Bandit]

here we go...

[DesigNate]

I agree. Chicago style is the best pizza.

*Ducks for cover*

[Ebriosa]

I have recently concluded that I like all pizza except Canadian style. All the toppings are under a massive slab of cheap, oily cheese, so that the cheese layer can just slide off.
Also, Canadians introduced me to Kraft box pizza, which has to be a crime against food, so their protests that sandwich cheese pizza is good falls on deaf ears.

[KDN]

New Yorkers are pussies, but they're right here. I can understand Boston ranking ahead, they have legitimately good pizza and are rabidly parochial. But San Diego and Vegas? Guffaw. Not bad, but at best it's a decent imitation of the Philly - Boston WOP corridor.

Arguing about great pizza is boring though, it's all been rehashed a thousand times. You know what's fun? Bad pizza. And for my money nobody does it worse than Baltimore. Come on guys, you're an hour away from Philly and you can't pick up any tricks? Th deep south at least has an excuse, what with the amazing food otherwise and history of anti-catholicism.

[A Frayed Knot]

No way in hell does Boston have better pizza than NY. I've been living in the Boston area for 18 years and I can count the places on one hand that have half-way decent pizza. In NY, I can go to any hole-in-the-wall pizzeria and find better pizza than I find in Boston.

[KDN]

I've never had a bad slice in Boston; New York's better, but Boston's about as good as central & south Jersey in my experience. It's the rabidness of New Englanders that would put it over the top. Head outside the corridor though and you'll see that this is all just hair splitting: bad Boston pizza beats up on good pizza from Baltimore, the Carolinas, New Orleans, etc.

The argument does rest on the hole in the wall places, though. The best pizza place in the US could be in South Dakota for all I know, but I shouldn't expect to get something of that quality in just any old joint.

[bostonaod]

ahaha, Boston came in ahead

[mr simple]

The White House's latest response to the latest report that the National Security Agency is accessing e-mail contents without a warrant is to insist it's only a small percentage of Internet traffic and to repeat that the average American's emails are "not being read."

They really can't understand why people won't just let them do their "jobs." Why are people so upset over this?

[gaijin]

What is the meaning of the word 'read' afterall?

[LynchPin1477]

That is an important question. I was on some message board yesterday where people were claiming that "reading" does not include computers that can recognize words and phrases and contextually match them to events in the world at large, thereby singling out emails for further scrutiny. I fail to see the distinction between that and human going over it, other than the computers are way more efficient.

[gaijin]

'reading' does not include computers that can recognize words and phrases and contextually match them to events

and there is the rub. Because reading for meaning comes from humans. So even computer matching relies on some 'meaning' applied by humans to an algorithm that computers use to read (e.g.: IRS keyword hitlist). Thus, 'read' is just another example of lawyerly minds trying to have words mean something that allows them to lie and be truthful in the same sentence.

[Bee Tagger]

the average American's emails are "not being read."

Will someone be bold enough to file a FOIA request to find out the FISA court's criteria for determining an average American? Do I need to watch more CBS?

[Brett L]

Not by humans. Just computers that correlate "meta-data" with words and phrases to build a fairly complete picture of anybody's life.

[invisible furry hand]

But only when we get scratch 'n' sniff metadata will we have a complete picture of your life

[Brett L]

Good news on that front! The fiancee's sense of smell is completely destroyed, meaning she can stand right next to me when we get married next month. Oh, holy shit. In five weeks.

[invisible furry hand]

that is excellent news, Brett! I'm throwing confetti at my laptop

[T]

So when can we expect the invitations?

[Brett L]

As far as invitations go, we're getting married for the baby in front of immediate family in 5 weeks. Sometime next year we're having the wedding party. All of the drunken stupid, none of the boring solemnity. You're welcome!

[Kaptious Kristen]

Getting married during peak hurricane season, eh? Hoping for a last-minute weather-related stay of execution?

[Brett L]

Please. Both families have been in FL for long enough that it would take a Cat4 or better to change our plans.

[Lady Bertrum]

Congrats! Have a wonderful day.

[DEG]

I like "Cat4 or better". Hehe.

And congratulations by the way.

[JW]

I'm so sorry, Brett, but it was a good life while it lasted.

[Kaptious Kristen]

High fives!

[Bee Tagger]

I have a new project for Nate Silver to consider. Translate baseball stats like WAR or VORP to the NSA's determination of whether an individual's emails should be read. TAR (Threat Above Replacement-level citizen) could be one or SORC (Suspicion Over Replacement Citizen). Every citizen could then calculate these stats for themselves using some handy online test.

[Pro Libertate]

Perhaps what we need is a system like DHS uses for threats, except that it changes color when our liberties are threatened by the government. We're not at the highest alert level yet, but we're definitely moving on up.

[Slammer]

"average" American. WTF does that even mean? Sneaky bastards.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Average means boring. No one wants to read boring emails.

[Malphas]

maybe i'll just start forwarding all my emails to all the government email addresses I can find. I think that can even be automated.

Just to help them out a bit.

[H. ReardEn]

Hey, I'm above average!

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Yeah, and Google's spiders don't "read" web pages, either.

[db]

None of us is the "average American." There is no such thing.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

I understand that the Right and Left want to pander to us from time to time, but you would think they would target their ads a little better. No, I do not want to sign a petition concerning Right to Work laws. No, I do not want to tell Lisa Murkowski that she betrayed family values. No, I do not want to write my Congressman to tell him to raise the minimum wage.

[Ted S.]

Would you like to sign a petition asking them all to kill themselves?

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

YES

[DontShootMe]

Sorry, the ad agency targeting algorithms don't have a "libertarian" filter

[Tejicano]

They probably do have a libertarian filter. Unfortunately it was programed to the instructions of a Team Blue statist who wouldn't know a real libertarian if it bit him on the ass.

[DontShootMe]

So, that's why I'm not a real libertarian. Don't think I've ever bit anyone on the ass.

[Bobarian]

So, now you have a goal in life?

[wwhorton]

Sure you are. Biting someone on the ass unprovoked would be a violation of the NAP.

[Tejicano]

Well I have.

If you'd seen hers you would probably have tried it too.

[Jon Lester]

So that Murkowski ad wasn't assigned just to me.

Be glad you're not signing in from a Georgia IP address, or you would be seeing Michelle Nunn's face all over every political news site.

[Kaptious Kristen]

I get all that bullshit because I'm registered "no party".

[Kaptious Kristen]

(only in the mail and on the phone, though. I'm not dumb, therefore I use AdBlock plus online)

[CampingInYourPark]

People infected with a deadly virus that emerged in Saudi Arabia last year may have caught it from one-humped camels, used in the region for meat, milk, transport and racing.

http://english.alarabiya.net/e.....break.html

Yeah, but can they problem solve like humans?

http://www.bostonglobe.com/new.....story.html

[Brett L]

Dr. Kelly Jaakkola, research director of the nonprofit marine mammal center, said researchers were surprised by Tanner's use of echolocation.

"He outsmarted us," Jaakola said.

Well, stupid humans are dumber than dolphins, that much is proven.

[Live Free or Diet]

caught it from one-humped camels,

More proof you shouldn't one-hump a camel.

[Enough About Palin]

"one-humped camels"

Is that like one poke sheep?

'ONE POKE' ... Sen. Brian Schatz involved in simulated sheep rape rituals

[Lord Humungus]

Utah man charged with running a bar in his garage

A Sandy man faces up to six months in jail and a maximum fine of $1,000 for allegedly running a bar out of his garage.

Sandy police seized 106 bottles of liquor, 77 cans of beer, a Jagermeister shot machine and nearly $750 in cash from the home of Jared Williams after an undercover investigation. Police also confiscated plastic shot cups, receipts, a cash register and two calculators.

Williams, 33, is charged in Sandy's justice court with doing business without a license, a class B misdemeanor. He has pleaded not guilty. A pretrial conference is scheduled for Aug. 29 before Judge Paul Farr.

[BiMonSciFiCon]

106 bottles of liquor and only 77 cans of beer? The Mormons that drink don't mess around.

[T]

Pssht. I have 106 bottles at my house and it's just me and the wife.

I'm trying to clean myself out of beer right now, though. I'm down to 3 cases or so.

[sarcasmic]

Freedom means asking permission and taking orders.

[Floridian]

Simpsons did it!

[Pro Libertate]

Judge Pon Farr? Holy cow, I bet he caught shit growing up.

[Matrix]

only by Trekkies. And who cares if you get made fun of by them.

[anon]

Fucking Dean Smith gets a medal of freedom?

What a goddamn joke.

[gaijin]

and Bill CLinton. Why would a president get a medal of freedom?

[JW]

They have to cheapen the award down to Nobel Peace Prize levels. Obama doesn't like the competition.

[creech]

Faux medal for faux advocates of freedom.

[Drake]

It's lib-talk. Everything means the opposite.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Would you rather it went to the Cleveland Browns?

[BardMetal]

It would be nice to win something.

[anon]

Yes.

[Pro Libertate]

I don't know about the medal, but he's one of my favorite basketball coaches ever.

[BiMonSciFiCon]

Is it safe to assume "not being read" means "not being read by people"?

[Eduard van Haalen]

I would assume it means "being read."

[Live Free or Diet]

Gov't employees have a bad "tell" when they're lying. They move their lips.

[invisible furry hand]

Sweden's Pirate Party celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Pirate Bay file sharing site on Thursday by reporting the country's IT minister to the police for breaking Swedish copyright laws.

http://www.thelocal.se/49546/20130809/

[Lord Humungus]

Apps at the gate
Tech start-ups promise to transform finance, if regulators will let them

Creating a financial-tech company is arduous. Whereas it takes less than a day to register a company in Britain, it takes months or years and can cost millions to get authorised as a bank. The number of new banks started over the past decade can almost be counted on one hand. Even those that have started, such as Metro Bank or Aldermore, are penalised by regulation: rules on capital favour large and complex firms. In America the Dodd-Frank Act is an imposing barrier to all but the biggest firms. And regulation is closing in on some existing firms. M-Pesa has struggled to grow much beyond Kenya, partly because authorities stand in its way. The market for remittances has been a hothouse for start-ups in Britain, partly because it was lightly regulated. Yet almost half the country's money-transfer firms may be shut as banks close their accounts to comply with money-laundering rules.

[CampingInYourPark]

WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration and congressional Republicans have found something to agree on: Town councils should be allowed to open their meetings with a Christian prayer.

Who would have thought Obama would end up being a SoCon?

http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....0966.story

[Eduard van Haalen]

"The case could lead to a major change in the law on religion that would go well beyond prayers at council meetings."

Major changes? The USSC has already allowed state legislatures to open with prayer - why wouldn't that apply to local legislative bodies? I suppose it's the Constitution's FYTW clause.

But, yeah, its the *defenders* of prayers at local govt bodies who are the radical innovators and socon extremists.

[Eduard van Haalen]

And, oh yeah, don't forget the invocation at the Supreme Court itself - "God save the United States and this honorable Court."

Oooh, it's just like the Taliban!

[Bobarian]

They both have men in dresses, too!

[Lord Humungus]

I see a movie in the making...

Spiders Delay Flights After Infesting Air Traffic Control Center

Flights out of Kansas City International Airport (KCI) were put on hold for 15 minutes after air traffic controllers were bombarded by an infestation of spiders.

Three employees were bitten by spiders as they worked at the Air Traffic Control Center in Olathe, Kansas. That center controls air space around Kansas City. The air traffic controllers were evacuated to another area of the building where they resumed air traffic control services.

Exterminators were called to the building and quickly discovered a spider's nest egg had hatched.

[DontShootMe]

Spiders in the Radar!

[Bobarian]

Get these motherfuckin spidahs off this motherfuckin tower!

/Samuel L.

[Brett L]

Only if John Goodman gets to play the exterminator in a nod to Arachnaphobia.

[Kaptious Kristen]

I gotta see if this frequency is covered on LiveATC.net .....

[Kaptious Kristen]

Haven't listened yet, but this is probably in the right time frame.

[Kaptious Kristen]

At 18:04, ATC says "We're shuttin' down". No mention of the spiders. 🙁

[Fist of Etiquette]

Former Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee, who oversaw coverage of the Watergate scandal, will be receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

See? He's a friend of a free, adversarial press!

[gaijin]

I figured Oprah's was part of some PR campaign for her new movie about JFK's butler.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Is that really a thing?

"Shall I fix breakfast for you and your...*guest,* Mr. President?"

[gaijin]

Well, he was a butler for more than JFK, but yeah:

"You hear nothing, you say nothing, you only serve."

"They say this new white boy [JFK] is smooth"

The Butler trailer

[Eduard van Haalen]

Will it be like Jeeves and Wooster?

"I think I'll invade Cuba."

"Very well, sir. I presume you'll be providing air support, sir?"

"Oh, Jeeves, don't you know anything about plausible deniability? Anyway, these invaders won't need air support."

"Very good, sir."

[Brett L]

I posted this yesterday. Its a sop to the hipster wing of the Democratic Party. He's doing it ironically.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

So when does Glenn Greenwald get his medal?

[Brett L]

2064

[Pro Libertate]

Now's the time for Ben to grab on to that Watergate mojo and ask the president hard questions during the presentation.

[The Late P Brooks]

Former Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee, who oversaw coverage of the Watergate scandal, will be receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Presumably this is so President Barack Obama can laugh directly in his face.

Will this take place before or after he and the entourage kick back on Martha's vineyard? Or will they have the ceremony on the lawn?

[mad libertarian guy]

Not all drone strikes are bad.

Revellers at a South African outdoor rock festival no longer need to queue to slake their thirst -- a flying robot will drop them beer by parachute.

After clients place an order using a smartphone app, a drone zooms 15 metres (50 feet) above the heads of the festival-goers to make the delivery.

[. . .]

"The delivery guys have a calibrated delivery drone. They send it to the GPS position and drops it with a parachute," he explained.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Rand Paul Tweeted this, explaining "Perhaps I am not against ALL drones!"

[Gbob]

During the election it's going to be spun that Rand Paul supports using drones on Africans. Racist!!!

[Eduard van Haalen]

By the way, that was a real tweet.

[Pro Libertate]

I suddenly like him even more.

[Lord Humungus]

And the world ended with a whimper...

Irish Sun decides boobs aren't news and drops topless models from Page 3

The Irish edition of the Sun newspaper has dropped topless models from Page 3 after deciding bare breasts do not reflect cultural values in the country.

The tabloid's new editor David Dinsmore had dashed campaigners' hopes that his reign could signal a change in policy, although earlier this year Rupert Murdoch told a Twitter user she 'may be right' when she told him topless models on page three of a newspaper was 'so last century'.

[Brett L]

Since when are great tits not news? Fuck these barbarians.

[Jon Lester]

Selling newspapers must not be in their cultural values, either. What other use is there for the Sun?

[SugarFree]

Jezebel has been bitching about Page 3 Girls for a while, which is strange because they also argue that breasts are for feeding children and are not erotic and Americans are all up-tight about boobs.

[Floridian]

You weren't looking for logic and consistency from jez, were you?

[Brett L]

Well, there's nothing wrong with the female breast, its the unattractive-male attention that is wrong and disgusting. If an attractive guy wants to look at a girl's tits, they are all for it.

[DJF]

Three rules to avoid sexual harassment lawsuit

1. Be good looking
2. Be attractive
3. Don't be unattractive.

[Lady Bertrum]

4. Be rich.

[Ebriosa]

Nope, everyone likes to sue rich dudes.

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

Am I the only one who reads the "breasts are for feeding children" as just another version of "barefoot and pregnant"?

[invisible furry hand]

get back in the kitchen and make me some pie

[Xenocles]

Bullshit, if she can still walk afterward you don't deserve a pie.

[Bobarian]

Oooh!

A little libertarian girl-on-girl action?

Woot-Woot!

[Eduard van Haalen]

Yeah, you should at least wear sandals when you're cleaning the bathroom.

[Live Free or Diet]

Am I the only one who reads the "breasts are for feeding children" as just another version of "barefoot and pregnant"?

I'm going to use that next time I run across a "pro-breastfeeding" protest, instead of telling them (loudly) "any excuse to see tits is fine by me!"
You can imagine that didn't go well, especially when I asked if it was on the drink menu. I have nothing against public breastfeeding, but protesting when it's already legal strikes me as assinine.

[DesigNate]

Most protests are against specific places that try to get one of them to stop, even though it's legal for them to do it.

[invisible furry hand]

Yes, The Sun is now in the grip of puritanism

[Brett L]

That's the best model pic they could find to represent "A BUSTY fan tried to blackmail a Premier League ace for ?100,000 after he sent messages begging for sex"? Brits are strange.

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

If by "Brits" you mean "Irish," then yes.

[Brett L]

thesun.co.uk is the Irish Sun?

[invisible furry hand]

pretty much - it's the English newspaper with a few Irish stories thrown in

http://www.thesun.ie/irishsol/homepage/

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

It's the Irish edition of the the Sun that's doing it.

[Brett L]

I was talking about IFH's specific story. That "model" would be lucky to find work at a strip club just off the highway in the middle of Bumfuck on the shifts the girl with the stretch-marks and C-section scar couldn't be bothered to show for.

[Clich? Bandit]

you...you seem to have, what is the word? In Depth Knowledge of such things.

[Brett L]

We took our buddy to the Cafe Risque truck stop strip club in Alachua (the one they advertise all up and down I-75 between GA and Orlando). There was a girl pretty much just like what I described comes out. One of my buddies yells, "I'll give you twenty buck to put your clothes back on!" Chick stops, grabs her clothes and stalks off. The DJ told us that wasn't cool, but we were done anyways. We'd already seen a chick with a knife scar that looked like a little bit of boyfriend home surgery. It was bad.

[Kaptious Kristen]

I'm always super-tempted to stop in one of those places for a $3.99 "steak dinner", but would never go in by myself (most of my road trips are solo because every single person I have ever road tripped with, ever, chooses to ignore the "driver's choice" rule of etiquette for music when I'm driving. Fuck 'em if they can't handle a little Duran Duran, John Denver, and Neil Diamond sung loudly and off-key. Driver's Choice is sacred!)

[Tejicano]

I'd say that most of their male readers were born in the "last century" so maybe they ought to stick with it.

[CampingInYourPark]

Michigan's Saginaw County Postpones Debt Sale

Saginaw County on Thursday postponed a $60 million bond offering after investors demanded higher interest rates than the county wanted to pay.
"Our advisors felt that investors in the current market were not giving the quality of the credit appropriate weight," county controller and chief administrative officer Robert Belleman said in a statement.
Associated Press Saginaw's bonds were meant to help fund the county's pension system.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/.....00012.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YrIj4I7ecg

[gaijin]

They may be waiting awhile if they hope to get lower demands from investors.

[The DerpRider]

I understand their sales pitch was "We're not Detroit!"

[Slammer]

Former Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee, who oversaw coverage of the Watergate scandal, will be receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Presumably this is so President Barack Obama can laugh directly in his face. Oh, and Oprah Winfrey's getting one, too.

I bet she'd rather have a pricey purse instead

[Lord Humungus]

Paul E. Peterson: The Obama Setback for Minority Education
Steady gains for black and Hispanic students under No Child Left Behind have come to a virtual standstill.

After Mr. Obama dismantled No Child, that motion came to a virtual halt and the black-white gap widened slightly. Annual gains have been limited to one-and-a-half points for blacks and to three points for Hispanic students. Whites gained two points annually, slightly (though not significantly) better than those registered by African-Americans. In other words, gains under the Obama administration by all students range between minimal and nonexistent, and the black-white gap on test scores threatens to widen after having narrowed steadily over the previous nine years.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Mr. Obama dismantled No Child

Another Big Gov GOP program.

[invisible furry hand]

you don't need to dismantle a child when you can just kill them with a drone

[WTF]

Technically, that is dismantling them.

[John]

So Obama dismantled a program that produced gains for blacks and minorities. Yes, all liberals are really racists. The last thing a liberal wants is for minorities to succeed.

[WTF]

Gotta keep'em dependent so they know who to vote for.

[Brett L]

I always knew Teddy Kennedy was secretly a Republican. That's why he literally killed a young woman.

[Acosmist]

NCLB is a joke based on magical thinking. Good riddance. (What's replacing it? Oh, right, the same exact thinking.)

[Lord Humungus]

Family fights city for therapy chickens

The chickens have also been helping her. Johnson is autistic and her doctors said they are physically and emotionally therapeutic.

"They provide her with the kind of comfort and solace that relationships with people, or being around people, don't," said Samantha Johnson, Johnson's mother.

City officials said the birds are prohibited and ticketed the family. City ordinance states that poultry is illegal within city limits, except with written permission of the council.

Unfortunately for the Johnson's, they haven't been able to get that permission.

[Eduard van Haalen]

I also find chickens to be therapeutic. Especially the chickens at KFC. Improves my mood a lot.

[Doctor Whom]

Johnson is autistic and her doctors said they are physically and emotionally therapeutic.

Who cares? Ordinances are there to be obeyed. Oh, yeah, and FYTW.

[Enough About Palin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHOFmHMTN5k

[mr simple]

Misleading headline of the day:

Twitter 'embarrasingly behind' on rape threats, Talitha Stone says

Look, it takes time if you want quality rape threats.

[Palin's Buttplug]

CBO lowers the projected US budget deficit again - to $606 billion.

(Obama inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit).

[WTF]

BUSHPIG!!111!!!CHRISTFAGS!!11!!!!

[DontShootMe]

darn those evil Rethuglicans and their sequester.

[Fluffy]

Obama and Krugman assured me that if the sequester happened the deficit would actually rise, due to Keynesian magic.

I CANNOT BELIEVE MY BELOVED KRUGMAN HAS LET ME DOWN AGAIN.

[DesigNate]

You don't "inherit" a fucking deficit you brain dead demfag. There is no law and no reason you have to keep spending at the same level the asshole before you did.

Nevermind that the $606 Billion still makes the goddamn budget higher than the budget of McBushitler's last year.

Fuck you are stooooopid.

[sarcasmic]

'What The F*** Would Jesus Do?': Female VICAR causes stir with obscene car sticker

Reverend Alice Goodman put the sticker on her red Subaru Legacy
Some members of her parish in Cambridgeshire were offended by the motto
Dr Goodman claims it is harmless and says 'F***' is 'an Old English word'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....icker.html

[WTF]

Dr Goodman claims it is harmless and says 'F***' is 'an Old English word'

I fail to see how that makes it okay. From what I understand, most of our nuclear curse words have been around in some form or other for centuries.

[Eduard van Haalen]

She's Anglican, be grateful she didn't say Jesus should have been aborted.

[William of Purple]

What The F*** Would Jesus Do?'

or as Sevo would say,

who?

[KMA Too]

The cliche-dar is pinging-

Female vicar: Check
Drives a Subaru: Check
"Edgy" bumper sticker: Check
Married to an Oxford Prof: Check

Could be a Jezzie plant of some kind.

A "Jezuit", if you will.

[PS wanders the Wasteland]

Scary horse face: check.

Oh wait, that's just an English thing.

[KMA Too]

Well, if the horseshoe fits...

[CampingInYourPark]

Silent Circle, an email provider which guarantees end-to-end secure email, has announced that it's going the same way as Edward Snowden's beloved Lavabit and shuttering over concerns of external pressures.

http://gizmodo.com/another-sec.....1075763867

Fuck! Are U.S. citizens really going to just let the Feds not allow any means of private communication?

[Lord Humungus]

apparently so.

[CatoTheElder]

Yep.

The majority of Americans are perfectly content to live in a police state. Not just content, they actually like it.

[Lord Humungus]

hmm... something I've been thinking about. The Commies had their "New Soviet Man":

Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man

Does libertarianism also require a "different man" for its principles to be implemented? Some of the ideas seem to resonate with my friends (and the populace at large), while others... meh. Would a libertarian government initially require a dictator of sort to push through the reforms required, or would a more revolutionary process be needed?

[tarran]

No.... of all political philosophies, liberty is the only one that doesn't try to remake human nature to make itself work.

Nor does it require a dictator to bring it into existence. Just the natural cultural changes that flow from improvements in technology.

[Heedless]

The exception being the natural human urge to poke your nose into your neighbor's business, take his stuff, and then bitch about his ingratitude.

[John]

No it doesn't. Libertarianism rests on the idea that man cannot be perfected and even if he could we could never know what "perfection" for everyone is. Anarchism on the other hand, does rely on a different man. Anarchism is just repackaged socialism in that regard. Remember, the end state of Marxism is for a stateless society. Marxists believe man can be perfected by the state. Anarchists believe man can be perfected by being left alone.

[tarran]

Anarchists believe man can be perfected by being left alone.

No we don't John. We merely believe that the state is

a) immoral
b) a tool used by evil men to hurt people.

I have never met any anarchist who has any interest in perfecting man let alone believing that the statelessness is a vehicle for doing so. It's a stupid idea, since leaving people alone by definition means one is not reworking or forging them.

I strongly encourage you to not assert your crude guesses as to people's motivations as if they are fact, particularly when your guesses are so farcically wrong.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Anarchism isn't a real thing, thankfully.

[John]

I have never met any anarchist who has any interest in perfecting man let alone believing that the statelessness is a vehicle for doing so.

Yes you have. You just haven't listened to what they are saying and thought about the logical consequences. In fairness, most of the time, neither have they.

In order for their not to be a state, people have to stop wanting to make one. The state may not be the people at large, but it is most certainly made up of people. For anarchy to work everyone has to give up on the idea of exploiting and oppressing others via collective force. If even one group of people doesn't do that, everyone else is forced to form their collective organizations to keep the first group from oppressing them. And we are right back to having states again. They always try to get around this by appealing to the collective defense unicorn, as if we could all get together and defend ourselves against the approaching baddies and go back to our anarchist paradise. And that of course assumes that we could somehow form organizations that didn't take on a life of their own.

[tarran]

For anarchy to work everyone has to give up on the idea of exploiting and oppressing others via collective force.

No they don't. That's like saying to live in a society everyone has to stop wanting to murder each other and live in fellowship with each other.

If even one group of people doesn't do that, everyone else is forced to form their collective organizations to keep the first group from oppressing them.

And as long as people are free to sever their relationship with one of these security service providers and to establish another one then these organizations aren't states.

[John]

And as long as people are free to sever their relationship with one of these security service providers and to establish another one then these organizations aren't states.

LOL. You want to try that again? Well, yeah as long as no one wants to form a state, we won't have states. Well no kidding. That is the problem Tarran. People won't be free to sever their relationship with such organizations until everyone stops wanting to prevent them or people stop wanting to form states.

[tarran]

That's a lovely attorney move to try to reframe what I said into something I didn't say. It doesn't change the fact that you are wrong about what anarchy entails.

The notion that we need states to protect us against people trying to forcibly set up states that take advantage of us is a very silly one, no matter how much you try to make it look rational.

[John]

The notion that we need states to protect us against people trying to forcibly set up states that take advantage of us is a very silly one

No. It is not that we need or don't need states. It is that people, because of their nature, will form them whether we want them or not. And once they do, we either live under their state or form our own. We don't get a choice.

Again, the whole thing is a fantasy. IF people stopped wanted to oppress one another and engage in collective violence, we wouldn't need or have any laws and all have a marry Christmas.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

The second you do something in self-defense other than kill a guy, you need a state.

Example: your community catches a serial child molester. you and your local buddies now have to get together to decide what to do with him. Then next thing you know you're arguing standards of evidence and appeals and you're right back where you started.

Anarchism is just an absurdity. It's not a real thing.

[John]

No they don't. That's like saying to live in a society everyone has to stop wanting to murder each other and live in fellowship with each other.

No, it is saying that. And anarchy would never work unless people did. You think that self defense could deter people. And yes at an individual level it can. But that doesn't take into account collective force. You may be able to deter one person from doing something, but once that one person forms a collective, that deterrence fails. And if people want to murder and rob as individuals, they will inevitably form collectives to do the same thing. States didn't arise out of nothing. They arose because of the nature of man.

[GPZsug]

Example: your community catches a serial child molester. you and your local buddies now have to get together to decide what to do with him. Then next thing you know you're arguing standards of evidence and appeals and you're right back where you started.

This scenario has no more to do with anarchism than that of some friends deciding where to eat lunch.

[John]

This scenario has no more to do with anarchism than that of some friends deciding where to eat lunch.

So there would be no bad things or personal violence in an anarchist state? If there would be, how would such a place handle such things? What do you do with the man who you think molested your child, has everything to do with anarchism. It is just a really hard question that anarchists don't have an answer for.

[GPZsug]

So there would be no bad things or personal violence in an anarchist state?

Of course there would be. Hence the critical mass concept.

What do you do with the man who you think molested your child, has everything to do with anarchism. It is just a really hard question that anarchists don't have an answer for.

No it's not. Kill him, chain him up in your monocle factory, let a jury of his peers decide. Ethically, it doesn't matter. In practice, the third option is probably the most conducive to a stable society. But don't mistake the third option for a state.

[John]

No it's not. Kill him, chain him up in your monocle factory, let a jury of his peers decide.

And knowing that he is guilty is such an easy thing? You won't ever kill some innocent person? And he is just going to agree to be killed or chained up? He won't resist or worse yet have friends who will help him?

How do you people believe this shit?

[GPZsug]

And knowing that he is guilty is such an easy thing?

No system of government pretends to exist for the purpose of achieving omniscience.

You won't ever kill some innocent person? And he is just going to agree to be killed or chained up? He won't resist or worse yet have friends who will help him?

None of these objections have anything to do with anarchy. In our current society innocent people are killed, criminals resist and accomplices help them all the time.

How do you people believe this shit?

How do we believe that rights exist? That is a difficult question. But I'm glad I'm not Tony, like most of the rest of you are.

[John]

It has everything to do with anarchy. Anarchy has no answer to that other than we will rely on the individual to both get the right person and institute proper justice. And that of course is assuming individuals have a different nature than what they do.

Arachists are a special breed of stupid.

[GPZsug]

Anarchy has no answer to that other than we will rely on the individual to both get the right person and institute proper justice.

Anarchy does not prohibit cooperation. You're conflating anarchy with chaos like most do, but with fancier language.

Arachists are a special breed of stupid.

If it's stupid to believe in rights then so be it.

[John]

Moreover it assumes that everyone would do that out of a commitment to freedom and there wouldn't be a free rider problem. Why should I go risk my life fighting the baddies when you will do it for me? In the end, the whole thing falls apart unless you assume people have been transformed into a different sort of being than what they are. It is just Marxism that skips over that whole unpleasant state transformation of man thing.

[tarran]

Why should I go risk my life fighting the baddies when you will do it for me?

The guys who care will either put their lives on the line, or pay other people lots of money to do it, either because they get a psychic benefit or and economic benefit.

For example, Walmart provides free parking lots that I use, on occasion when I'm not setting foot in the store... (there was one that I used as a convenient place to do emergency diaper changes back in the day). They don't fret as to whether people are parking there to change diapers. They provide it because it gets people into the store.

[John]

The guys who care will either put their lives on the line, or pay other people lots of money to do it, either because they get a psychic benefit or and economic benefit.

In other words, people will do so out of a feeling of obligation to collective and to the well being of society as a whole. That is just another way of saying "Soviet Man".

[tarran]

ROFL

John, you can't seriously be so stupid to actually believe what you just wrote.

You're putting me on, right?

[John]

I can't believe you are so stupid that you actually believe that there would be groups of people who would out of a sense of duty would because they care go out and protect us from the state next door. You are just pretending that people are not who they are.

I actually can believe you are that stupid. Anarchism is a special sort of thing that makes normally smart people completely fucking retarded.

[WTF]

I can't believe you are so stupid that you actually believe that there would be groups of people who would out of a sense of duty would because they care go out and protect us from the state next door.

Am I missing something here, or isn't that exactly why alot of guys sign up for military service?

[John]

WTF,

Those guys are paid. And they sign up out of patriotism towards a STATE. And they also are paid by the government using the force of the gun to extract tax money. See how many people volunteer to do it without pay and knowing they have to fund their own weapons and equipment.

[WTF]

Fair enough, but most of the guys signing up out of a desire to serve aren't really doing it for the fabulous pay and benefits. And there is no reason why others in the group wouldn't be willing to voluntarily provide resources to those who would volunteer as protectors.

[GPZsug]

Anarchy is an end, not a means to an end. Perfection of man has nothing to do with it.

[John]

It has everything to do with it. You will never get to that end, unless you perfect man. Without perfecting man, people will just keep forming governments to oppress other people.

[John]

And Marx was by your definition an anarchist, since his desired end, his paradise was a stateless society.

[tarran]

And all US Army officers are mass murderers because Major Nidal Hassan was an army officer.

[John]

That doesn't even respond to the point. The end state of Marxism is anarchy. And Marx to his credit understood, you will never have anarchy until man is transformed into something he is not today. Read Marx. Socialist paradise is exactly what anarchists claim to be able to achieve.

[GPZsug]

Without perfecting man, people will just keep forming governments to oppress other people.

Every form of society requires a critical mass, not perfection. Right here, right now there is a critical mass for a democratic republic. If a critical mass ever exists in support of anarchy then anarchy we'll have. Things change. The 21st century is not some wondrous age in which we've reached a stable minimum of human oppression.

[John]

But the critical mass for anarchy is really huge. Maybe not 100% but close. A small, well armed, committed minority can take over pretty easily. And the problem is once they take over one area it just gets easier to take over others.

[GPZsug]

But the critical mass for anarchy is really huge. Maybe not 100% but close.

Perhaps. But the number is irrelevant. 100% and 0% have objective meaning, so does perhaps 50%. But the significance of any other number is subjective. Say democratic republic requires 60% and anarchy requires 90%. That might suggest that societies will tend toward democratic republic, but it's hardly justification for incredulity when someone suggests that anarchy is desirable.

[John]

A democratic republic requires 60% of an area. Anarchy requires 90% of the entire world. Anarchy can never exist in just one spot. Some nation will come and take it over. For it to work, the whole world has to do it. And that of course is a complete fantasy and not even a very interesting one.

[Zeb]

Depends on the anarchist. Some certainly do have a sort of vision of a better kind of man. And a lot of leftist anarchists are just silly.
But to me, it is mainly a recognition that government isn't anything special and has no particular legitimacy over any other groups of people who want to force other people to behave in a certain way. That there is no moral basis for government and rule of law is an illusion.
It's more of a philosophical orientation than a political philosophy for me at least. I think government is probably inevitable in some form or other. But that doesn't mean I am going to pretend that it is anything other than what it is.

[John]

But do you honestly believe living under even a bad government, say Venezuela is just as bad as living in say China when there was anarchy? Not every government is North Korea. And while I don't like a lot of the things our government does, it is pretty foolish to say it is the same thing as the Gambino family or some Chinese warlord. And that is what you are saying.

[Zeb]

I'm not saying it is the same thing. I am saying that it is the same kind of thing.
As I said, I think that government is inevitable. And of course some are better to live with than others.
I really don't imagine some perfect future state of anarchy (or even a minarchist libertopia). I just don't ascribe to the state any special legitimacy. It really is just the most successful group of people trying to control other people. But still, I accept that this is the world we live in an have to make the most of. Which is why, in practice, I am more of a practical libertarian than a hard core an-cap.

[John]

If it is the same kind of thing, it is the same morally.

[Zeb]

Fine, then all government is bad. But some are still less bad than others.

[Zeb]

Or look at it this way. I think it is immoral to force people to do things that they don't want to do unless you are acting in self defense or in defense of others. Any government needs to do some of that. That doesn't mean that some forms of government aren't preferable to others. But that is a utilitarian calculation, not a moral one.

[invisible furry hand]

if anything, libetarianism accepts the current state of human nature and argues for a minimal state to minimise its potential as a tool of oppression. It does of course require vigilance to prevent the regrowth of the state to satisfy statists and bullies; perhaps it is in that aspect that it does not satisfactorily deal with many people's propensity to be lazy about their liberty. But i live in hope

[Lord Humungus]

additional: I'm thinking of the general wailing and gnashing of teeth if the welfare state was whittled down. It seems - at least these days - that only a minority want to take responsibility for their own actions.

Or would the open market and chance for improvement be enough - in the medium to long run - to make new adherents?

[Floridian]

I think humans may be parasitic by nature. Why join a community unless you are going to get more out of it than you are going to put in? The sales pitch for communism is that we will all work together and share the reward. The secret hope is to siphon more off the collective than you put in.

[anon]

It's more symbiotic; the community benefits from having my unique skillset only as much as I value what they have to offer me. Hence, money.

[Floridian]

In a free market I completely agree. But people don't vote for a free market. They vote to advance themselves at the expense of others.

[anon]

I think it was Aristotle that said something about a civilization lasting only until its constituents started voting themselves money from the treasury.

Which means yes, we're on our way out.

[mr simple]

That quote is possibly from Alexander Tytler, but no one really knows.

[gaijin]

Why join a community unless you are going to get more out of it than you are going to put in?

IN addition to the more thoughtful responses, I believe there to be generally an inverse relationship between one's sense of belonging to a community and the distance from that group. Call it tribalism, but what one generally gets out of or puts into belonging to a group made up of family and close friends is different than a zero sum calculation requiring me to get "more" than I put in to some far flung community of strangers with which I might also identify.

[SugarFree]

It's a matter of incentives. Turning yourself into a New Soviet Man only benefits others and only benefits them if they have transformed themselves as well. You strive to be the best cog in an impossibly perfect machine.

Liberty is about what is best for you as an individual, based on your terms and axioms. The only thing lost to the society of free individuals is the ability to do violence and fraud to other people.

The popularity of committing violence and fraud upon other people explains why liberty confuses and angers so many.

[sarcasmic]

Well, according to Tony, liberty must be imposed upon society. I mean, it would take a dictator to force those who initiate force upon society to stop. It would take a dictator to stop those who currently live off plunder to find a different means of existence. If you draw no distinction between initiating force for plunder and control, and using force to stop those who initiate force for plunder and control, then indeed libertarianism is tyrannical.

[WTF]

^^THIS IS WHAT TONY REALLY BELIEVES.

[tarran]

As does John, if he the arguments his is advancing above or ones he sincerely holds.

[sarcasmic]

Why do you think I call him Red Tony?

[John]

No I don't. I just understand that world is full of really shitty people who don't give a fuck about mine or anyone else's liberty. I have liberty because I am lucky enough to live somewhere will people fight for it. That is it. There is nothing natural about liberty. It is something that you have to create and defend. It doesn't arise naturally because the world is full of rainbows and puppies.

[DesigNate]

I think John is right in the sense that anarchy requires people to not band together to try and initiate force for plunder and control. To me, it is great in theory but I have a hard time believing it would work in practice.

Say we were able to convince everyone today that anarchy was the best state for liberty and humanity as a whole. You're still going to have the DiFi's, Obama's, Pelosi's, Boehner's, etc. trying to amass power (both literal and figurative) to control people and put them back in their place. How would we deal with that?

[sarcasmic]

That's a bit embarrassing! Emma Roberts 'turned away from bakery' after trying to queue jump to get a popular Cronut

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs.....ronut.html
Tried the old "Do you know who I am?" and it backfired. Ha ha!
On a side note, that dress would look great on the floor next to my bed. Oh yeah.

[gaijin]

what the heck is a Cronut?

[Kaptious Kristen]

Criossant/donut hybrid

[Pro Libertate]

I just heard about it--croissant + doughnut. It sounds like an abomination before God to me.

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

It's the new "it" food, some kind of combo of a doughnut and a croissant.

[WTF]

I wonder why other bakeries aren't making them, to cash in on the latest elite craze. Maybe it's only 'cool' if you get one from the orginal source.

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

I read the other day that some folks were starting to attempt reverse-engineering it.

[sarcasmic]

I wonder why other bakeries aren't making them

Probably because croissant dough is a pain in the ass. You take a loose yeasted dough, put a lump of cold butter in the middle, fold it over, roll it out and fold it into thirds. Then it rests in the cooler until the dough is loose again. Roll it out and fold it into thirds, being sure to keep it cold enough that the butter doesn't melt. Do this a few more times and you've got a nice layered dough. Then you must form it and still keep it cool until just before cooking time, or the butter will melt. It's a pain in the ass and not easy to get right.

[WTF]

Yeah, I know, but we're talking about professional bakers here who could be cashing in on the newest bullshit food craze.

[sarcasmic]

I've known plenty of professional bakers who won't go near croissant dough.

[Tejicano]

The secret is to use vodka instead of water.

[Lord Humungus]

The answer is always Vodka.

[The DerpRider]

But not Stoli unless you want to be part of the boycott...

[JW]

Emma Roberts

Who?

[sarcasmic]

It's fashion snap! Kate Upton, Blake Lively and Sarah Jessica Parker wear the same Gucci dress in latest magazine shoots

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem.....hoots.html
The people in the comments apparently have a thing for horses.

[Certified Public Asskicker]

Well they are British.

[sarcasmic]

Cupid turning violent and a bear rescuing a woman: The cheeky way people have been posing with statues to bring them to life

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....-life.html
I larfed.

[B.P.]

"Obscene: This man has posed with a statue of a giant moose and manoeuvered himself into an X-rated pose"

That's an elk statue, you indoorsy British fop.

[Slammer]

Friday morning Metal link

[Aloysious]

I liked the nekkid girl butt at 0:13. Good song, as well.

[Aloysious]

Was listening to this with breakfast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XIww9Mqlig

[mad libertarian guy]

BTW: Thanks for the Gris link the other day. It's a damn good band with a great fucking album.

[The Late P Brooks]

"Our advisors felt that investors in the current market were not giving the quality of the credit appropriate weight," county controller and chief administrative officer Robert Belleman said in a statement.

I think he's got it backwards. They have suddenly come to their senses and are just beginning to properly assess the risk.

[John]

I love it, they are only reading a small percentage of internet traffic. I guess if they decided to strip search a million people at random they could defend it by saying "we only violating a small percentage of the American people."

[Pro Libertate]

They're just reading the ones that their algorithms tell them are "suspicious." You know, like the same algorithms that tell them to monitor this comments section 24/7/365.

[Brett L]

The good news is, our signal to noise ratio is so low as to be statistically zero to the NSA bots. They probably have some human monitoring it. ('sup NSA dude? Listen to any good deployed military phone sex recently?)

[Drake]

Mark Steyn writing about militarized police gone wild.

http://www.nationalreview.com/.....mark-steyn

[sarcasmic]

Pictured: Arizona jail officer shot dead outside his home on his way to work... as Sheriff Joe Arpaio issues AR-15 assault rifles to EVERY deputy in the county

Jorge Vargas, 27, is a married father of a little boy
He was killed in his uniform as he got ready for work outside his house Thursday morning
Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced Thursday that he was giving the assault rifles to his deputies so they would have 'enough firepower to fight back'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....-work.html

On the one hand it looks like some citizen justice has been served. On the other hand the result is keyed-up cops with rifles, no doubt ready to shoot at any threat, real or perceived. How long before some old grandmother gets herself killed because she can't hear what some terrified cop is yelling at her.

[Lord Humungus]

looks like someome got even.

[John]

I doubt it was citizen justice. Remember when the Sheriff in East Texas was shot a few months ago? Everyone was sure that it was the Mexican drug gangs finally going after LEOs. Turned out he was murdered by some nut who was involved in some kind of domestic dispute.

Ten bucks says the cop was banging some other guy's wife and the husband took matters into his own hands or his wife and her b/f want her to be free of being married.

[mad libertarian guy]

Ten bucks says the cop was banging some other guy's wife and the husband took matters into his own hands or his wife and her b/f want her to be free of being married.

That or drug gangs killing a guy who fucked them over. The number one source for drugs in prison is prison guards. They got to get that from somewhere.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

"On the one hand it looks like some citizen justice has been served."

What? Where's the sense of justice in just mowing down random people? You're no better than they are.

[sarcasmic]

Who said anything about "mowing down random people"?

The guy was a prison guard. Chances are this was a disgruntled prisoner getting revenge.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

You just made that up. You have no idea what happened, and yet you called it "justice". You're a fucking animal.

[sarcasmic]

I said "looks like." That's not a definitive statement. It's a possibility. Your reading comprehension is terrible.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

You weasel. If someone says, "Ohhh! looks like you have been served!" They don't mean, "it appears you have been served, but appearances may be deceiving"

you incredible coward.

[sarcasmic]

You're having quite the emotional reaction. Do you have a brother who works as a prison guard or something? Maybe you like to suck penises hanging out of uniforms?

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

I'm having a reaction to you the same way I have a reaction to "feminist men" - it abhors me to see both you and they act in such an incredibly womanish way.

Own your words, you coward.

[sarcasmic]

Irrational women are irrational.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Grow a pair and own your words.

[Floridian]

Probably some dude who caught a beating for not respecting officer friendly getting even

[BardMetal]

Um killing a guy getting ready to go to work isn't exactly what I would call justice.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

sarcasmic apparently has the same murderous impulses as those he most hates. Something about an abyss...

[sarcasmic]

That's not what I said, but it makes for a great straw man. Thank you for playing.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

You called it justice, you dick. Don't squirm around now. Either own it or retract it, you pussy.

[sarcasmic]

I said "looks like," you dick. Suck it.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

You weasel. If someone says, "Ohhh! looks like you have been served!" They don't mean, "it appears you have been served, but appearances may be deceiving"

you incredible coward.

[BardMetal]

and sarcasmic's mom looks like a whore that likes to get shit on in German scat porn.

Notice I said "looks like" I'm not saying she's actually a whore that like getting pooped on, but thats just what it "looks like" to me.

[BardMetal]

Exactly grow a pair and admit it was a mistake to call it justice, and stand by your remark and try to defend it.

[Floridian]

Not that sarcasmic said it was justice, but if you are allowed no legal remedy for the wrongs perpetrated against you (protected LEO) what are you suppose to do?

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Floridian,

I actually have little problem with someone getting what they deserve, but you have to demonstrate they actually deserve it.

sarcasmic knows exactly what he was doing and is now too much of a pussy to admit it.

[sarcasmic]

So no speculation is allowed until a court has gone over all the evidence, God has weighed in, and Randian has had the final say. Gotcha.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Everyone here can see exactly what you were saying. In full context, you said this:

On the one hand it looks like some citizen justice has been served. On the other hand the result is keyed-up cops with rifles, no doubt ready to shoot at any threat, real or perceived. How long before some old grandmother gets herself killed because she can't hear what some terrified cop is yelling at her.

Usually, when people say "on the one hand...on the other hand" they mean, "one of these things is good and one of these things is bad". You knew what you were doing, you fucking worm.

[sarcasmic]

Maybe you should stop going to the beach if you can't figure out how to wash the sand out of your vagina.

[Floridian]

It would be nice to have the complete story before passing a judgment but you will never get the complete details when a protected class is involved. If this guy robbed some drug dealer and pistol whipped him then there will be no evidence or report of that. It could be an innocent man clipped for no reason, so all we have is speculation.

[sarcasmic]

Did you miss the part about what kind of work the dead guy had been doing for the better part of a decade?

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

I forget - what part of any sense of libertarianism other than anarchism calls for there to be no prisons?

[sarcasmic]

When did I say there should be no prisons?
Oh yeah. I didn't. Nice straw man, thank you for playing.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

So what does his work have to do with it? Because this guy was a prison guard, and you clearly implied that it was the nature of his work that led to this sort of "justice".

You won't stand by your own words because you know you fucked up. Own up to it and retract or be a man and own your words.

[BardMetal]

No you just it was justice to kill a police officer based on nothing else then the fact that the guy was a police officer.

[sarcasmic]

No you just it was justice to kill a police officer based on nothing else then the fact that the guy was a police officer.

The guy wasn't a police officer. You can't even put words into my mouth right. What a loser.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

You don't want to argue the essentials so you try to misdirect to the inessentials. How tiresome.

[Xenocles]

It doesn't look like "citizen justice" any more than any other murder does. Find me a suspect with a specific motive, then we'll talk. Every murderer has a reason that seems just to him at the time.

[John]

Exactly. See my comment above. I bet it was a jealous husband or his wife's b/f or something like that.

[mad libertarian guy]

On the other hand the result is keyed-up cops with rifles

These guys aren't fucking cops. Prison guards are the scum of the earth.

[KMA Too]

And, he wasn't a prison guard. He was a county jailer. And, yes, it is a distinction with a difference. Typically, jailers get along better with their incarcerated people due to many of them not being convicted yet, not being violent felons, etc.

Exactly what he could have/might have done to be scum of the earth, I'll leave to you to explain.

[John]

http://online.wsj.com/article/.....TopOpinion

The Washington Examiner manages to read the anti gun movement's mail. It reads like Episiarch had written what he figured they really want to say.

The most powerful time to communicate is when concern and emotions are running at their peak," it advises. Antigun advocates are urged to seize opportunistically on horrific crimes: "The debate over gun violence in America is periodically punctuated by high-profile gun violence incidents including Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, the Trayvon Martin killing, Aurora, and Oak Creek. When an incident such as these attracts sustained media attention, it creates a unique climate for our communications efforts."

Basically they admit there is no rational case for gun control. Bonus points for equating George Zimmerman to the guys in Newtown and Aurora.

[anon]

Yeah, cause self defense is exactly like murder.

I'm actually pretty happy nobody takes the gun control nuts seriously.

[John]

From best of the web yesterday. The magazine Popular Science tells us in one article that fetus cannot feel pain at any time before being born. I would be curious to hear how the trip down the birth canal activates our brain to feel pain.

http://www.popsci.com/science/.....ion-debate

And in another article tells us that crustations do feel pain and thus fishing for them is inhumane and cruel.

http://www.popsci.com/science/.....them-alive

Somehow the process of being born turns a human fetus from something less developed than a crab into a full human being. Got it.

[BardMetal]

Can we add an amendment to the constitution demanding the separation of science and state?

[Palin's Buttplug]

Go tell your pals at Free Republic.

[John]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weu-R_bgmU4

CHRISTFAG!!!

Let it out shreek, you little demented retard.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

The magazine Popular Science tells us in one article that fetus cannot feel pain at any time before being born.

No, that's not what it says.

[John]

The woman who wrote it supports abortion at any point during the pregnancy. So she is either saying that pain can't be felt at any time or that feeling pain is irrelevant to the debate. Since she wrote the article debunking fetal pain, it isn't the latter.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

"And what we know in terms of the brain and the nervous system in a fetus is that the part of the brain that perceives pain is not connected to the part of the body that receives pain signals until about 26 weeks from the last menstrual period, which is about 24 weeks from conception."

She is saying that pain doesn't exist at 20 weeks, so any reliance on fetal pain at 20 weeks to justify a ban at 20 weeks is scientifically flawed.

She didn't write an article debunking fetal pain. She wrote an article debunking fetal pain as early in the pregnancy as those favoring increased restrictions want to use fetal pain as a reason for the restriction.

Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up: Fetuses feel pain, so a trip down the birth canal doesn't grant that power. However, they don't feel pain at 20 weeks, therefore fetal pain at 20 weeks in a scientifically invalid justification for a ban on abortions at 20 weeks.

[John]

But she doesn't think it is ever one. Either that or she doesn't think that feeling pain is an issue. But of course it seems to be when it comes to crabs.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Fine, she thinks abortion is acceptable at any point. That doesn't mean she says fetuses don't feel pain, as you claimed she did.

[John]

And if you want to concede that abortion should be banned as soon as the fetus feels pain, that is a good start. I will take that.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

I think abortion should be banned when there is consistent higher brain function because, to me, that is the "brain life" side of the "brain death" coin. I could accept feeling pain as a substitute.

[Brett L]

I read it to say that fetuses don't feel pain as fully developed humans do at 20 weeks. Neither do lizards. It is stealing a base to say that neither experience pain.

Newborn babies mainly use their brain-stems not their forebrains to focus their eyes and turn their heads toward movement for the first 3 months or so, it doesn't mean that they are blind, it just means that all of their eye movements ae mediated by a different region of the brain than older babies.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Along the lines of above, I'm not all that interested in brainstem function. What makes us "us" isn't involuntary functioning of a brainstem.

[Brett L]

Fair enough. I think the author is using a carefully worded statement by a scientist to try reclaim the mantle of "scientific evidence" when none exists. I guess I agree that she covered her bases, but I also agree with John that if this is what PopSci is publishing, they are heavy on the Pop and light on the Sci.

[Brett L]

Shit. Edit.

using a carefully worded statement by a scientist , more broadly than it was qualified to apply, to try...

[Azathoth!!]

So, there's a certain part of the body that feels pain? I always thought that it was the nervous system...which is ALWAYS connected to the brain because it grows out from it.

But I could be wrong, this 'doctor' may have discovered some heretofore unknown body part that we've all missed these past millenia.

Sometimes its really repulsive to see the lengths to which these people will pervert science to make their point.

[Brett L]

The headline is: "Fetal Pain is a Lie"

I'd say John has the better of this one. Also, the writer took "fetuses may not be wired for pain until 24 weeks from fertilization" as fetuses definitely don't experience pain before then. Its a hit piece.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

A. I doubt she wrote the headline.
B. Even if she did, it is a correct headline with regard to abortions at 20 weeks, which was the issue the article addresses.

"And what we know in terms of the brain and the nervous system in a fetus is that the part of the brain that perceives pain is not connected to the part of the body that receives pain signals until about 26 weeks from the last menstrual period, which is about 24 weeks from conception."

Tell me how a reading that says a "fetus cannot feel pain at any time before being born" is consistent with what was actually in the article. It should be obvious, especially to someone who made it through law school, that she's saying pain is wired up at 24-26 weeks, depending on the starting point. Which is before the trip down the birth canal.

[Brett L]

Let's argue on the thread above. I disagree with that being the writer's thesis and think that she is most definitely trying to spin that quotation into an argument that abortion is okay even at 26 weeks.

[Zeb]

Headlines are not generally written by the author and often say something different from what the article says. I have no idea how solid the science is on when a fetus can start experiencing pain, but the article is most definitely not claiming that they cannot feel pain until a magical transformation happens at birth, which is what John was saying.

[John]

That is exactly the conclusion you have to make based on her assertion combined with her commitment to legal abortion at any time. There is nothing silly about it. You just refuse to thing through her arguments to their logical conclusions.

[Zeb]

Does she say that abortions should be banned if the fetus can feel pain? I think that she is just rebutting the arguments based on the ability to feel pain which have been offered as justification for the 20 week ban.
The author is not the one arguing that abortion should be banned because the fetus can feel pain. So it is not logical to conclude that she must believe that it cannot feel pain until birth. Especially since she pretty much says that it can after 26 weeks.

I imagine that the author has different reasons for thinking that abortion should be allowed at any time.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Well, the fetal pain one was written by Salon, so 'nuff said there.

[Brett L]

"A patient of mine ? already a mother to a young child, really happy about the pregnancy, husband is really happy about the pregnancy ? went in for her first ultrasound and was told everything was fine." But when the patient came back at 18 weeks for a follow-up, Davis says, her doctors told her to brace for difficult news. The fetus' heart was not developing normally, and would require multiple operations to fix. Still, after meeting with a pediatric cardiologist to discuss what it would mean to raise a baby with chronic health condition, the couple decided to continue with the pregnancy.

Then came their 20-week checkup.

The heart condition had gotten worse, and the latest scans picked up new information: a systemic problem had emerged, affecting other organs in the body. The outcome was dire. After a week of painful discussions within their family, the couple decided to terminate the pregnancy ? at 21 weeks.

I feel terrible for these people who discover their child has a congenital condition, but like Jenny McCarthy, I wish they would stop using pseudoscience to wrap their undeniably difficult decisions in objectivity. Why not simply say, "we thought our child would suffer less this way, and we're broken up about a terrible decision we hope nobody else ever has to deal with?"

[John]

I agree. It is a horrible decision to have to make. But they need to be honest with themselves and admit the decision they made.

[Drake]

My kids were born via Caesarian Section, but they don't seem immune to pain. PS needs a new hypothesis.

[Zeb]

Or you need to read the article, not just John's silly interpretation of it based on the headline.

[Drake]

Nope. I've already moved my bowels today.

[invisible furry hand]

Xerox machines are either possessed or becoming sentient

http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blo.....n_scanning

[Lord Humungus]

MATT DAMON!

Matt Damon: Obama 'Broke Up With Me'
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-H.....Up-With-Me

"There are a lot of things that I really question ? the legality of the drone strikes, these NSA revelations. Jimmy Carter came out and said we don't live in a democracy. That's a little intense when an ex-president says that. So you know, he's got some explaining to do, particularly for a constitutional law professor."

When asked his opinion of the President's second term, Damon chuckled and said, "He broke up with me."

[Eduard van Haalen]

"I almost didn't vote for his re-election, that jerk!"

[John]

But I will still be voting for his designated successor in 2016. Just put some makeup over your black eye and shut up Matt. Obama has a lot of important things to do and doesn't have time to listen to your whining.

[invisible furry hand]

OK, 'fess up, what did you do to the baboons?

Traumatized baboon mystery at Dutch zoo

Zoologists are baffled by the strange behaviour of a troop of baboons at a Dutch zoo which have become inexplicably withdrawn, apparently fearful of an unseen threat.

more

[Almanian!]

"Well, he showed me his ass, I just went ape shit on him..."

[Almanian!]

or

STEVE SMITH VISIT BABOON EXHIBIT. STEVE SMITH COME BACK EVERY NIGHT - FOR EXHIBIT.

[Brett L]

Stop feeding them moldy bread and see what happens.

[bmp1701]

One baboon was spotted lying on its back in a darkened alcove, quiety whispering "The Warty. The Warty. The Warty."

[Eduard van Haalen]

Well, it might have something to do with them being *in a cage.* Just speculating, of course, but humans in cages tend to be depressed, too.

[The Late P Brooks]

Where's the sense of justice in just mowing down random people?

A prison guard, in uniform, ambushed in his own driveway; it may or may not have been work-related, but it surely was not random.

For the record, I'm willing to believe he deserved it.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Of course you are. you're the same kind of animal they are.

You do realize that makes you no better than the worst LEOs, right?

[sarcasmic]

Having no sympathy when bad things happen to people who use violence to enforce unjust and immoral laws is no different than using violence to enforce unjust and immoral laws. That makes sense. To Tony.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

you have no evidence the man was doing anything of the kind. For all you know, he could have been a guard in the murderers and rapists wing. Are those unjust now?

You had no idea what the facts were and then decided "ahh, fuck it. He was wearing the wrong clothing, so death to him." you can call stupidly call me "Tony" or wimper about strawmen all day. I really do not care, because I know exactly how wrong you were for saying what you said.

You're the same kind of barbarian they are. "And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."

Fuck you.

[sarcasmic]

you have no evidence the man was doing anything of the kind.

What are you talking about? It was his occupation.

For all you know, he could have been a guard in the murderers and rapists wing.

Even so, he still could have been a heavy-handed asshole who took every opportunity to inflict pain and humiliation simply because he had the power to do so. Considering his occupation and the kind of people who are attracted to that occupation, I'd put the odds at better than 50%.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

You're just compiling conjecture onto bullshit to justify yourself.

[sarcasmic]

I never said it wasn't conjecture. Sheesh. We're not in a court of law here. Are you a judge or something? No wonder you're so quick to defend those uniformed thugs.

[Fluffy]

Dude, that's completely untrue.

People who sign up to work for the state morally entangle themselves with the state.

If you sign up to enforce the law in Nazi Germany, I am entitled to assume that conflicts you enter into arise from your enforcement of those laws.

And if someone shoots you dead on the street, I am entitled to assume you had it coming. Or at least to make that my rebuttable default hypothesis.

Maybe you were just a good cop who only wanted to investigate burglaries and rapes in 1942 Berlin, and when you caught a bullet it was a terrible tragedy. But that's not what my first take on the situation will be when I hear about your death. And that won't reflect badly on me AT ALL.

Sorry to go all Godwin on you, but that reductio is often useful in these situations.

Obviously the US is not Nazi Germany. So the question becomes, "Are we far enough into the abyss yet that sarcasmic and P Brooks are right to assume the worst in such a story?" I don't think we are yet. But we're far enough down the road that I'm not going to freak out on either of them about it.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

That's a fancy way of saying, "murders are OK as long as I come up with a sufficient excuse."

But that's not what my first take on the situation will be when I hear about your death. And that won't reflect badly on me AT ALL.

Sure it does, particularly because you just admitted the cases of the United States and Nazi Germany aren't analogous.

[Fluffy]

Actually, I admitted they are identical in degree yet.

They ARE analogous. Situations that are like in kind but different in degree are analogous. That's the definition of analogous.

The difference in degree changes the likelihood of certainty.

If I see that a Gestapo chief is shot dead on a street in Paris in 1943, I can be 99% sure he had it coming. (The 1% doubt arises because maybe he was secretly an allied spy or something.)

If I see a prison guard shot dead on the street in Maricopa County, AZ, I cannot be 99% sure he had it coming. I am "some number X < 99%" sure he had it coming.

So to evaluate whether sarcasmic's reaction is reasonable, you have to know X and you also have to know sarcasmic's personal tolerance for having his initial reaction be wrong.

If X is, say, 20%, maybe that would be good enough for sarcasmic, but not for me.

The critical thing morally is if the reaction is rebuttable. If X is 10%, and I choose to cheer despite the low number, but am willing to change my mind if new information presents itself, then - yeah, I still see nothing wrong with that.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

So to evaluate whether sarcasmic's reaction is reasonable, you have to know X and you also have to know sarcasmic's personal tolerance for having his initial reaction be wrong.

no, actually, in order to evaluate whether his reaction was reasonable, HE has to demonstrate he performed these steps. You know what I saw? "Oh, guy in uniform died. Looks like justice." There wasn't any evidence of thought, which is par for the course when it comes to cops with a lot of people around here, presented whatsoever.

[Fluffy]

Actually, I admitted they are identical in degree yet.

This sentence got eaten. It should read "that they are different in degree but identical in kind."

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Except at some point, differences in degree turn into differences in kind.

[T]

After all, no prison jailer ever did anything to violate the human rights of a prisoner. Never happens. Because if it did, he'd be swiftly prosecuted.

So thinking that perhaps he did something to a prisoner that was in excess of his lawful authority and the prisoner later struck back is just beyond the pale.

After all, someone who's job is keeping other people locked in cages is probably such a decent human being otherwise.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

So he deserves to be gunned down in his driveway based on your conjecture? You sheer, unsupportable and unproven conjecture?

[T]

My conjecture has fuck-all to do with his getting shot or what he deserves.

If you take up a profession that involves violence against other people, it shouldn't come as a shock to anybody when you die violently.

It also shouldn't come as a shock to anybody (here) that the cops in this country routinely violate people's rights because they know they won't be prosecuted for it.

So, let's see, putting these two facts together, what do you get? You think he was one of those 'good' cops who never did nothin to nobody? I don't know what happened, but I'm a betting man. 20 bucks says his actions led to this outcome. Wanna take that bet?

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

"20 bucks says his actions led to this outcome."

This needs to be better defined. What do you mean by "his actions"?

[T]

I'll narrow it down: it's retaliation for his on-the-job performance. I'm excluding from this the possibility that he was involved in something shady under color of law, like using his position to smuggle drugs into the jail or something. I wouldn't count that as his job performance.

Whether or not the retaliation is justified is another can of worms.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Whether or not the retaliation is justified is the entire argument.

[Scooby]

The problem with that is that we will NEVER know. This guy could have been killed by one of his many torture victims (supposing they exist), and the only publicly available info will be that he was a HERO that went to church every Sunday and gave 20% of his meager pay to support the local orphanage.

[sarcasmic]

Hey! You don't have all the facts! God has not yet spoken! Must wait for God before speculating! And by God I mean Neoliberal Randian.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Oh look the coward is here to sling shit from the sidelines.

[Xenocles]

Nobody here disagrees that he might have deserved it. All we want is some sort of evidence of a specific act to warrant it. But if you had that you would be trumpeting it in every post, wouldn't you?

[sarcasmic]

All we want is some sort of evidence of a specific act to warrant it.

Seeking out an occupation that gives him the power to cheerfully inflict violence against people caged for violating unjust and immoral laws?

Is that specific enough for you?

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Nope. That's way too vague, first of all, and second of all, you define all of those terms as is convenient for you.

[Xenocles]

No, it's not. There are people who deserve to have their liberty or lives taken away from them and you know it. (Before you deny it, remember you have been cheering for this man's death all morning.) The fact that it happens to many who do not deserve it does not negate that. The fact that I would prefer that removal to be a function of government while you might be open to a freelance arrangement does not negate that fact. So why would I condemn a man who does a job that is necessary just for doing that job? Show me the abuse that inspired this act and I'll be content to at least look the other way about his killing.

[Almanian!]

Matt Damon. MATT DAMON!!

[Lord Humungus]

After watching Paradise Lost, I've been reading the book The Devil's Knot" for a more detailed background on the West Memphis Three case.

I'm only a hundred pages in, but eegads, how could anyone with a conscience do a prosecution on this sort of evidence?

I know it's old news, but as a freak/geek who grew up in a conservative/religious small town, I can't help be fascinated.

[John]

I was in a class with a guy who is a defense attorney in Arkansas and knows all of the lawyers in that case personally. His opinion, for what it is worth, was that the three kids were guilty as hell. That the confessions, while full of bullshit and lies, also contained facts that only killer could have known and were not fed to the kid.

That said, the prosecution was incompetent and under tremendous pressure to sole the case. And they had the right guys. But they basically engaged in every sort of misconduct imaginable to ensure they got a conviction figuring no one would care because the case was so horrific. They never banked on HBO making a documentary and the case getting so much attention.

His opinion, and it seemed to be very informed, was that the government framed the guilty.

[Not an Economist]

Wouldn't be the first time it happened and it won't be the last.

Hopefully, if the kids really did do it, turned their life around in prison.

[John]

Here is the other question I have about the West Memphis three. If it wasn't them, where are the other dead kids? It has been over 20 years now. If someone else did that, a pretty sick fucker is still walking around out there. But, to my knowledge there have been no other murders like that in that area. Maybe the guy was a serial killer who rolled in from out of town. That is possible. But those type of people eventually do get caught and then love to brag about all of their murders when they do. The longer it goes that some serial killer hasn't confessed to it, it seems the more likely those guys did it.

[Kaptious Kristen]

I have heard some speculation that it was the step father. Doesn't have to be a serial killer.

[John]

You don't rape and murder three small children out of passion or greed. You may murder them but you don't murder them that way. Anyone who does a crime that horrific did it for a thrill or out of some sick compulsion and would have done it again.

[Lord Humungus]

Byers, the step-father, did have some strange ties to the police as a drug informer. And admitted to hitting his kids... plus the brain tumor.

Just a bunch of craziness down there in Arkansas.

[Almanian!]

Also, I will not be attempting to post Mary Stack's picture today (SugarFreeing twice and then succeeeding on a third try).

YOU'RE WELCOME.

[The Late P Brooks]

Damon chuckled and said, "He broke up with me."

He then pulled out his phone and checked for messages.

[Fluffy]

"So to make myself feel better I PUA'd public schools and then dumped their ass."

[The Late P Brooks]

eegads, how could anyone with a conscience do a prosecution on this sort of evidence?

It's a question which answers itself.

[The Late P Brooks]

you're the same kind of animal they are.

At least I'm not sobbing hysterically.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Nice. did you learn your rhetoric in third grade? Look out, P Brooks is going to execute the Rubber and Glue Gambit! Oh noes!!

[Mike M.]

Remember Eric Whitaker, the Obama confidante and bagman who tried to bribe Jeremiah Wright into disappearing in '08 for $150,000? His former Chief of Staff is being investigated by the feds in a half million dollar kickback scheme. That's Chicago, I guess.

[CampingInYourPark]

Pembroke Pines Cop Punching Mentally Ill Girl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOK1vJayFf4

[John]

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/173854/

Interesting letter from a school teacher. Basically, compulsory public school is a giant waste of money. These kids don't want to go to school, and their parents just want free day care. They don't learn anything. Most of them are going to spend their lives as illiterates. And it is their choice to do so. So why are we spending billions to force them to go to school?

[Floridian]

So why are we spending billions to force them to go to school?

This is an area of libertarianism I struggle with. How are kids with ability who have scum for parents suppose to advance? I would prefer vouchers and competitions in school but have a hard time letting kids opt out of education. An 8 year old does not understand education is the key to a better life. I know that the smart kid in a dumb family is an anomaly but it seems a waste to let that potential go unfulfilled.

Disclaimer: I know confiscating wealth to fund schools is also taking potential away from the rightful owner.

[John]

They advance when they get older and decide for themselves to go to school. I am not saying eliminate schools. I am saying stop forcing kids who don't want to be there to go there. Forcing them doesn't seem to do any good.

[Floridian]

Will children who wait be behind? I know certain developmental stages have to be stimulated for neuron connections.

[John]

Children who go to school and have no desire to learn are behind. They won't be anymore behind by not being there.

[Floridian]

Probably. I guess I think kids can be influenced by peers and good teachers, but it is most likely a smaller influence than I would like to admit.

[VG Zaytsev]

Yep, this happened to a nephew of mine.

He squeaked out of high school only because the Memphis school system is completely fucked up and impossible to flunk out of is you show up semi-steadily.

Went into the military and got his life together. After a couple of tours he went to college and is an optometrist now.

One of the many flaws of the current approach to education is trying to force everyone to learn at the same pace with the same milestones - instead of letting them learn at their own and accepting that a lot of people are never going to be anything more than dumbasses.

[Floridian]

I guess that is the chance you take in a free society. I do worry about parents who are too lazy to take their kid to school even though the kid wants to go.

[Brett L]

Universal tax credit. If your child attends a school, you get a credit up to $X per kid per year (regardless of the tuition) where X is enough to put a kid in a school which meets the standards of some 3rd party system that can't take money from the government or the schools it rates. No income minimum or maximum. If taxes - X is negative, the gummint cuts you a check.

[Fluffy]

The notion that we need states to protect us against people trying to forcibly set up states that take advantage of us is a very silly one, no matter how much you try to make it look rational.

Um, what?

It's perfectly rational.

"I trust the state set up by me more than I trust the state set up by you."

I don't see anything irrational in that statement at all.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Kevin C. Walsh explains what the Cuccinelli sodomy case is and isn't about. But the Democrats will still try to scare the soccer moms by pretending that Cuccinelli wants to put adult couples in prison for private sex acts.

(notwithstanding the headline, the post is about more than just bestiality)

http://bit.ly/19fG6Zd

[Brett L]

This is why trying to have it both ways is dangerous. He tried to use terminology that would appeal to the base, and now wants to split hairs when the other party is beating him up about it. There are plenty of laws on the books prohibiting adult and minor sex of all types including sodomy. He's not ready to be governor of a state if he can be walked into this kind of trap willingly.

[Eduard van Haalen]

I wouldn't assume he's pandering to the base. His rhetoric was about protecting kids - a Democrat would have talked the same way. It's not as if concern about child abuse is the exclusive prerogative of troglodytish socons.

I bet the girls parents were pressing him to keep the creep in prison. Plus he's made no secret of his support for federalism, and the federal judges here really disrespected the considered opinions of the Va courts - they're only supposed to second-guess state courts if the latter *clearly* misapplied Supreme Court precedent, and I think the Va judges made a perfectly plausible interpretation of SC precedent.

Should Cucc have abandoned his federalist principles because Democrats would call him names? And if he hadn't challenged the federal judges' 2-1 decision, then who knows - maybe the Dems would have run ads that they allowed a child-molester to walk free, hypocritically violating his belief in federalism!

[John]

Cuccinelli is a fucking moron or a prosecutor so fanatical his desire for a larger sentence overwhelms his common sense. Since when is it hard to get a good sentence on a sex offender? Why is this legal trick even needed?

The Dems are running the worst candidate imaginable. And sure enough the Republicans found a clown who is going to fuck it up.

[Eduard van Haalen]

All I know is he took political risks by fighting Obamacare and EPA abuses - that's the main reason why the progs hate him. And if his position in this case were so awful, why do the progs find it necessary to misrepresent his position?

Yes, libertarians have good points about the abuse of the law just to go after a sex creep - but that's not how the case is bring presented to the soccer moms. He's accused of wanting to go into adults' bedrooms and put them in prison for consensual sex acts. They wouldn't get the same political mileage by saying "dirty old men have rights, too, even if they solicit underage girls!"

[John]

If I lived in Virginia, I would vote for him. This whole thing means nothing and anyone is better than McCulliffe. But it infuriates me that he was so short sighted he allowed himself to get into this mess. How fucking hard is it to realize coming out for criminalizing consensual sodomy is a really stupid political idea?

[Eduard van Haalen]

"How fucking hard is it to realize coming out for criminalizing consensual sodomy is a really stupid political idea?"

But he's not trying to use the law to punish consensual adult sodomy - he admits *Lawrence* gives adults that right. This is a creep who asked a 17 y/o girl to service him, then called the cops on the girl to call her a rapist. And the Va courts said the guy could be punished - and the federal courts are undertaking to second-guess the Va courts. Maybe C is a principled federalist who is willing to take the political risk of challenging a dubious federal-court decision?

[Eduard van Haalen]

PS - I'm not familiar with Va politics, but I suspect there are *much* worse Republicans out there.

[John]

I know what he is doing and it is completely idiotic. He doesn't need those laws. He is just a dick prosecutor who wants another charge to throw in. Well good for him. But he is a total retard for not realizing the political consequences of that little trick.

[Eduard van Haalen]

The political consequences is that Dems lie and say he wants to lock up Mr. and Mrs. Average for what they do in the bedroom - which is not correct. If they'd attacked his *actual* position, how many swing voters would they persuade? I mean, yes, it's prosecutorial abuse, but the soccer moms probably won't care about cutting corners in child-abuse cases.

Again, if he hadn't appealed, I wouldn't have put it past the dems to say "see - he's letting a child-abuser walk!"

[Brett L]

even if they solicit underage girls

Uh, no. That's the point. He doesn't NEED sodomy laws for solicitations of a sex act from a minor.

[Eduard van Haalen]

And he doesn't even have to argue that the Va courts were right - he only needs to say that the federal courts didn't have the power to second-guess the state courts - and he's established enough credibility as a supporter of federalism that this argument is consistent with the rest of his career.

[Acosmist]

Damn, that's my Fed Courts prof!

[CampingInYourPark]

WASHINGTON ? A goofy instructional video by the Department of Homeland Security that suggested people confronted by crazed gunmen should defend themselves with scissors was part of a $6.7 million consulting contract

http://www.dhs.gov/video/optio.....ning-video

[Brett L]

Honestly, if I don't have a gun or knife, I'll grab scissors. Any weapon to hand is better than my hands, and my hands are better than curling up and waiting to get shot.

[T]

I'm in favor of something that can be a club. Blunt force trauma to the head throws people off their game more than stab wounds.

[CampingInYourPark]

Obviously, the Feds should give you a couple million to make a cool video then.

[Doctor Whom]

There is nothing left to cut (arf).

[CampingInYourPark]

So while the letter acknowledges that recipients have a right to participate in policy debates, Durbin's intent is transparent: Renounce ALEC, and quit donating money, or I'll shame you but good.

The Journal notes that as Durbin well knows, companies that support ALEC's economic initiatives don't care about "stand-your-ground" laws: "His goal is to scare them with reputational damage by mentioning them in the same breath as Trayvon Martin."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/.....6739.story

[John]

http://www.nydailynews.com/new.....-1.1422003

They don't even try to hide the bribery anymore. Cuomo is the idiot son of a liberal lion. He is a loyal Democratic pol. So the major media will never hold him to account. His fellow Democrats will never say anything. So why not take bribes?

[The Late P Brooks]

Let's recap, shall we?

You wrote: Where's the sense of justice in just mowing down random people?

To which I replied, "A prison guard, in uniform, ambushed in his own driveway; it may or may not have been work-related, but it surely was not random."

Which you ignored in order to gallop around on your white charger accusing me of being a monster. Fine, whatever. I AM a monster. I thought everybody knew, already.

BUT- If you lived next door to a guy you knew to be an enforcer for the Opium Tong, and you came out of your house one morning to see him lying in his driveway in a pool of blood, do you seriously expect us to believe you'd say, "Oh my god, someone driving around randomly shooting people in their driveways JUST HAPPENED to pick that guy!"?

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

*peers*

Hm. That looks like the same logic LEOs use to harass black kids.

[Xenocles]

Few murders are random in the first place. Nearly all of them have a reason that makes sense to the murderer. In fact, if I saw a person gunned down in his driveway I would assume there was a motive for it. But that's a long way off from saying that it was an acceptable motive.

You don't just assume all murder victims had it coming because most of them did in the eyes of their murderer, do you?.

[Slammer]

For all Reasonoid metal fans: Bloodstock open air is being streamed

[Sevo]

OT. Greens as evangelists:
"Electric cars don't just have drivers. They have believers. [...]
A new study from Climate Central, a non-profit climate research group, argues that in most states, hybrid cars actually have lower lifetime greenhouse gas emissions than electrics."
http://blog.sfgate.com/energy/.....tric-cars/

[Night Elf Mohawk]

I don't give a rat's ass about greenhouse gas emissions. If I could get an electric car that was cheaper to own and drive -- as a second vehicle used for errands, etc. -- than a hybrid or a conventional IC, I'd do it.

[Zeb]

And little turbo diesels have even lower emissions. Hybrids are just stupid.

[The Late P Brooks]

That looks like the same logic LEOs use to harass black kids.

That's pathetic, even for you.

[John]

Collective guilt is collective guilt. Even in Libertopia we would still have prisons and cops wouldn't we? So it is not like being a prison guard or a cop automatically makes you evil. It is that a lot of the people currently doing it are evil. But not all of them are. And just randomly shooting them for being such is pretty fucking stupid and engaging in just the sort of collective guilt that you guys hate liberals for doing.

You are not covering yourself in glory here Brooks.

[Fluffy]

So it is not like being a prison guard or a cop automatically makes you evil.

We assign collective guilt to the armed servants of states all the time, dude.

If a bomb blew up a cop in Saddam Hussein's Iraq during the invasion, did you waste any time saying, "Aw, man - it's not like being a cop automatically made that guy evil"?

No, you didn't.

If the corps is evil and you put on the uniform, people are going to applaud when you catch a bullet.

Like I said above, I don't think we're there yet, but there's nothing really wrong with the principle.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Just so I can get the principle clear, how are you not part of the problem if you, for example, vote? Am I part of the problem because I am indirectly enabling the state through my argumentation? How about the secretary at the Fargo office of the Department of the Interior? Is she fair game?

I just want to know how far this collective guilt stuff goes.

[sarcasmic]

Because voting or pushing papers is the same thing as walking around with a club. Yep. Exactly the same thing.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

How far does this collective guilt thing go?

Answer the question or shut your crying mouth.

[sarcasmic]

You're the one who is crying.

Waaaah! sarc used conjecture! Objection! Waaaah! He made an assumption! That's not fair! Waaaah! He has no proof! He won't recant! Waaah! Wa-wa-wa-waaaaah!

[John]

So Eichman, who did nothing but shuffle papers, was somehow less accountable than the guys running the ovens?

[Fluffy]

How about the secretary at the Fargo office of the Department of the Interior? Is she fair game?

Anyone who is employed by the state is fair game, sure.

When we bombed Saddam Hussein's defense ministry buildings, I'm sure we got some secretaries and janitors.

Do you see how I've backed you into a position of total pacifism?

If that's your position, hey, awesome.

But if you ever posit the possibility of a just war against a state, EVER - for ANY state, EVER - then it has to be possible for it to be just to blow away the secretary at the office of whatever.

[John]

Yes if your plan is to make war on the government, shooting guys in uniform is perfectly fine. But hiding out of uniform to do it, makes you a terrorist fuck.

[Fluffy]

Great, so we AGREE that assigning collective moral guilt to armed and uniformed agents of the state is perfectly fine.

Hey, as long as we're on the same page.

[John]

Great, so we AGREE that assigning collective moral guilt to armed and uniformed agents of the state is perfectly fine.

In war? Sure if you call shooting people assigning guilt. But that is not what you or anyone else on this thread is talking about. You are talking about some coward stalking and murdering some random person.

We are not on the same page. But you are not really on a page. You are just talking shit.

[sarcasmic]

In Libertopia cops and prison guards would be held accountable for their actions.
In Libertopia the law wouldn't give cops the power to arbitrarily search people and steal their property.
In Libertopia jailers wouldn't be locking up people unless there was a victim.

In Libertopia the job of being a cop or jailer would not attract evil people because it would not be license to be evil.

[John]

That is all fine. But that still doesn't excuse engaging in collective guilt now.

[Fluffy]

In your other 11:23 message you conceded that assigning collective moral guilt is a-ok.

[John]

No I didn't. You are confusing war with murder. Just because you kill people in uniform in war doesn't mean it is okay for me to go out and just kill random people while I hide as a civilian.

Terrorism is not war.

[The Late P Brooks]

You don't just assume all murder victims had it coming because most of them did in the eyes of their murderer, do you?.

No, I don't. And I completely agree with the proposition that the overwhelming majority of murder victims are killed by someone known to them. That was what started this; a certain somebody tried to claim that this particular murder was RANDOM, in order to justify his tearful outrage.

[sarcasmic]

in order to justify his tearful outrage.

Randian really is worked up over this.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

You said the murder of an LEO looked like justice with zero evidence. Like I said, you're no better than they are. Just switch out the terms "upstanding citizen" and "skell" and you're all set.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Except you still have no proof it was anything but random. What you have is conjecture that it MUST have something to do with his job. You have no idea whether that's true or not.

[Emmerson Biggins]

If you don't think this was random, you are worse than hitler.

[The Late P Brooks]

iYou are not covering yourself in glory here Brooks.

And Dipshit turned, "a guy you knew to be an enforcer for the Opium Tong" into "Chinaman".

So, pathetic.

[The Late P Brooks]

And just randomly shooting them for being such is pretty fucking stupid and engaging in just the sort of collective guilt that you guys hate liberals for doing.

What the fuck is it with you guys so insistently pretending this was RANDOM?

IT WAS NOT RANDOM. It may or may not have been WORK-RELATED, but it's ridiculous to pretend shooting a uniformed prison guard, at his place of residence, could have been anything but intentional targeting. As you said, way up there, maybe it was the guy his wife was banging.

Jesus, I thought I was a lazy reader.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

You are a lazy thinker, though, so give yourself some credit.

[sarcasmic]

You don't understand. You're not allowed to speculate or conjecture. Randian makes the rules, and it's not allowed. You must have hard facts before doing anything. Hard. Facts. I repeat, speculation is not allowed. Not allowed not allowed not allowed.

Not allowed.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

You're allowed to do what you want. And I am allowed to call you a massive pussy, because that's what you are.

[sarcasmic]

OK, God. Whatever you say.

[John]

What the fuck is it with you guys so insistently pretending this was RANDOM?

Why are you pretending it was some crazed citizen vigilante? And no one has said it was random. They have just made the obvious point that the murderer was probably motivated by something that nothing to do with this guy being a prison guard.

[The Late P Brooks]

You've got me there, Hobbes.

[The Late P Brooks]

Except you still have no proof it was anything but random.

Fucking pattern recognition- how does it work?

You're one of those people who keeps putting the pencil back in the sme place, even after it has rolled off the desk ten times, right?

[John]

What pattern? There isn't any pattern here. One guy is not a pattern.

[sarcasmic]

Fucking pattern recognition- how does it work?

Literalists have problems with abstract reasoning.

[Render Unto Caesar]

Let's say this guy was your typical asshole prison guard.

What sort of actions to you believe warrant his summary execution?

I'm actually asking, not inferring that there are none.

[sarcasmic]

I never said his execution was warranted. Just that when there is no justice through the system, sometimes citizens take justice into their own hands. Call it "citizen justice" if you will, like I did in my original post on the story. If you want to know why he was killed, you'll have to ask his killer.

[Render Unto Caesar]

So I'm asking under what circumstances is ok to get "citizen justice" when conventional and broken modes of justice have failed.

Surely you have a criteria or threshhold for calling it justified.

[sarcasmic]

When did I say it was OK?

[Render Unto Caesar]

Holy shit, you implied it.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

What's the pattern? One data point does not a pattern make.

On one side, you want to argue that his job means it probably wasn't random. On the other side, you want to argue that it could have been his wife's jealous lover, which has fuck-all to do with his job. On the third hand, you want to say this is obviously a pattern (again, of what?) even though you have no evidence thereof.

you're all over the map here. Over one word, "random", that really has nothing to do with the essentials of what we're arguing about. I can only assume this massive red herring is here because you cannot justify your original assertion that, "I'm willing to believe he deserved it."

[Enough About Palin]

Two young women from London who were volunteering as teachers in Zanzibar had acid thrown in their faces.

Religion of peace.

[Joe M]

Somewhat good news on that: Five men held over acid attack on Katie Gee and Kirstie Trup in Zanzibar as parents release pictures of injuries

The girls managed to get first aid very fast and were taken to hospital. The doctors said the injuries are relatively minor. There is discolouration but they are not expected to be scarred.

[Enough About Palin]

Hernandez-Llach ? a graffiti artist known as "Reefa" ran, leading officers on a foot chase through Miami Beach.

Chief Ray Martinez said the teen ignored orders to stop.

"The officers were forced to use the Taser to avoid a physical incident," he said.

Hernandez-Llach was shot once in the chest, and collapsed.

So if the kid was being chased, how the fuck were the cops able to taze him in the chest? His back or his ass I can understand. I guess he must have been fleeing backwards.

[Floridian]

I think they cornered him from the earlier article I read

[sarcasmic]

Pictured: The moment officer punched disturbed 14-year-old in the face at Florida mental hospital 'where patients are tied to cots and pumped with sedative dubbed 'booty juice'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....juice.html

How many cops does it take to subdue an unarmed 14yr old girl? Three! Three cops to subdue an unarmed 14yr old girl!

And how many times do they need to punch her in the face? As many times as they feel is necessary!

And how much mace do they need to put in her face? As much as they feel is necessary!

And how many of their dicks would Neoliberal Kochtopus suck? All of them!

[John]

Have you lost your fucking mind? When the parents of that girl shoot one of those cops, come talk to me about how they deserved it. I will probably agree with you. But stop telling me that some poor bastard neither of us know anything about automatically deserved to be murdered.

[sarcasmic]

I never said he deserved to be murdered. I said that it looked like citizen justice to me. When someone who spends his days pushing people around gets murdered, for some odd reason the first thing I assume is that maybe he pushed the wrong person around.

[John]

I never said he deserved to be murdered. I said that it looked like citizen justice to me.

If it is justice, doesn't that mean he deserved it? If not, what does justice mean?

[sarcasmic]

In the case of citizen justice, where a citizen is taking justice into their own hands, then obviously the citizen thinks it is deserved. You'll have to ask the citizen.

[John]

So anytime a "citizen" kills someone it is "justice"? That doesn't make any sense. You meant to imply that he deserved it. And that is nuts. And now you won't back off from it.

[sarcasmic]

I mean to imply that he may have deserved it. And no, I won't back down. Anytime someone who can commit violence without consequence gets capped, my first assumption is that they pushed the wrong person around. I'm not saying that I'm right. Just that with the only facts available being the person's occupation and the manner of their death, that's my first assumption.

[Acosmist]

Holy shit this thread is not something you're going to want in the public record.

Hey guys, we can safely ignore sarcasmic aka PB aka Tony from now on. Citation: this.

[The Late P Brooks]

I can only assume this massive red herring is here because you cannot justify your original assertion that, "I'm willing to believe he deserved it."

So tedious.

A) You brought the assertion of "randomness" into this, because as far as I can tell, you desperately do not want to accept the proposition that somebody could conceivably have targeted this person in retribution for actions directly related to his work as a prison guard.

B) I stand by my statement. I am "willing to believe" he deserved it. This is the same as saying "it would not be a huge surprise to learn this was a justifiable retribution for actions directly related to his work as a prison guard." Retribution unavailable via any legal recourse, due to the institutionalized immunity from consequences for malfeasance.

C) You bore me. Stick with one name, so I can ignore you.

[sarcasmic]

C) You bore me. Stick with one name, so I can ignore you.

I can't tell if it's Tulpa, Randian, or someone else.

[John]

I am "willing to believe" he deserved it.

Why? You know nothing about the person other than he was a prison guard. So you are willing to believe anyone who is a prison guard deserves to be murdered. And you are not engaging in collectivist guilt?

[sarcasmic]

So you are willing to believe anyone who is a prison guard deserves to be murdered.

Uh, no. I think what he's saying is that if a prison guard is murdered, that perhaps it may have been job related. Whether or not it was deserved is a different matter entirely.

[Render Unto Caesar]

Do they deserve to die simply for justice's sake or is this some sort of means of reform?

[sarcasmic]

Why do you keep asking me to defend an argument that I never made?

[Render Unto Caesar]

You said he may have deserved it. I'm just globalizing your argument. You're saying that under some circumstances it's justified to kill when conventional means of justice aren't available, right?

I'm asking why.

[Render Unto Caesar]

The reasons I gave are my best guesses as to your reasoning. I'm not trying to lock you in to two choices.

Give me any reason.

[sarcasmic]

Bastiat defines justice as an absence of injustice. Like dark is an absence of light or silence is an absence of sound.

When there is injustice, and those who are duty bound to correct injustice are the cause of that very same injustice, what do you suggest should be done?

If the system won't do anything, nor will the system change for the better, what is a victim to do?

Also notice in my original comment that the reaction to this was to give every cop a rifle to go with their adrenaline and fear. Which is what I've said all along on the subject of citizens fighting back against their oppressors. The result will not be that the oppressors stop oppressing. No, they'll escalate, double-down, and take yet another step towards a totalitarian police state that would make Stalin proud.

[Render Unto Caesar]

I said this in my post below, but I don't think advocating for street justice, especially in the sweeping philosophical sense you seem to be doing, is reconcilable with the non-aggression principle.

[sarcasmic]

Shit, man. When did I advocate for street justice?

I can recognize that Joss Stone is talented and hot, but I wouldn't advocate that you listen to her music because in my opinion it sucks.

I can recognize that someone might feel the need to engage in street justice, heck I can even empathize, and I might even smile when I hear the news, but that's a far cry from advocating the practice.

[The Late P Brooks]

Let's say I am "willing to believe" as opposed to some other person who is "unwilling to believe".

I'm pretty sure I never said, "We should kill every single prison guard in America."

[The Late P Brooks]

So I'm asking under what circumstances is ok to get "citizen justice" when conventional and broken modes of justice have failed.

This is an excellent question. I have no answe3r.

What makes an injustice intolerable?

The story about women subjected to cavity searches on the side of the road in Texas was actually in the New York Daily News a few days ago. Suppose your wife, or daughter, or mother had been sodomized in public by a uniformed Texas Highway Patrol officer; what would you do, particularly after the "justice system" had effectively laughed in your face?

If you went to that female officer's house and assassinated her as she was getting into her car, that might be horrible, but it wouldn't be entirely undeserved. Or surprising.

What are prison inmates subjected to on a daily basis, by the guards?

[Eduard van Haalen]

"Former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich has teamed up with the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law to open a clinic this semester on clemency matters for people with criminal convictions, and the initiative will include a workshop for newly elected governors and their staff.

"The CUA Law/Ehrlich Partnership on Clemency will be part of the law school's Innocence Project Clinic. Students will receive clinical experience by preparing pardon applications....

"Other law schools have established similar programs in recent years....However, Ehrlich and Catholic University law school officials say the workshop for interested governors and their staff will be a unique component. The clinic also will take up advocacy for reforms."

http://wapo.st/1cqCLad

(h/t Prof. Ruckman's pardon blog)

[Render Unto Caesar]

Thanks for actually answering.

I have no answer either. It's easy to identify with people who go straight vigilante in the face of extreme injustice. But advocating for street justice in general seems to be a far cry from the adherence to and respect for the non-aggression principle.

[sarcasmic]

If this "street justice" is a response to aggression, how exactly does it violate the NAP?

Non-aggression isn't pacifism.

[Render Unto Caesar]

I'm not saying it is pacifism, but there's a pretty high bar responding to aggression with deadly force.

That's why I asked earlier for examples of what you think justifies killing in the face of injustice.

[sarcasmic]

When did I say the killing was justified? Fuck. Give it a rest. You're not going to get me to defend an argument I never made.

[Render Unto Caesar]

Semantics.

[sarcasmic]

And in case you weren't paying attention, I keep repeating that the result of "street justice" against LEOs is better armed cops with itchy trigger fingers, not a review of what might have caused the citizen blow-back.

Why would I advocate for a practice that will only result in even more abuse of citizens at the hands of those sworn to serve and protect?

[Render Unto Caesar]

I don't understand that first sentence at all.

Can you be more specific?

[sarcasmic]

You know what? No. I'm done playing your little game. I'm thinking you're dense or dishonest. Maybe both. Whatevs.

[Render Unto Caesar]

My little game? Your first sentence made no sense. It wasn't grammatically correct.

You think a good way to end a debate is to decry the lack of intelligence of your opponent and challenge the good faith of their arguments?

I heard Huff Post is hiring. You'd be a shoe-in.

[sarcasmic]

I question your good faith because of the title of the story that started this whole thing.

Go back and read it. It will answer your question.

I'll even give you a link.

[Render Unto Caesar]

Appealing to emotion? Weak.

Don't see how that means I'm not dealing with you in good faith.

[sarcasmic]

Your insistence that I defend an argument that I never made didn't help either.

[Render Unto Caesar]

Whatever, man. I'll say this and be done. I freaking despise cops. I always have. I think they are power hungry sadists.

I also was in the Marines in the very recent past. I mention that because I want to you know that I'm more familiar with cultures of violence than you'll ever be. Violence is elevated to a position virtue in the Marine Corps, because, in the end, doing your job involves violence. I had a very significant change of heart about my positions towards what justify deadly force after that experience.

That's in large part the reason I'm very wary of people who sound like they are glorifying violence as a solution to problems of injustice, which I believe you were doing on this thread. You can say you weren't, or play around with semantics some more, but that's what it sounded like to me.

[Render Unto Caesar]

Feel free to continue challenging my good faith, by the way, dick.

[sarcasmic]

Feel free to continue challenging my good faith, by the way, dick.

That's civilized. Then again, what should I expect from someone who can't eat pickles because he can't fit his head into the jar.

[sarcasmic]

That's in large part the reason I'm very wary of people who sound like they are glorifying violence as a solution to problems of injustice, which I believe you were doing on this thread. You can say you weren't, or play around with semantics some more, but that's what it sounded like to me.

I smile a big smile whenever bad things happen to cops, be it them shooting themselves in the foot or someone shooting them in the head, because I figure they did someone along the way to earn it. Do I know for sure? No. But I smile anyway.

That doesn't mean I want everyone to go out and shoot a cop.

If that distinction is too much for you, then that's your problem not mine.

[Render Unto Caesar]

That's ok. I can make "distinctions" too. Just know after witnessing your ravings that I'm chalking you're distinctions up to colossal naivety and immaturity.

[Render Unto Caesar]

your*

[sarcasmic]

And if you can't understand the point of a sentence because the grammar isn't perfect, then that's your problem, not mine.

[The Late P Brooks]

But advocating for street justice in general seems to be a far cry from the adherence to and respect for the non-aggression principle.

Rampant "street justice" is what they have in places like New Orleans and Chicago, apparently; any slight or infringement may be met with lethal retaliation.

Immunizing law enforcement officers from legal consequences of misconduct, no matter how egregious, is a nearly certain way to put ourselves on that path. I personally believe those so-called good cops should be the ones most vigilant in encouraging their colleagues to adhere to a high level of professionalism and respect for the people who actually pay their salaries, but that does not seem to be the case.

[sarcasmic]

Those so-called good cops tend to quit in disgust or are drummed off the force.

[The Late P Brooks]

Those so-called good cops tend to quit in disgust or are drummed off the force.

Well, yeah. That's the problem.

[Render Unto Caesar]

Yeah, like the guy in AL who challenged "contact quotas" and got a pink slip.

[sarcasmic]

Or Dorner.

[paranoid android]

In a development that I'm sure will be just shocking to all those assured that the President and his men were being completely transparent and on the level about NSA surveillance, it turns out that yes, the government can search for communications data for any US citizen they want, no warrants required:

NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens' emails and phone calls