Thursday Open Thread

Thursday is the new Thursday. And the old.

Comments

[Kazinski]

I'm thinking of wintering in Portugal this year probably somewhere around Porto, anyone spend much time there or has an information about getting a 6 month residency visa?

[Cal Cetín]

I prefer Gstaad, myself.

[Kazinski]

Did I mention is was for over the winter? If I wanted to winter in a cold snowy mountain area, I'm in the Sierra Nevada's now living at about 5000', if I want snow, I can stay put.

Last winter was Tucson which was great, the winter before was Cambodia, and Thailand, which is good, but who wants a 14 day quarantine when you've already been vaccinated?

[santamonica811]

I get your point about the 2 weeks in quarantine. But while that would be a deal-killer for a short vacation...for a 6-month stay, it does not seem unreasonable.

Since you have done Cambodia and Thailand, why not Viet Nam next? Tons to see. Great tourist infrastructure. Amazing food, friendly people. Inexpensive. Probably my favorite country, factoring in everything. (Laos is also amazing, but not sure if you'd be happy being only there for 6 months.) Not sure what travel is like right now for Malaysia, but I'd put it right up there with VN, and the dirt-cheap Air Asia flights would also let you explore Borneo.

[Kazinski]

Yes, I've spent a lot of time in Vietnam too, Nha Trang and Hoi An are favorites, and would be near the top of my list. Lao is great too, I went to Luang Prabang year before last for a couple of weeks and then took the bus to the Plain of Jars at Phonsaven, which I'd wanted to do for decades, and then on to Hanoi for New Years and Ha Long bay afterwards. And it's all dirt cheap.

So that would be on my radar, except my wife is Cambodian, and there is a little ethnic predjudice rearing it's head there. Cambodians resent that most of South Vietnam used to be Khmer, and even though Thailand has probably taken more Khmer territory and fought more wars against Cambodia, they have the same Buddhist sect, same alphabet, and more cultural affinity towards the Thai's. And Lao while being politically almost a vietnamese client state is ethnically almost identical (excepting the minorities like the Hmong) with the Thai's, language, alphabet and religion.

But going to Cambodia now is out of the question, they are handling the covid like an insane asylum. If they have one family get the covid they will lock down entire neighborhoods or hotels with no warning for weeks, with insufficient food, and they are requiring a few thousand as a deposit in case you get the covid for expenses, whether you've been vaccinated or not.

[Lee Moore]

Can't help you with Porto, but I spent about a month in the Algarve a couple of years ago. January IIRC, and it was all very pleasant, and the weather was perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. Lots of good food.
If you are a golfer (I am not) there's plenty of golf courses.

But Porto, I guess, will be a bit colder.

[Kazinski]

I confused Porto with Portimao, Portimao is what I'm thinking of.

I'm not a golfer, but I like good food.

[ThePublius]

Good morning. Nice to see the Open Thread up at 12:01 a.m. Must be automated now?

[Krayt]

So are most of the morning releases. They dump out at desired times and not just immediately on submission.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said the FTC failed to show that Facebook had monopoly power. — Reuters

Two days gone since that, and not a word on the VC. What about it?

I'll start with the observation that Boasberg—in deciding whether Facebook is a monopoly—seems to have mistaken Facebook contributors and commenters for its customers.

Note also that folks who look to antitrust as a means to rein in social media giants have a very long row to hoe. Please explain why repeal of Section 230 in congress would not accomplish all the reining necessary, with far less legal complication.

[Brett Bellmore]

As a MeWe user, I'll agree that Facebook does not, technically, have a monopoly. Their market position is very, very dominant, but they aren't the whole market. OTOH, they do have enough of a market position that they can get away with pissing off their own customers on a regular basis, they have 'market power'. Which is, I suspect, enough that you could apply anti-trust law to them.

I think you *might* also be able to make a case that they're in violation of Section 230, (d). They don't so much notify customers of parental control applications, as they actively work to subvert customer control over content. (Ask FB Purity, one such application, about their perpetual war with FB; Every time they get their application working again, FB changes something to break it.)

But I agree. I don't think all of Section 230 needs repeal, but (c)(2), or maybe just (c)(2)(A) could profitably be repealed. The platforms have proven that they have no good faith to exercise, it's futile to expect it of them. They should be limited to cooperating with their customers' third party filtering software, and complying with court takedown orders.

[Sarcastr0]

Which is, I suspect, enough that you could apply anti-trust law to them

Market dominance is not the test for anti-trust; it's anticompetitive behavior. As I was reminded by some of the better informed folks on this very blog.

I think perhaps Facebook is an example for why that shouldn't be the only test, but that's the state of the law as I understand it.

[Brett Bellmore]

Google autocompletes "facebook a"ticompetative behavior. That's not for no reason, facebook IS a monopoly under that test, too, reasonably applied.

Though I'll grant that Twitter is much more egregious on that front.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think you and I can assert that as a fact. Maybe in ought-land, but not in is-ville.

Google is actually the one I think of most on that front, buying up early startups.

[Brett Bellmore]

When I speak of Twitter being more egregious on that front, I'm talking about the way competitors would face coordinated de-platforming actions.

There's an ecology of cooperating platforms and IT companies, which while they are nominally not one entity, cooperate in beating down competition to each other. That was blatantly on display with what happened to Gab.

But, yes, Facebook did a lot of the buying up potential challengers, too.

[Queen Amalthea]

Gab is still up, it's right here:

https://gab.com/

No one is stopping you or anyone else from using Gab and ignoring Twitter (or whoever), are they?

[Brett Bellmore]

And if somebody beats you only half to death, it's just fine, since you lived?

They successfully took Gab down during a key period, the deplatforming of Trump, when Gab had a real shot at rivaling Twitter. And it took enormous resources Gab could have devoted to growing their business, just to survive what was done to them.

[Queen Amalthea]

How did they 'take down Gab?' By refusing to do business with them?

[Queen Amalthea]

I mean, when you're connected with something most people consider awful then a lot of people are going to stop doing business with you. It's not anti-competitive in the sense that they want you out of business because you're competing with them.

[Brett Bellmore]

Twitter never was doing business with Gab.

What they did was to pull off a coordinated attack. The first stage was that Gab's IT security provider canceled their coverage.

Then a hacking group was given notice of this, and successfully downloaded personal information on all of Gab's users.

Then once this was complete, Amazon cut off their hosting.

Then their bank was persuaded to drop them.

Then when they began litigation to defend against this, their law firm dropped them in the middle of the case.

All very well coordinated, and done in an order that caused the maximum damage. For instance, if their security firm had dropped them after Amazon stopped hosting them, there wouldn't have been a window during which their data could have been downloaded. If their law firm had dropped them before the litigation began, they'd have had an opportunity to replace them.

[Queen Amalthea]

This seems like your usual conspiracy reasoning, a much more straightforward explanation is that around the time their brand became controversial in the light several companies decided to drop business with them.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, it's all perfectly innocent for these things to all happen in the space of a day or two, for your security provider to drop you without any notice to you, but somehow a hacker group finds out, for your hosting service to drop you, but only after the hackers have downloaded your private data.

Like they say, once is happenstance, twice coincidence, but three times is enemy action.

[Sarcastr0]

It is, Brett, if they all come from the same recent stimulus.

PR in our social media world is full of snap decisions based on not-a-day-old hot takes.

[Queen Amalthea]

"it’s all perfectly innocent for these things to all happen in the space of a day or two"

Yes, it is! This is the problem with your conspiracy thinking. It's a perfectly natural and reasonable explanation that within a few days of their brand being tainted in the spotlight (again!) that several different companies would drop them and drop them at different times. The conspiracy theorist *of course* then struggles to find patterns in this (a la Beautiful Mind), but reality is usually much more simple than the grand conspiracy you're concocting (where several large players, with many decision makers, for some reason turn their attention away from their usual obsession-making money-to craft a plan to derail a minor business associate-note, the latter is an entity you, as a political partisan and frequent conspiracy theorist, are supercharged to want to defend and therefore motivated to cast about to find a narrative to do so).

[NToJ]

"They successfully took Gab down during a key period..."

Who is "They"? And if it was successful, why is Gab still up?

[VinniUSMC]

Never fear, Pedantic Man is here!

during a key period

I don't know how you missed this modifier, given that you even quoted it.

"They" took down Gab during a key period. If it was down during some period as specified, then the statement is not falsified by it being back up at some later time.

[Brett Bellmore]

Because, as I said, they spent a huge amount of money they COULD have spent increasing their market share, just getting back into operation.

And by the time they'd done so, the opportunity to get a flood of new users when Trump was banned had passed.

[NToJ]

@Brett,

So who is "They"?

[Brett Bellmore]

"There’s an ecology of cooperating platforms and IT companies, which while they are nominally not one entity, cooperate in beating down competition to each other. That was blatantly on display with what happened to Gab."

[David Nieporent]

Setting everything else aside, I'm pretty sure you're confusing Gab and Parler.

[Sarcastr0]

competitors would face coordinated de-platforming actions

Would is not enough to establish a case.

If you can establish cartel behavior, that helps a lot but I don't think you can, because I don't think the cooperation you think is happening actually is.

I don't know much about the timeline wherein buying up competitors matters in antitrust and when it's water under the bridge.

[Brett Bellmore]

If you can look at what happened to Gab, and not see coordination, then nothing short of a public confession by the principals involved would persuade you. You just don't want to believe it.

[Sarcastr0]

I have, because you mention it a lot. And I don't see coordination.

Multiple parties reacting by rejecting the app full of Nazis when it came to light it was full of Nazis doesn't strike me as a plot.

[NToJ]

Maybe by "look at what happened to Gab, and not see coordination" Brett meant the coordination of all the nazis who started using Gab?

[Brett Bellmore]

NToJ, I honestly don't care if NAZIs start using a platform. Not that that's an impressive accusation, when everyone to the right of AOC is liable to be accused of being a NAZI by somebody who wants to punch them.

What I do care is that there be platforms around that don't censor their users. It's inevitable that such platforms will be used by people somebody thinks ought to be censored.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett, no new theses. You were not arguing about the merits of the action, you were arguing coordination.

Stick to your own goalposts.

[NToJ]

@Brett,

I was joking. I don't care if Nazis use the platform either. But if a bunch of sensitive losers (Nazis) coordinate to post on a certain platform, it's hardly surprising that a bunch of sensitive losers respond by not doing business with that platform. Do you market whatever you sell to fucking Nazis? No, of course not.

There were platforms before Gab that don't delete user generated content (except for child porn). There are other platforms, besides Gab, that existed the entire time Gab was up, that similarly don't delete user generated content. If you don't know about them, I can get you a list.

[David Nieporent]

What I do care is that there be platforms around that don’t censor their users. It’s inevitable that such platforms will be used by people somebody thinks ought to be censored.

There will never be platforms around that don't 'censor' their users. It's not a workable business model.

Any site that holds itself out as Nazi-friendly is going to be overrun with Nazis, because (a) most sites don't hold themselves out as Nazi-friendly; and (b) most people don't want to be hanging out with Nazis. It's a social media version of Gresham's law.

All you have to do is look at Trump's new grift/social media site: its TOS have the same we-reserve-the-right-to-moderate-content-at-will that the existing social media companies do.

[bernard11]

And the motivation for all this is?

I'm looking for something other than your standard paranoid delusions, understand.

[Kazinski]

Well wouldn't Facebook buying upstart competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp, and Google buying YouTube be textbook examples of anti-competitive behavior? Those are just the most prominent examples, and forced divestiture would probably be great for the stockholders too.

Buying up competitors certainly was a consideration when Standard Oil was dismembered.

Then there was old Ma Bell ATT, they were just too damn big, but it probably didn't need to be done because cell technology and the internet would have done what the government did anyway.

[NToJ]

"Which is, I suspect, enough that you could apply anti-trust law to them."

Yes the old "Has this seller sufficiently pissed off its customers" test. I must have missed that in my antitrust classes but it sounds logical enough.

Wouldn't it be fun to try and adjudicate that test? Will plaintiffs bring in a bunch of customers to testify? How many? One million? Ten million? Will we measure the degree of pissed offedness based on their affidavits? Should we have them self report their pissed offedness on a scale of 1-10?

The fact that they are still customers isn't evidence that they are not in fact sufficiently pissed off. It's just more evidence of the antitrust violation!

[Brett Bellmore]

The functional definition of a monopoly is, a seller who doesn't have to please his customers to retain market share. That's WHY we care about monopolies, after all; If monopolies tended to be obsessive about providing excellent service to all comers at the best possible price, who'd find them objectionable?

When you see a business that persistently does things that piss off their customer base, and they don't lose market share, there's something pathological going on, and that something pathological is exactly what anti-trust legislation was intended to deal with.

[Sarcastr0]

As everyone has been telling you, that's not how the law works. Blame Reagan.

And stop mixing up is and ought.

[NToJ]

"When you see a business that persistently does things that piss off their customer base, and they don’t lose market share..."

If you can calculate what a business's "market share" is, that's the sort of thing you would use to prove an antitrust violation. No court, no legal system, would rely on something as squishy as how much they "please his customers" or "piss off" their customers. Start with market share. As of yet, no one has successfully argued that, for example, FB has sufficient market share to exercise monopoly power.

[bernard11]

The functional definition of a monopoly is, a seller who doesn’t have to please his customers to retain market share.

No. It's not.

[bernard11]

Facebook does not, technically, have a monopoly. Their market position is very, very dominant, but they aren’t the whole market.

Wait a minute. What is Facebook selling? Isn't it, more or less, targeted online ads?

How do they have a monopoly on that? I get ads right here on VC, and they sure seem to reflect things I've looked at.

[Kazinski]

They are selling their users data is what they are selling.

You are the product they are selling.

[bernard11]

I understand that, though, just as a nitpick, they are not selling my data in particular because I don't use FB.

So, my question is, are there other places where advertisers can buy user data?

[shawn_dude]

Much of Facebook's power comes from the high barriers to exist they impose on their customers. Basically, if everyone you know is on Facebook, getting them to abandon Facebook for some other, less established service is difficult.

When I deleted my Facebook account (and Instagram and WhatsApp), I had to resign myself to cutting of access to a lot of people who either didn't feel as I do or couldn't themselves resolve to also cut off access to a lot of other people.

[jb]

"Note also that folks who look to antitrust as a means to rein in social media giants have a very long row to hoe. Please explain why repeal of Section 230 in congress would not accomplish all the reining necessary, with far less legal complication."

Because repealing Section 230 doesn't solve the problem that you want it to and has a huge amount of collateral damage to every site with user content on the Internet (e.g., this comment section would not exist without Section 230).

[NToJ]

It's tradition. The Supreme Court mistakenly interpreted people who watch college football games on television as the NCAA's members' customers too, in NCAA v. Univ. of Oklahoma.

[brownactjack]

how come no one ever seems to think that the release of covid 19 was deliberate , as they all seem to want to think it escaped from the lab by accident?

[Brett Bellmore]

Because if they'd deliberately released it, they'd have released it somewhere else? Nobody nukes their heartland so that other countries will have to deal with the fallout.

Now, once it got out, making sure it spread to the rest of the world was pretty obviously deliberate.

[dwb68]

"Now, once it got out, making sure it spread to the rest of the world was pretty obviously deliberate."

Never underestimate the need for corrupt bureaucrats to try to save their own skin.

Once it was out, trying to keep in contained say by ceasing flights, would have been admitting "Houston we have a problem." American three letter agencies barely admit that, only after multiple FOIA lawsuits. Many American city police departments admit that only after DOJ pressure. Communist bureaucrats definitely don't do that.

[Brett Bellmore]

They embargoed Wuhan internally, while letting international travelers leave without quarantine or notice of any problem. I think that really was deliberate, especially when you combine that with their other measures to impede the international response.

Given how successfully that damaged all of China's adversaries, I very much fear that, while Covid 19 wasn't deliberate biowarfare, Covid 22 will be.

[Sarcastr0]

China's almost certainly damaged as well; they just won't admit it.

[Lee Moore]

Damaged how ? I mean from the perspective of the CCP rather than from the perspective of tenderhearted Westerners ?

1. Lots and lots of dead old people in China - that's a minus ?!?

2. All that money we had to spend looking after sick old people ? Bwahaha ! (Or whatever the Chinese for Bwahaha ! is.)

3. Did we shut down our economy like those weirdo roundeyes ?

4. Was this not the best opportunity evah to deal with Hong Kong, comrades ?

As Brett says - they couldn't have predicted how wonderful Covid-19 was going to be for their strategic position, but they sure know now how effective another one would be.

[Sarcastr0]

This is nuts.
China did shut stuff down, a bunch of dead people are disruptive, even if old, and young people are effected. Think of our urban centers, and then think of China's air.
Plus don't forget sick people. And then hospitals' being overworked.

[Lee Moore]

It's those misty Western eyes again. Put your CCP specs on.

A lot of dead old people and sick people (in China) is good, not bad.

No young people are hardly affected at all, and if some tiny percentage are affected, so what ?

[Sarcastr0]

No, you're putting on your supervillain spectacles. Real societies, even authoritarian ones, don't think or operate like that. Like, you're beyond Nazis to maybe the Khmer Rouge and King Leopold as the only examples.

young people are hardly affected at all
Either you have a really unrealistic definition of young, or you are bad at math. .1% of a billion is a crapload of people. And absolute numbers matter when it comes to disruption.

[Brett Bellmore]

We're talking CHINA here, supervillain spectacles are perfectly appropriate. They're active genocides, for God's sake! They literally disassemble political dissidents for spare parts! It's virtually impossible to overstate the degree of their ruthlessness.

[Sarcastr0]

No, China is not a supervillain.

Not going to defend their genocide, or their authoritarianism, or any of their other long line of human rights horrors.

But that is, sadly, mere villain territory. Uncommon, but not unheard of.

Y'all are writing a political techno-thriller here based on nothing but your anti-China nationalism. From such self-propagandizing not many good things come.

[Life of Brian]

Not going to defend their genocide, or their authoritarianism, or any of their other long line of human rights horrors.

But that is, sadly, mere villain territory. Uncommon, but not unheard of.

When your argument depends on striking some sort of murky line between "really, really bad" and "really, really, REALLY bad," it just might be a sign you have no actual argument.

[Lee Moore]

1. As Brett says, wake up.

2. This link estimates the Covid infection fatality rate, internationally, by age :

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/11/18/covid-infection-fatality-rates-sex-and-age-15163

You don't get to a 0.1% IFR until the 45-49 age cohort. For "young people = under 20s" the IFR is about 0.002%, ie about a fiftieth of your 0.1% rate. For "young people" = under 30s, the IFR is about 0.005%, ie about a twentieth of your 0.1% rate. Even for "young people" = under 40s, you only get up to an IFR of about 0.011%, or a ninth of your 0.1%.

There are roughly 400 million Chinese under 25. The under 25 IFR is about 0.003%. So if the entire Chinese population got Covid you'd expect about ...wait for it...paper tissues ready....big drum roll....

...12,000 Chinese under 25 deaths from Covid.

So what definition of "young" are you using ?

As for your definition of "crapload" if 0.1% of a billion Chinese died of Covid, that would be about a million. Virtually all of whom would be old unproductive mouths to feed.

The normal death rate in China is about 7.5 per thousand, or 7.5 million a year. Or under Sarcastroian arithmetic, 7.5 craploads. An extra million is hardly going to crash the system, especially if it's spread out over a couple of years.

[Armchair Lawyer]

No, Nazi Germany is not a supervillain.

Not going to defend their genocide, or their authoritarianism, or any of their other long line of human rights horrors.

But that is, sadly, mere villain territory. Uncommon, but not unheard of.

Y’all are writing a political techno-thriller here based on nothing but your anti-Nazi nationalism. From such self-propagandizing not many good things come.

[Commenter_XY]

Sarcastr0, are you certain you understand the nature of the CCP regime? It is not clear to me that you do. The history of the CCP in power is an unending story of invasion, repression, and mass murder. Whether you want to talk about Tibet, or Hong Kong, the inner Mongolia Autonomous region, or Xinjiang...the documented behavior of China is clear, and from this behavior, the nature of the CCP regime is crystal clear.

Who is wearing the supervillain spectacles, and who is wearing rose colored glasses?

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think it's like supporting China to say we shouldn't use our contempt for them author unsupported scenarios.

[Lee Moore]

I'm kinda on Armchair Lawyer's side here, though if you do have a "Supervillain" category, the Nazis have got to be serious contenders.

I don't think the current CCP qualifies as a Supervillain - maybe Mao did, but I think they're much less villainous now. Ditto the Soviet Union, which totally crushed the Nazis for "Supervillain of the Thirites", but got pipped in the forties, and then became merely villainous after Stalin departed.

The trouble is though, that modern villains tend to have absorbed the principle "the individual ants count for squat" so that what you do to them is entirely a matter of utility. If you have that mentality, then even quite common or garden villains can turn their hands to supervillainy when the spirit moves them.

The sad truth is that if the individual ants don't count, a Uighur genocide, body part cannibalism of political undesirables, or polishing off a million old folk*, isn't really a biggie.

* note this is a hypothetical crime, not an actual charge

[Sarcastr0]

I'm not saying China's human rights violations are not awful, I'm saying that's not enough to start speculating maybe they did COVID.

[Brett Bellmore]

"I’m kinda on Armchair Lawyer’s side here, though if you do have a “Supervillain” category, the Nazis have got to be serious contenders."

I've got a different criterion in mind.

See, the thing about the Nazis is that, while they were kind of peak evil, they weren't sustainably evil, they didn't pace themselves, and that limited their total villainy. So, while they killed a lot of people in a short amount of time, they roused opposition and got crushed.

Both the former USSR, and communist China, practice sustainable villainy. Their rate of evil isn't quite so high, but because they can keep it up, their totals eclipse the Nazis.

The Nazis are estimated to have murdered a bit in excess of 16M people during the Holocaust. The USSR? In excess of 60M. China? In excess of 30M. But, of course, the USSR burned out, and China is still going strong, give them time.

World communism has fully earned their claim to supervillainy.

[Brett Bellmore]

"I’m not saying China’s human rights violations are not awful, I’m saying that’s not enough to start speculating maybe they did COVID."

Read more closely: I think Covid 19, (Though not its spread to the rest of the world.) was mostly an accident. My concern is that it worked out so well for them the next pandemic will be deliberate.

Covid 19 had severe deficiencies as a bio-weapon. The death rate was relatively low as pandemic diseases go, (The Spanish Flu laughs at Covid.) it could have been a lot more contagious during the asymptomatic phase, and they didn't have a good treatment for it when it escaped.

A deliberate biowarfare attack would be a hundred times worse.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think it's clear it worked out well (I don't believe China), and I also don't think it's worthwhile to speculate about novel supervillain stuff a country may pull in the future; it's all subjective and spite-based.

And you can see there's plenty of folks here who think China did Covid this go-round as well.

[Life of Brian]

I don’t think it’s clear it worked out well (I don’t believe China)

Why not? You're berating us for not believing them about all else COVID. Why is benefit to them the one thing you're rather conveniently choosing not to believe?

[shawn_dude]

The CCP runs the country successfully only if their citizenry participate and continue to approve. Authoritarian regimes who have to forcefully oppress a billion people on the regular don't last long; the money China gets from being able to allow some amount of capitalism is too useful to throw it away by crushing resistance in the way a supervillian in the comics might.

China gets away with genocide and oppression by controlling the media and convincing people they're not really committing genocide or opressing anyone. And if you wonder who might fall for that, you have to look no farther than January 6th and QAnon right here in the US.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"I’m not saying China’s human rights violations are not awful, I’m saying that’s not enough to start speculating maybe they did COVID."

Why not? They're claiming around 5,000 Chinese COVID deaths, that's around the same number of Chinese they killed in Tiananmen Square.

[Sarcastr0]

As though anyone believes that number, TiP.

I want to figure out reality, not indulge in nationalist fantasy. Many on here don't seem to be in that boat.

[David Nieporent]

They’re active genocides, for God’s sake!

Of ethnic minorities, not their main population.

[Lee Moore]

I'm struggling to compute Mr Nieporent's comment about genocide of ethnic minorities v main populations.

It's true that genocide of "the main population" is rarer than genocide of ethnic minorities - so rare that I can't really think of any examples beyond the Khmer Rouge - but it's not obvious to me why genociding your main population is more or less supervillainous than genociding an ethnic minority.

Even the Khmer Rouge didn't try to kill everybody, they tried to kill the educated classes. And killing people because of their social class isn't obviously - to me - wickeder or less wicked than killing people because of their ethnic group.

[David Nieporent]

It’s true that genocide of “the main population” is rarer than genocide of ethnic minorities – so rare that I can’t really think of any examples beyond the Khmer Rouge – but it’s not obvious to me why genociding your main population is more or less supervillainous than genociding an ethnic minority.

I'm not saying that it's more or less evil. I'm saying precisely what you said — that instances of the majority committing genocide of the majority ethnic group are incredibly rare. The fact that the Chinese are villainous enough to commit genocide against the Uighur minority does not mean that they are willing to commit genocide against the Han majority, which is what some here are claiming they did: deliberately using the virus to eliminate old people.

[Lee Moore]

I’m not sure killing off a chunk of your old and sick (of your main population) really counts as genocide. You’re not really aiming to kill everybody off, and you wouldn’t be very cheerful if everybody was polished off. For who would march in your parades, and dig your turnips ?

But if we’re going to bandy “genocide” about for merely trying to kill – let’s take Sarcastro’s figure of 0.1% - of your “main population” then it’s not so rare. I doubt there’s a communist regime anywhere that hasn’t managed that. That’s a little unfair on commie regimes since the regime enemies are classes of the main population, rather than ethnic groups. Which is not to say, of course, that commie regimes are backward about dealing with ethnic groups which don’t get in line.

The Fuhrer was quite happy polishing off ethnic German “mental defectives” - though I doubt that ran to 0.1% of the population.

In any event I don’t think anyone has been seriously suggesting that the CCP deliberately released Covid-19 to cull its old and sick population. The release in Wuhan refutes that. That was my “”Dr Evil” suggestion. However, I find it hard to imagine that the CCP leadership would be terribly upset by a few hundred thousand accidental extra deaths in the oldest cohort of China’s population (so long as the CCP leadership itself was safe.)

After all, even in non commie countries, bureaucrats have spotted that old sick people are quite expensive :

https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/02/14/34-of-nhs-staff-say-they-were-pressured-to-place-do-not-resuscitate-orders-on-disabled-covid-patients/

[Brett Bellmore]

Right, no question they're damaged, too. The question is whether they thought the damage was an acceptable price for the damage they did to the rest of the world, and think they could minimize the damage next time if they released it deliberately.

Remember, given that Covid does strike the elderly preferentially, and China has a bit of an age imbalance problem, and given that it's fairly easy to use a pandemic to turbo-boost any genocides you might happen to be perpetrating, (Think the Ughyrs got any vaccine?) they might not think their internal damage was all that awful.

They are the country that famously said of a nuclear test, "Not all the pigs died."; Meaning, with their population they could absorb an awful lot of casualties and still view themselves as winning a war.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think China has any interest in being the chaos agent you take it for.

[Brett Bellmore]

As they say, "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."

[Sarcastr0]

I mean, me and the State Department and the DoD and the unclass part of the Intel community.

[Life of Brian]

See, lemmings have pride too! Unfortunately that was last month.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, what fools they are not making shit up like you are.

[Life of Brian]

what fools they are not making shit up like you are

Interestingly enough, I just read my kids The Emperor's New Clothes for the first time last night. Fortunately for them the masses kept their language a bit cleaner than that when berating the boy that had the temerity to just open his eyes and look instead of letting crowds of Really Important Smart People tell him what he was supposed to see.

[Queen Amalthea]

I think by law conservative conspiracy folks have to mention the Emperor's New Clothes in this kinds of arguments.

[Life of Brian]

I think by law conservative conspiracy folks have to mention the Emperor’s New Clothes in this kinds of arguments.

I think by law lefty "nothing to see here, move along" folks have to invoke the word "conspiracy" to try to summarily dismiss anything uncomfortable or inconvenient.

But I'll play one round: Who exactly would China need to have conspired with here?

[Queen Amalthea]

"Who exactly would China need to have conspired with here?"

" lefty “nothing to see here, move along” folks have to invoke the word “conspiracy” to try to summarily dismiss"

You were responding to Sarcastro's saying he agreed with the State Dept, Dod and other intel community to deny China's leak/release. They're all in on it, right? Freemasons?

[Life of Brian]

You were responding to Sarcastro’s saying he agreed with the State Dept, Dod and other intel community to deny China’s leak/release. They’re all in on it, right? Freemasons?

So lemmings are conspiratorial? That's... interesting.

[Sarcastr0]

A country being bad doesn't mean you get to just speculate they did some other bad thing.

Which is all that's happening here. There is no evidence, but people are saying 'I'll bet this was good for China, and China did it, and China's gonna do it again!'

And your broad spectrum empty and repeated invocations of lemmings and Emp's New Clothes to insist 'you're just in denial' is really a telling illustration of your affirmative rejection of even a little critical thinking.

[Life of Brian]

your affirmative rejection of even a little critical thinking

Ackshully it's you, Mr. "well, yeah, there is this whole genocide and long history of human rights horrors stuff within their own borders, but there's just no reason at all to think they would wish the slightest shred of harm to befall the rest of the world!" who is squeezing your brain shut to the idea of basic critical thinking.

[Sarcastr0]

You don't get to use a bunch of factual awful things to prove another awful thing you have no evidence for, no matter how much doing so would validate you.

I'm not standing for China, I'm standing for living in a world of facts.

[Life of Brian]

no evidence

Someday you really do need to share your own special definition of the word "evidence" that you use to navigate these discussions. I think we'd all learn a lot.

[Sarcastr0]

Certainly all you've provided so far as proof of China intentionally creating and releasing Covid is 'China bad.'

That's not evidence, any more than 'LoB posts dumb stuff on the Internet' is proof LoB did 9-11.

[Life of Brian]

Certainly all you’ve provided so far as proof of China intentionally creating and releasing Covid is ‘China bad.’

Nor did I intend or claim to provide a full complement of the available data points in this thread, and I credit you with fully understanding that.

But enough with the distractions. How about that definition of "evidence"?

[Sarcastr0]

My counter-thesis is about what isn't evidence, and I'm not letting you change the subject.

[Life of Brian]

My counter-thesis is about what isn’t evidence

Exactly -- using a magical morphing definition that allows you to ad hoc disqualify anything anyone mentions. It's "fetch me a rock," Sarcastr0 style.

That's why you need to provide a definition ex ante -- if you're into intellectual honesty, anyway. Are you?

[Queen Amalthea]

Sacastro already answered you: "You don’t get to use a bunch of factual awful things to prove another awful thing you have no evidence for, no matter how much doing so would validate you."

You've accused him of not thinking critically because he won't accept the argument "China has done awful thing X, Y and X, so that's evidence they did awful thing A!" You're trying to prove OJ killed Lacy Peterson because he killed his ex-wife and stole stuff at gunpoint.

[Life of Brian]

Sacastro already answered you: “You don’t get to use a bunch of factual awful things to prove another awful thing you have no evidence for, no matter how much doing so would validate you.”

Queenie, I'm very comfortable that even you understand that's not a definition of "evidence," or anything resembling a definition -- it's a claim that I have no evidence. As I've said several times now, I'm thus asking for an up-front standard for what constitutes acceptable "evidence" rather than continuing to indulge his "nope -- not that!" game.

Since you seem to be speaking for Sarc now, maybe you'd like to provide one?

[Sarcastr0]

You're trying to shift the argument, because you lost pretty hard. I'm not taking the bait.

[Queen Amalthea]

"So lemmings are conspiratorial?"

You seem to not know even what you started out arguing. Hardly surprised.

[M L]

China's economy actually benefitted massively from COVID 19.

[Sarcastr0]

Sure, dude.

[Life of Brian]

I'm sure you'll have all sorts of reasons why this is not a good source (and do feel free to share a better one if so), but the first data point I found here shows 6% YoY growth in China's 2020 share of global GDP. That's after 3% in 2019, 3.1% in 2018, and so on.

That seems fairly.... significant.

[Sarcastr0]

Or you could not use a dumbass aggregate metric and find the very same website has a different analysis:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1102691/china-estimated-coronavirus-covid-19-impact-on-gdp-growth/

[Life of Brian]

Or you could not use a dumbass aggregate metric and find the very same website has a different analysis

To be a bit more precise, a different statistic. Yours shows China's YoY growth of its own GDP in a vaccum; mine shows China's YoY growth of its share of global GDP. They're not contradictory in the least. I would have credited you with being intelligent enough to understand that.

I also would have credited you with being intelligent enough to understand that of those two, the increase in China's share of global GDP is the metric you would look to in order to evaluate if and how much they benefited from the COVID circus. But there I go thinking again.

[M L]

Sarc, I don't know what stat you are trying to reference and most of the info on your link is paywalled.

[bernard11]

I also would have credited you with being intelligent enough to understand that of those two, the increase in China’s share of global GDP is the metric you would look to in order to evaluate if and how much they benefited from the COVID circus.

No. You wouldn't.

[Life of Brian]

No. You wouldn’t.

Now that's the sort of crazy-deep, compelling intellectualism I've grown to expect from you. Well done.

[David Nieporent]

I also would have credited you with being intelligent enough to understand that of those two, the increase in China’s share of global GDP is the metric you would look to in order to evaluate if and how much they benefited from the COVID circus. But there I go thinking again.

There you go thinking like a Trumpkin again.

The world economy is not zero sum. An increased share of a smaller GDP is not a benefit. Making other people poorer is a bad thing, not a good one.

[Lee Moore]

An increased share of a smaller GDP is not a benefit. Making other people poorer is a bad thing, not a good one.

That's a very parochial viewpoint. Do you think the Fuhrer would have minded reducing German GDP by half, so long as he could have succeeeded in squishing the Soviet Union ? Do you think Pol Pot worried deeply about the hit to GDP of slaughtering a quarter of the population ? It took China about forty years after the CCP took over to realise that commie economics is nuts. The Soviet Union never caught on in 70 years. When it's about power, it's about power. Not about the consumer satisfaction of the ants you rule.

True, in the long term, if your economy is crap, your capacity to support armed forces is compromised. But again, if you're a dictator, what matters most is staying in power now.

I guarantee that if you offered old Xi a button that would make the United States disappear without trace, with no comeback or risk, he'd push it in a heartbeat, and hang the next few years' export figures.

[David Nieporent]

When it’s about power, it’s about power. Not about the consumer satisfaction of the ants you rule.

True, in the long term, if your economy is crap, your capacity to support armed forces is compromised. But again, if you’re a dictator, what matters most is staying in power now.

And even a dictator stays in power by keeping his populace reasonably satisfied.

I guarantee that if you offered old Xi a button that would make the United States disappear without trace, with no comeback or risk, he’d push it in a heartbeat, and hang the next few years’ export figures.

This is delusional.

[M L]

BEIJING (AP) — China’s politically sensitive trade surplus soared to a record $75.4 billion in November as exports surged 21.1% over a year earlier, propelled by American consumer demand.

Exports to the United States rose 46% despite lingering tariff hikes in a trade war with Washington, customs data showed Monday.

Total exports rose to $268 billion, accelerating from October’s 11.4% growth. Imports gained 5% to $192.6 billion, up from the previous month’s 4.7%.

Chinese exporters have benefited from the economy’s relatively early reopening after the Communist Party declared the coronavirus pandemic under control in March while foreign competitors still are hampered by anti-disease controls.

https://apnews.com/article/business-global-trade-coronavirus-pandemic-china-united-states-76b934a5c6729de4466fc6ba89b4dcb2

another:

China’s trade surplus soared to a record $75.4 billion in November as exports surged 21.1 percent compared with a year ago, highlighting how the global plague that started in China has enriched the Asian behemoth.

China’s exports have soared since Beijing moved to reopen the world’s second-largest economy while much of the industrialized world has staggered under the weight of the pandemic and recently seen economic growth stymied by resurgent infections. The early outbreak of coronavirus in China and its long-term industrial policy to dominate manufacturing proved economically auspicious, allowing China to proper by supplying the world with personal protective gear, work-from-home technology, and many of the goods people have stockpiled during lockdowns.

The surge in exports far exceeded the 12 percent forecast by economists and beat October’s 11.4 percent year-over-year gain. The pace of the growth of imports, what China buys from the rest of the world, declined from October’s 4.7 percent gain to 4.5 percent. Economists had forecast that China’s recent prosperity would increase demand for imports for a 5.3 percent expected gain.

China’s trade surplus with the rest of the world is up 21.4 percent in the first 11 months of 2020 to $460 billion.

A huge driver of the surplus has been exports to the U.S. These are up 46 percent despite the Trump administration’s tariffs. China’s imports from the U.S. have not kept up and fallen behind what would have been expected if China were to meet its obligations under the Phase 1 trade deal. China’s November trade surplus with the U.S. is up 52 percent compared with last November to $37.3 billion.

[Don Nico]

S_0 it is very doubtful that the Chinese economy was damaged on the same scale as the US and European economies.

[Michael P]

God wouldn't have given Sarcastr0 that microscope if He wanted him to realize he's in a forest.

[Sarcastr0]

You've got a good head on your shoulders Don, but you're really scanty on your support. How can you tell?

[Dr. Ed 2]

No, Brett, the CCP really *is* that ruthless.

They have a different view on the value of individual human life than we do -- and blaming it on wet markets and poor sanitation that we were already complaining about is the perfect cover.

Remember too that communists tend to be rather ruthless to their own people -- Stalin's great famine in the Ukraine and Pol Pot's Killing Fields come to mind...

[David Nieporent]

Did a random Massachusetts cop tell you that? Or did a trucker?

[Lee Moore]

Popping my Dr Evil hat on, note the characteristics of the disease. It's quite good at killing old people (and very sick people), and very bad at killing anybody else.

What's China's biggest strategic problem ? Well in a world of intercontinental ballistic missiles, China's a very good target. Much better than the US or the USSR. It's got very little empty space, that isn't uninhabitable mountain. Every shot's a winner.

But in second place - China's got a very disadvantageous population age structure. Way too many old, unproductive, people - way too many mouths to feed.

So the ideal bio weapon for China is a disease that kills old people. In China. Obviously having released it in China, you let it leak overseas (a) for cover and (b) because that puts your enemies to the expense of caring for their old and sick (which you're not going to bother with at home.)

But as Brett says you still wouldn't release it in Wuhan. Maybe Shanghai ? Maybe Hong Kong ? But not Wuhan.

[Krayt]

Looking at it as a 4d chess game, you can plausibly claim it was local bats, or accidental escape from the lab if worse comes to worse. If it just mysteriously appears a thousand miles from either, it might be more suspicious.

Anyway this story has a long way to go.

[Brett Bellmore]

Eh, there are bats everywhere. (OK, not Antarctica.) So you can have bat viruses show up any place bats and humans interact, and it's plausible.

Having it show up where you've got a biological warfare lab doing gain of function research on bat viruses? Probably not the smartest thing to do if you're trying for deniability, but perfectly understandable as an accident.

[Krayt]

Yes but I am assuming the detailed dna analysis would show this could only come from a particular region. Bats elsewhere might have a similar virus, but would have mutation markers not in the human samples.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's my impression that the virus populations of flying animals would be expected to be well mixed, due to their mobility. But I could be wrong about that.

[Sarcastr0]

We don't have the genetic coronavirus map to pinpoint like that.

Our snapshot does show random variations as compared to it's closest sequenced relative, which implies no genetic engineering was involved.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, you're operating off old, carefully curated data. In fact, we've had evidence that genetic engineering might have been involved for some time. It's just been heavily suppressed.

The Science Suggests a Wuhan Lab Leak

This is, of course, the sort of thing social media platforms have been very ruthless about censoring. And you'll see a lot of articles supposedly debunking the notion now that the blockade has failed. But all they really do is establish that the argument isn't iron clad, it's merely suggestive.

But when you combine that with the virus showing up near a lab with a reputation for being careless, where genetic engineering of this very virus was taking place, it becomes a reasonable conclusion.

[Sarcastr0]

Don't cite the WSJ opinion section for scientific fact. I also don't have access to read the article's talk about genetic mutations. I guess they've gotten smarter about incognito mode.

You can't carefully curate data when it's a fully sequenced genome.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, but you can curate what reports about the fully sequenced genome go public or can be linked to on social media without getting somebody kicked off the platform.

And it's a WSJ opinion piece by Dr. Steven Quay and Professor Richard Muller, not their janitor.

New Study By Dr. Steven Quay Concludes that SARS-CoV-2 Came from a Laboratory

[Sarcastr0]

Like many others, I am concerned about what appear to be significant conflicts of interest between members of the WHO team and scientists and doctors in China and how much this will impede an unbiased examination of the origin of SARS-CoV-2

By taking only publicly available, scientific evidence about SARS-CoV-2 and using highly conservative estimates in my analysis, I nonetheless conclude that it is beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a laboratory

This off the break clearly bad science. Scientists don't talk like that.

Plus, A Bayesian analysis concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural zoonosis but instead is laboratory derived. is not saying much at all.

I'll stick with the scientific consensus that the randomness of the mutations is clear.
https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2021/06/how-virus-detectives-trace-the-origins-of-an-outbreak-and-why-its-so-tricky-opinion.html

[VinniUSMC]

No evidence is ever good enough, that does not agree with Sarcastr0's lived truth.

[Sarcastr0]

VinniUSMC, bring some substance next time.

I have laid out my issue with Brett's single cherry-picked expert - he has an agenda, he's doing more politics than science, and his Bayesian handwaiving doesn't hold a candle to the quantifiable data from the viral ecologists.

Sorry if that hurts the story you wish were proven, but that's your problem, not mine.

[VinniUSMC]

bring some substance next time.

After you.

"This off the break clearly bad science. Scientists don’t talk like that."

[Michael P]

Like someone said earlier: "bring me a rock", Sarcastr0 style.

Is it his fault if the evidence that disagrees with him is not merely unconvincing, but is always bad science or bad faith? After all, someone said that the mutations in SARS-CoV-2 relative to its closest known wild relative (which was identified by, and kept at, that Chinese lab in Wuhan that does gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses) were random. The fact that the two most notable mutations, one of which is quite large, made it more infectious in humans and less infectious in bats doesn't bear on that at all!

[Sarcastr0]

You have your causality backwards.
Evidence tends to agree with me because I form my onions based on the evidence.

And sometimes it shifts, and then you will see me shift my opinion.

Is there some subjectivity? Sure. But at least I'm not finding any scrap of unsupported opinion (or nothing at all!) that agrees with what I want to be true and highlighting that as my proof, like many here.

[Absaroka]

"I’ll stick with the scientific consensus that the randomness of the mutations is clear."

You are speaking, I think of this from your link: "When comparing the genetic sequence of wild RaTG13 with SARS-CoV-2, differences are randomly spread across the genome. In an engineered virus, there would be clear blocks of changes that represent introduced sequences from a different viral source."

I'm just doing a Genetics 101 analysis here, but I think there are three possibilities in play, and that talks only about two. The three possibilities are:

1)The virus jumped naturally from a wild animal to the index case human as full blown covid-19.
2)The virus was collected in the wild (from a bat, or a from a human as a poorly adapted virus) and made more infectious by using the various gene splicing techniques to insert selected chunks of genetic material, leaving edits that can be statistically differentiated from random mutations.
3)The virus was collected in the wild (from a bat, or a from a human as a poorly adapted virus) and made more infectious by passing it through generations of lab animals, and selecting for the naturally occurring mutations that increase virulence (this is called 'Gain of Function' research).

I'm surely open to informed disagreement, but your article doesn't explain how GoF selective breeding and natural evolution would have differing genetic signatures. ISTM the difference with selective breeding and natural evolution is the time scale, not the resulting genes.

[Sarcastr0]

Well spotted, Absaroka, but look at my initial thesis: no genetic engineering was involved.

That's what I'm working on; and that's what so many people are pushing back on.

[Lee Moore]

Sarcastro's objections seem to be primarily semantic. Specifically he insists that "genetic engineering" must mean gene splicing, and excludes selective breeding in the lab as an "engineering" method.

The gene structure of the virus is, we are told, inconsistent with Sarcastroan "genetic engineering" but is consistent with either natural evolution in the wild, or accelerated evolution in the lab, by "gain of function" selective breeding.

But a lab leak of a very effective selectively lab bred virus, and a lab leak of a very effective genetically lab engineered virus (in the Sarcastroan sense) are both cases of a lab leak of a man made virus.

And that is what people are interested in - is this just a bit of bad luck, nature happening upon a nasty by chance, or is it a case of bad science, with a global pandemic visited on the world by foolish and sloppy scientists ?

If the latter, the difference between an engineered or selectively bred virus is irrelevant - except for the matter of forensic evidence.

[Absaroka]

"Specifically he insists that “genetic engineering” must mean gene splicing, and excludes selective breeding in the lab as an “engineering” method."

FWIW, I think that is the general (but not universal) usage.

"But a lab leak of a very effective selectively lab bred virus, and a lab leak of a very effective genetically lab engineered virus (in the Sarcastroan sense) are both cases of a lab leak of a man made virus.

And that is what people are interested in – is this just a bit of bad luck, nature happening upon a nasty by chance, or is it a case of bad science, with a global pandemic visited on the world by foolish and sloppy scientists ?

If the latter, the difference between an engineered or selectively bred virus is irrelevant – except for the matter of forensic evidence."

Precisely so.

[jb]

'Cause it would be really dumb, and we assume China acts in its own interests.

FWIW, even though it comes from Vox, which is obviously pretty left-leaning I found this recent podcast on the topic to be a pretty balanced roundup of what we know and don't know, as well as some thoughts on vaccine policy at the end:

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vdGhld2VlZHM/episode/NTMyMjQwODYtMGQ1Yi0xMWViLWJjYjktMGY2NWEwZDQ3Yzgw

To pivot away from lab leak speculation to the vaccine policy topic: the Moderna vaccine was developed in two days but still took nine more months to actually reach the market. It seems like there's huge opportunities to accelerate the process of using rapidly developed vaccines like this to head off pandemics rather than trying to put out the fire well into the problem. Yet I don't hear any discussion about actually changing the approach here. Is this just discussion tainted by the current partisan stupidity around the Coronavirus vaccine, or should it be an opportunity for some actual bipartisan policy reform since it doesn't seem like there should be obvious sides on this one.

[M L]

They did change the approach to vaccine timing, for political purposes to harm Trump.

One doctor’s campaign to stop a covid-19 vaccine being rushed through before Election Day
How heart doctor Eric Topol used his social-media account to kill off Trump’s October surprise.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/19/1010646/campaign-stop-covid-19-vaccine-trump-election-day/

[jb]

Blah blah. So I guess you're saying actual re-thinking about our approach to vaccine approval is indeed held hostage due to the fact that no one can think about anything without a partisan lens. That seems sad to me, since a faster approval process for the Covid vaccines would have saved millions of lives.

[M L]

Yes, it is very sad that they killed millions to get Trump.

[jb]

Assuming the most credulous possible reading of your article, this one guy magically delayed vaccine approval for maybe six weeks. Actually revamping the approval process might have saved six months. We're having totally different conversations.

Honestly, I think Trump's approach to vaccines is one of two genuinely good outcomes from his administration. But rather than having a serious discussion about what we can learn from this pandemic, you want to descend into political paranoia and make no attempt to actually fix the process for the future. The Republican party really is a cult of personality at this point--it's not possible to have any conversation about any topic without some framing around Orange Man at this point.

[Michael P]

Those crazy Republicans, focusing on how we can keep partisan political efforts from infesting the federal bureaucracy rather than on removing barriers between bureaucrats and the health of hundreds of millions of Americans! Who do they think they represent, anyway?

[jb]

This one random doctor wasn't even part of the federal bureaucracy, and I have no idea what "removing barriers between bureaucrats and the health of hundreds of millions of Americans" is supposed to mean.

Rather than being butthurt that some doctor didn't like Trump, maybe be interested in Trump's actual idea of trying to make vaccine approval faster? Or are ideas only good while the person who proposed them are in office?

[M L]

I agree that accidental release is most likely, in part based on questions of interest.

But note that your argument assumes that just because this happened in the vast nation of China, anyone who might have done this deliberately must have been trying to act in the best interests of China as a whole. That is actually a very very weak assumption.

First, just because it happened in the vast nation of China doesn't mean it was ordered by Xi Jinping himself or the CCP generally. There are numerous, countless parties around the world who would stand to benefit from such an event, and even more crazy megalomaniacs who are convinced they know what is good for the world at large or are actually antagonistic toward mankind. Now, presumably this would be difficult for most parties to achieve and I have no knowledge about specific actors or how feasible this would be. So I do think that if there was a deliberate release of the virus, the CCP or some CCP-related actors would be the default most likely culprit, but that's just a weak default supposition in the face of complete uncertainty and lack of information/knowledge.

Second, there is certainly no reason to assume that the CCP would act in the best interests of the Chinese people at all, as opposed to their own corrupt and tyrannical interests. So we do need to distinguish what we mean by "China's own interests." Even so, I can't see how this event would be within the official CCP's best interests (though there could be rogue or dissenting factions within the CCP). This is, in part, why I think an accidental release seems more likely by some margin. More than that, I've said for over a year that the consequences of releasing the virus would seem to be too unpredictable before the fact, for it to make sense as the strategic move of any kind of state actor. At least that's what I've thought. But maybe one could argue that the consequences were more predictable than one might think in many ways.

[shawn_dude]

That 9 months was acually pretty darned quick. No mRNA-based vaccine was ever approved prior to this. It was a novel approach with no data regarding how it would behave in a real human body. They were allowed to run multiple trials and studies in parallel where in the past they would have been done in serial. This sped them up to a mere 9 months.

That speed came with a cost: a lot of conspiracy theorists, some among the commenters here on Volokh, firmly believe it was created suspiciously fast and that it was all planned. The whole "plandemic" conspiracy still has wide belief among conservatives who refuse to take the vaccine. And that is leading to more unnecessary deaths from mutated versions of the virus.

[bernard11]

Because there is no evidence? Even the case for an accidental lab leak isn't particularly strong, despite the hubbub.

[Michael P]

There is even less evidence for a wild-animal or wet-market origin, particularly in the form of viral samples from animals near Wuhan but outside of WIV. (Lots of people claim that Wuhan is a major transportation hub, big city, etc but ignore that the same is equally or more true of a number of other cities closer to the place where we've seen wild coronaviruses very similar to SARS-CoV-2, meaning those cities are much more likely as initial outbreak points.)

[Sarcastr0]

The DNA looks a lot like an animal Coronavirus.

The zoonotic hypothesis not having direct support does make it less likely, but it's not out of the running yet.

Going with 'I'm sure it was a lab leak' is still quite anti-scientific.

[Queen Amalthea]

"There is even less evidence for a wild-animal or wet-market origin"

What are your credentials, education, accomplishments in this field? Because if you don't have much there, why in the world would anyone else think you know wtf you're talking about? That you could competently judge what evidence is relevant, whether it is sound, etc?

[brownactjack]

how can a city or county inspect the construction of a large condo. I was FHA inspector and appraiser for single family residences and each inspection took about 30 minutes to inspect the construction and verify the building to plans approval. The mere thought of having to inspect a 300 unit condominium boggles my mind at going through the completed units for final inspection for the lender.

[rsteinmetz]

Typically in that kind of construction there are multiple checks Including Architects and Engineers observing Construction as it progresses, Government Inspectors making periodic inspections before significant phases of the work, like looking at steel reinforcing before the concrete is poured. There are typically Testing Laboratories testing the concrete actually poured and other materials to see if it meets specifications and submissions from the builder to the professionals involved specifying the products and materials to be used and how they are to be fabricated.

[Brett Bellmore]

And then in Florida you have occasional hurricanes to identify after the fact building inspectors who are on the take. Which I suspect tends to limit that sort of thing at least a little.

[Michael P]

Occasionally those process requirements fail: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/dulles-metrorail-project-subcontractor-and-company-president-settle-civil-fraud-suit

[Stephen Lathrop]

In other news, Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota has announced a private grant from a Tennessee billionaire which she says will fund deployment of South Dakota national guard troops to the Mexican border. That sets the stage for a replay in a new context of the kind of late-19th-century antics which mining interests used to counter unionism in the American West.

In one famous incident, the consequences included the arrest by the national guard—and confinement without charges—of every adult male in a North Idaho mining town—including elected local authorities and law enforcement—followed a few years later by a retaliatory unionist's assassination of the ex-governor of Idaho.

The dynamiter assassin was promptly caught and confessed, but not promptly tried. Instead, an ensuing trial featured union-executive defendants, including Wobbly founder Big Bill Haywood and two associates. They had been kidnapped by mining-company-funded Pinkertons in Colorado, and rushed in secret to Idaho on a privately-funded special train, to face trumped up murder charges in Boise.

Haywood and others were defended by Clarence Darrow, in a courtroom spectacle which convulsed the nation. William Borah led the prosecution, in a move which shortly afterwards propelled him to national stature in the U.S. Senate.

The anti-union investigation and prosecution was privately funded (in secret) by mining interests which laundered money through the Idaho government to pay Pinkertons and other investigators. Darrow raised money nationwide among unionists, and used it to investigate, and maybe to bribe, potential and actual jurors. Both sides spent private money liberally to investigate each others' investigations, and to influence each others' witnesses.

Haywood was acquitted, at least ostensibly because Idaho law required corroboration of prosecution testimony from an alleged accomplice—in this case the confessed assassin who blew up the governor. The state failed to meet that legal burden.

After turning out demonstrators by tens of thousands in places as far away as New York and Boston—and entangling President Roosevelt in the nasty politics of private prosecution—the whole incident was largely forgotten. Maybe because all the actors on both sides behave so reprehensibly, it didn't pay anyone to bring it up again. Good luck, Governor Noem.

[Brett Bellmore]

If it's alright in the context of election administration, why not the national guard?

[Sarcastr0]

As I said below, this isn't a big deal. But government contractors doing government functions are not the same thing as paying for a national guard deployment.

[Brett Bellmore]

Let's be clear: Helping pay for a deployment that the state government wants to do anyway is not nefarious. It's not remotely the same as the state renting a national guard unit out to a corporation to do their dirty work.

In fact, Zuckerberg's aid to election administration wouldn't have been all that nefarious, either, if it had been state-wide, rather than selectively deployed for politically disparate results. Uniformity in election administration is an important principle that was thoroughly shat upon last year.

[Queen Amalthea]

"Zuckerberg’s aid to election administration wouldn’t have been all that nefarious, either, if it had been state-wide, rather than selectively deployed for politically disparate results"

Cite? First I've heard of this.

[Brett Bellmore]

From a source you might read: How Private Money From Facebook's CEO Saved The 2020 Election

The money was systematically given only to areas where Democrats reliably get most of the votes, so that the resulting increase in voting would accrue only to Democratic candidates. If you were an area in need of help where the voters were mostly Republican, you were out of luck.

[Queen Amalthea]

Where does the article indicate what your second paragraph claims?

[Brett Bellmore]

They provide a map. They actually describe the locations getting the money, in the NPR article, in terms of how Democratic they are!

[Queen Amalthea]

They only talk about four places specifically, one of which (Racine County) went for Trump in 16 and their map has dots all over the country.

[bernard11]

Again, Brett, you are lying about what your own link says.

Stop it.

[David Nieporent]

He's also being disingenuous. Zuckerberg's money was not given to Democratic jurisdictions. It was an open process; anyone who was willing to adhere to a certain set of practices could apply for and receive the money. It's just that most GOP jurisdictions were unwilling to do that.

[Queen Amalthea]

In fact, it seems to say this: "But an APM Reports analysis of voter registration and voter turnout in three of the five key swing states shows the grant funding had no clear impact on who turned out to vote. Turnout increased across the U.S. from 2016. The APM Reports analysis found that counties in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona that received grants didn't have consistently higher turnout rates than those that didn't receive money."

[Brett Bellmore]

The question is whether they had higher turnout than they would have. The money transformed heavily Democratic areas that typically had low turnouts into heavily Democratic areas that had good turnouts.

[jb]

Eh. Turnout was really high everywhere. Your theory seems to be that this support was crucial to Democratic turnout but Republican turnout was super high just because Trump is so awesome whereas a much more likely alternative hypothesis is that this support didn't really do anything and people would have turned out all over no matter what.

[bernard11]

Aside from your usual paranoia, I don't quite see the problem here.

Am I doing something wrong if I work to increase turnout in a Democratic area?

I mean, you have this odd notion that making it easier for people to vote is some sort of nefarious activity. It's not.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Bernard, here's the deal. Take a State....call it Georgia.

Let's pretend every voting district in the state of Georgia has the same amount of government funding regarding handling elections. This funding is used to fund polling places, extended hours, more people, more information, more absentee ballots, ect. All of this makes it "easier to vote".

Now, pretend a private organization selects all the whitest, most GOP heavy districts. And they decide to help the local governments there run their elections. They dump millions of funding helping these districts vote. They expand voting hours...but just in these districts that get the additional funding. They get more polling places...but just in those districts that get the extra private funding. And of course, they insert their own people into the ballot design, and several other items.

So, you've made it "easier to vote"....but just for a select portion of the population. The White areas can vote in under 5 minutes. The black areas, which didn't get this extra private funding, take 30 minutes to vote.

Is that a problem?

[Michael P]

That seems like an intentionally misleading metric. They should compare turnout (by county or whatever) in 2020 to the previous two or three presidential elections. Turnout isn't usually uniform across counties.

[Queen Amalthea]

Except we know turnout was strange this time all around (even sans grants) because of Covid changes.

[Sarcastr0]

I agree with your first paragraph, Brett.

But I still think your analogy was bad 😛

Your second paragraph is not supported. Setting up a program where jurisdictions apply for grants based on need is not a nefarious scheme.

[Brett Bellmore]

If you'd left it at "need not be", I'd have agreed.

But you could apply all you wanted, and if it looked like helping you would help the Republican party, not the Democratic, you weren't getting that grant.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think need-based maps in a partisan way as clearly as you assume.
if it looked like helping you would help the Republican party, not the Democratic, you weren’t getting that grant
Where is your evidence for that? Because that'd be fraud based on my understanding of grants and the selection criteria they claimed.

[dwb68]

Good times. Makes the Cosby and Trump trials seem so boring.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Well, it's better than rich Silicon Valley executives buying the ability to run the elections in midwestern states.

[Lee Moore]

Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota has announced a private grant from a Tennessee billionaire which she says will fund deployment of South Dakota national guard troops to the Mexican border.

Leaving the North Dakotans to cope with the Canucks by themselves. Is this wise ?

[dwb68]

You know, you should have also provided a link to the Supreme Court case, in an opinion written Harlan, which stands for the proposition that it does not matter how the defendants got to Idaho, once they are there they can be tried.

Pettibone v. Nichols, 203 U.S. 192 (1906)

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/203/192/

[Stephen Lathrop]

dwb68, thanks for that.

To accurately appreciate the Harlan decision, it's worth mentioning that none of the 3 defendants had been in Idaho at any time proximate to the murder of the governor, nor afterwards, up to the time they were delivered to Boise by private train, under guard of the Pinkertons who captured them in Denver.

Also, James McParland, the Pinkerton who planned the operation, took pains to plan the route and schedule the trip to minimize the chance that any lawyer could intervene with a habeas corpus petition in Colorado, or anywhere else along the route. McParland expected his captives would be ordered released unless he could get them to Boise before the kidnapping was discovered.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm actually not super worried about this. Biden could have stopped it if he wanted to, and Noem had to sign off. This isn't a private army.

[David Nieporent]

It should have to be paid for by a private person because this isn’t a governmental operation; it’s a campaign stunt for Noem.

She’s sending “up to” 50 NG members. (If each one can personally guard 40 miles by himself, they can “protect” the entire southern border!)

[Sarcastr0]

Oh yeah, it's nonsense and populist garbage.

But it's not damaging to our Republic beyond the usual playing to the nativist blood garglers.

[Brett Bellmore]

I haven't gargled any blood since my chemo was done, and that was only one time, thankfully. Brrr.

To be clear, I wish illegal immigrants all the best of luck and health, someplace they're legally entitled to be.

[Sarcastr0]

Sure, but you also don't seem to be over the moon about 50 armed troops to protect our border.

Those that are, well, seems like they want some military stuff to happen to those illegals.

[Life of Brian]

Those that are, well, seems like they want some military stuff to happen to those illegals.

So today's bespoke standard is that if we post armed forces somewhere to prevent people from entering a restricted space, that means we want the people to get hurt rather than for them to stop trying to enter? That puts a whole new twist on the Capitol, I guess.

[Sarcastr0]

It's 50 troops; it's not good for interdiction in any functional sense. But it is good if you just like guns being pointed at those mean ole illegals.

[Life of Brian]

It’s 50 troops

It's 50 troops from each of an increasing number of states. I know you know this.

it’s not good for interdiction in any functional sense

Whatever "functional sense" means. Are you suggesting it would have no deterrent effect at all? It's not exactly like they have to stand along the border and link elbows just in case someone happens to come by, dude. This is the 21st century. We have technology and stuff.

And all that aside, when did the new standard become "this won't fix 100% of the problem, so don't bother"? I must have slept through that one.

[Sarcastr0]

You've truly thought carefully about functional benefit here, and don't just love the symbolism of militarizing the border.

[Life of Brian]

You’ve truly thought carefully about functional benefit here, and don’t just love the symbolism of militarizing the border.

From your lips to God's ears.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It may only be 50 guys, but that's 48 more than were initially guarding the US Capitol on January 6th...

[Brett Bellmore]

Who knows, maybe they'll rescue an illegal alien or two from dying of exposure in the desert, and hydrate them before returning them to the border. That would be nice.

[shawn_dude]

Question is, are the Guard members volunteering or are they being ordered to the US border on the dime of a private citizen?

And if one of the Guard members violates the civil rights of someone crossing the border to legally request asylum, will the rich dude funding the operation be liable or will that largely be borne by the Guard members themselves?

[Brett Bellmore]

First question: Everybody in the Guard volunteered to join it.

Second: Nobody has a civil right to illegally cross the border.

[Queen Amalthea]

He mentioned "someone crossing the border to legally request asylum". I don't know how asylum laws work, but that doesn't seem like what you addressed...

[Moderation4ever]

I would argue that as this is being funded by a private entity it is no longer the state's national guard but is rather a mercenary group.

[Michael P]

Then please make that argument in some coherent form, because even the resident lefties seem to think that's nonsense.

[bernard11]

Would that be Kristi Noem the Covid Queen?

Yet another ghastly GOP presidential hopeful.

[apedad]

Quelle surprise.

Trump sucks.

https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall

[Bob from Ohio]

JFK and Obama in the top 10! Very objective.

Bunch of liberal prisoners of the moment say guy they personally hate is bad.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

No surprise -- Trump is on Mt. Flushmore:

Buchanan, A. Johnson, Pierce, Trump

Which means worse than the guy who took his lifelong slaveowning so serious he was buried with a Confederate flag.

That's Tyler, who was born in 1790, was president in the 1840s -- and whose grandson is still alive, last I checked.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Only one US President actually lived in the Confederacy. Any guesses? Being there as part of the Union army doesn't count.

[AmosArch]

Let's close out 'Pride' Month with a moment of reflection for all the less charismatic and connected groups who can't help who they are any more than gays and transgenders but unlike gays and transgenders are actually persecuted in this and other western countries. And for whom nobody, especially those on stage right now crowing about how 'brave' they are gives a sh(t about and/or wouldn't dare to help. Since some of these groups are so unpopular in our new age of supposed tolerance and empathy, any gesture seen as conciliatory toward them, even completely rational ones that would help everyone, would be an instant career ender.

[apedad]

Amen brother!

Why doesn't anyone care about the poor, white, WASPish, American male.

(stifled sniffle, tears begin to well up in my eyes...)

[AmosArch]

Wasn't specifically referring only to men as a group but yes. In some ways men, or specifically practices they tend to do more are more discriminated against as a group than gays and transgenders. For example to this day there is only one place in the US where two consenting adults can exchange money for sex (besides the traditional way) without fear of arrest, which is increasingly tilted against men as they are seen as the exploiting party even though they're not the one financially benefiting. It is far easier and more socially acceptable in today's 'enlightened' society to permanently mutilate a child with sex change drugs and surgery than to hand a dollar to a woman for hanky panky for some reason. And before you try to divert the blame its the leftists who are leading the charge or at least significantly participating in this under the banner of feminism. And regardless it shows how men have always been under some form of control.

Most people think and the media proclaims everyday that society regulates the sex lives of women. But in reality the vast majority if not all the criminal regulation we have in Western society that is directly relating to sex has to do with restricting stuff men are more likely to do. Not only do you get kicked around, they gotta rub it in by telling you how privileged you are to get this treatment. Talk about a raw deal. Can any of the groups leftists throw a pity party for demonstrate that they are fed the same 24/7 gaslighting about how well off they are by the MSM?

[Queen Amalthea]

If men are so discriminated against how come they are so vastly over-represented in positions of financial, social and political power?

[Illocust]

And prisons, and parents denied full custody, and those subjected to punishments without due justice, and the victims of murder, and workplace injury/death, and those who pay alimony, and those who pay child support, and those falsely imprisoned. Funny how those metrics never come up when people talk about privilege. Weird considering more likely to be killed in the workplace should be extremely relevant to any discussion about wages.

[Queen Amalthea]

Yeah, a lot of those metrics actually kind of point to mistreatment of women and male privilege (men are assumed to pay alimony and support and denied custody more because it's historically [at least] been the male that gets to be the 'breadwinner' rather than the nurturer, etc.).

[Queen Amalthea]

To put it another way, one aspect of privilege is that many people who have it or think they should have it are going to act badly towards others because of that.

[Queen Amalthea]

Where do you think the assumption of men paying alimony came from? Hint: it wasn't feminists. It was the dominant idea that men should be the breadwinner and therefore should have to pay to take care of the woman and kids. If anything feminism has cut the legs out from under this in more recent times.

[Queen Amalthea]

Whoops, that was a reply to Brett.

[Brett Bellmore]

LOL! You actually manage to make automatically being the one to pay alimony into a sign of privilege. It's such a privilege that something like half of all suicides are men shortly after divorce... The author attempts to make this about the men being bad, of course, not divorce laws being horribly unfair to men. I cite it just for the numbers.

[Queen Amalthea]

Some stats and commentary to back up my point above:

https://www.divorcemag.com/articles/percentage-of-men-awarded-spousal-support-increasing

[Brett Bellmore]

Increasing from virtually zero, sure.

[Queen Amalthea]

It decreased from 1 in 4 in the 1960's to 1 in 10 today, so as feminism grew stronger alimony plummeted. It's traditionalism driving alimony more than anything else Brett.

[bernard11]

It’s such a privilege that something like half of all suicides are men shortly after divorce…

The linked article makes no such claim AFAICT.

[bernard11]

Brett? Brett?

[Michael P]

It doesn't look like that is true, but divorce is a huge risk factor: https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-role-of-marriage-in-the-suicide-crisis

[NToJ]

"And prisons..."

Do you know why men are overrepresented in prisons?

[Krayt]

Giant memeplexes like religion and politics evolve winning strategies by gaining converts.

Camille Paglia and other 70s feminists, who talkes about how pornography, the one profession women out-earned men, should be trumpeted rather than disdained by feminists.

But telling people they are sorry victims at the hands of those with money dangling carrots carries more weight, as far as gaining converts go, so that plank is adopted instead.

Prostitution would be in the same boat. Libertarians say legalize it all and have government clean it up like it does for other industries.

[Queen Amalthea]

Many, many feminists do support sex work. More than most conservatives do, that's for sure.

[Sarcastr0]

Krayt - look up SWERF.

You're at least a wave behind on your feminist critique.

[NToJ]

This response explains so much about AmosArch.

[shawn_dude]

If you're placing snear quotes around "pride" then that's just a self-pwn.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-lawmaking-trfn/2021-is-worst-year-for-gay-and-trans-rights-in-war-on-lgbt-americans-idUSKBN2CS2EP

[Michael P]

What kind of moron looks at 2021 and thinks that "this is the worst year EVER for gay and trans rights" is anything but laughably bad propaganda?

[apedad]

Mariam Taha Thompson, 62, formerly of Rochester, Minnesota, was sentenced today to 23 years in prison for delivering classified national defense information to aid a foreign government. As part of her March 26 guilty plea, Thompson admitted that she believed that the classified national defense information that she was passing to a Lebanese national would be provided to Lebanese Hezbollah, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Good.

62 + 23 = high chance of dying in prison.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/defense-department-linguist-sentenced-23-years-prison-transmitting-highly-sensitive

[Commenter_XY]

apedad....Read your link. Whoa. This lady should get the needle, and spare us taxpayers the expense of having to pay for her sustenance in prison.

[Krayt]

Yikes, that's the most egregious thing I've heard since that top CIA brass gave info on dozens of "assets" to the Rooskies, leading to estimates as many as 24 were liquidated.

[Commenter_XY]

They should have summarily executed Ames, after sucking his brain dry of everything he exposed.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Social media organizations appear to be continuing to suppress any real discussion over the vaccines and their potential risks.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/cancel-culture/big-tech-cracks-down-mrna-vaccine-pioneer-who-warns-about-their-risks.

This is honestly dangerous. Very dangerous. No one is doubting that the vaccines are valuable and useful. But with any technology, there are risks involved. And honestly being able to discuss the risks is critical. The suppression of any dissenting views and information here is dangerous.

[apedad]

Sure because un-informed mouthbreathers on Facebook are such a valuable assets in vaccine research.

If anyone has pertinent information, they know exactly how to make their data/reports/findings available to the appropriate entities.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Uninformed "Mouth Breathers"...

-Harvard Med professor Martin Kulldorff.
-Scientist Robert Malone, who has done extensive research with mRNA vaccines.

But if the "appropriate entities" decide they don't like the information, well...

[Armchair Lawyer]

If there's anything we've learned, absolute obedience and belief in our higher "appropriate authorities" is entirely accurate, and we should never, ever, question them or even think critically about their statements.

[apedad]

No one said that and of course we need appropriate testing, review, follow ups, etc., and no one is pushing for absolute obedience.

Grow up.

[Armchair Lawyer]

So, your view is we should disobey, but not based on information (which of course is banned to us) but just because?

Here's the deal.

"Science" isn't always right. Sometimes, long term effects of new technologies are poorly understood or not understood at all. Tetraethyllead works wonders as an anti-knocking agent. But has profound long term health risks. Internal combustion engines work wonders. But release CO2, which in the long term can have profound effects on the climate. mRNA vaccines are very effective against the coronavirus. But the long term effects are simply unknown.

Now, sometimes, there are viewpoints, right or wrong, about the potential long term effects. Sometimes scientists propose tetraethyl lead might have harmful side effects...decades before they are actually proven. And I would rather know about these viewpoints and not have them censored out of existence, or only given to the "appropriate entities" who stick them in a closet and bury them.

Because when you just give the "appropriate entities" the knowledge, and censor it from yourself, you give over your power of independent thought to these entitites. You can't decide on what you never knew existed. Knowledge is power. Deliberate ignorance is basically giving up your power to decide.

[Sarcastr0]

Your grand vision of social media as an avenue for noble dissenting viewpoints ignores that actually it magnifies cranks. There are studies, if you want them.

There's a reason why under no funding models is science is not done based on public acclimation.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Social media can magnify DISSENTING viewpoints, period. Which is the very point. It offers an outlet to know about views that are not "popular" enough to make it into the mainstream media.

A key example of this is Li Wenliang, and his initial disclosure of SARS-COV-2 and its following outlets into social media. Such disclosures wouldn't be made via mainstream methods.

[Sarcastr0]

Social media magnifies appealing viewpoints. Which is a recipe for disinformation.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Li Wenliang's disclosures were appealing? And disinformation?

[Sarcastr0]

Your anecdote proves nothing.

Sometimes appealing info is right. More often, it's made up and tailored to be appealing to certain groups. According to metrics, the right is the target audience vastly more than anyone else.

[Armchair Lawyer]

"Sometimes appealing info is right."

And you would shut down those sources of "right" information?

[Sarcastr0]

Sometimes a naked guy with words painted on his chest may be conveying correct information, but that alone isn't enough to support the information channel.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Sounds like yes, you would shut down these alternate sources...

Correct?

[I Callahan]

So we had better squelch anything that dissents from government? That’s the price you’re willing to pay to stop bad information from being seen?

[Sarcastr0]

We already do, AL. You think you're being principled but you're just facile.

I Callahan, don't strawman so hard; you'll strain something.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Ah Sarcastro....Good to see the little authoritarian in you, stamping down on un-approved sources of information. Can't let people think for themselves with non-approved information.

[Sarcastr0]

Thanks for the insults, but you haven't really answered my hypothetical about message via naked man.

You're no-limits-all-speech is ridiculous, and you know it. Which is why I think you've taken to name-calling instead of responding.

[jb]

It's pretty weird that people who hate cancel culture somehow become completely blind to the ills of social media when the political valence reverses.

[Armchair Lawyer]

"Cancel culture" is designed to shut people down and shut people up.

I'm pro-information. More is better. "Shutting people up" is bad.

[bernard11]

A.L.,

You mean like,

"Don't you dare say anything mean abot the Founders, or you'll be in big trouble?"

All the yelping about cancel culture is utter BS coming from those caught up in the CRT panic.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Bernard,

You can say anything mean about the Founders you want. It's a free country. I might not agree with what you say, but I support your right to say it.

Now, if you're going to put it into a public school curriculum...that's different. You'd support my right (hopefully) to preach the word of Jesus. Putting it into the public school curriculum...you might not support.

I'm currently enjoying America, the Movie on Netflix, if you're worried about mean things about the Founders in particular.

[Queen Amalthea]

Of course scientific consensus is sometimes wrong, but you know what's more often (and bound to be) wrong? Unqualified opinions and cranks.

[Armchair Lawyer]

So the answer in your opinion it to censor and eliminate the dissenting opinion...Rather than allow for an open discussion of ideas and their merits.

[Queen Amalthea]

I'm not aware of the government censoring anyone in that area, are you? To the extent that happens it should be forbidden.

But if you're talking about private entities not giving what they see as cranks a platform, that's certainly not 'censoring and eliminating the dissenting opinion.'

[Armchair Lawyer]

So, you support "private" entities from censoring and eliminating dissenting opinions then?

[Queen Amalthea]

They cannot 'censor and eliminate' dissenting opinions. My not letting you talk on my lawn doesn't 'censor and eliminate' your opinion.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Sigh...

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient."[2][3][4] Censorship can be conducted by governments,[5] private institutions, and other controlling bodies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

So, yes, private organizations can censor dissenting opinions.

[Queen Amalthea]

I notice you dropped the 'eliminate.' Nifty that.

So, you think the recent SCOTUS case should have ruled that the property owner was wrongly censoring the union that wanted to come in and speak to the workers on the owner's land?

[Queen Amalthea]

Btw-'suppress' is defined as: to put down by authority or force.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suppress

Private entities can't do that (at least legally).

[Armchair Lawyer]

You think a private entity has no authority?

I mean the semantic games you're playing here. The Catholic church had a long history of censorship.... According to your absurd definition, because it's not a government, it can't censor.

[Queen Amalthea]

"You think a private entity has no authority?"

Only over its own property (or maybe via contract) in our society.

The Catholic Church had censorship powers to the extent that governments did what they wanted btw.

[Armchair Lawyer]

You think a private entity has no authority?”

Only over its own property (or maybe via contract) in our society....

And when that private entity owns sizable chunks of the methods of information transmission?

Boom.

[Queen Amalthea]

They're not stopping anyone from transmitting information, just not helping them do it.

[NToJ]

"So, you support “private” entities from censoring and eliminating dissenting opinions then?"

Of course. I support the liberty of individuals to decide what they should promote and disseminate. What's your alternative?

[Armchair Lawyer]

NToJ,

I didn't ask if you supported their liberty. I asked if you supported their censoring.

Or in other words.... You have the right to be a jerk. I don't support you actually being a jerk though.

[NToJ]

@Armchair,

"I didn’t ask if you supported their liberty. I asked if you supported their censoring."

You asked:

"So, you support “private” entities from censoring and eliminating dissenting opinions then?"

The answer is yes. You didn't frame it in terms of any act of "censorship" but in terms of whether I support whether private entities, generally speaking, should censor. If your question was tied to the specific issue Queen Amalthea raised ("if you’re talking about private entities not giving what they see as cranks a platform") the answer is the same. If a person thinks another person is a crank, they should have the right to not promote or disseminate their speech. What's your position? (If you're talking about the Catholic Church, of course I think the Catholic Church should decide what is said in Catholic Churches. Don't you? Who else do you think should decide?)

What you're trying to get at is that sometimes people use their rights in ways that entitle the rest of us to criticize them for those decisions. Which is of course true. If RedState promises to promote only positive discussions of Christianity on its website, but bans me if I discuss Christianity positively, then that decision should be criticized on the grounds that RedState is not acting consistently. I am sure you can show me acts of private removal of private speech in which I agree the private actor is a dick. But I can't possibly answer that hypothetically; to know whether I would criticize a private person deleting posts (for example), I'd have to know what the post was about, what the relationship was between the poster and the host, and so on.

You should assume the cases in which I think the host should be criticized will be rare, as I don't get worked up that much about the behavior or private people doing dickish shit on their own private property, because the liberty interest in having private property is more important than projecting out my views of about what dicks should or should not do, and forcing them to not be dicks on their own property. My remedy for you (or LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook or Reason.com) being a dick on your property is to just stop using your property.

By the way, assume you conclude that some person engaged in removal of posts on their private property is engaged in unethical or untoward behavior, per you. What are you going to do about it? In your ludicrous, absolute opprobrium against private removal of content, you have lost a significant remedy against the remover. Namely you can't privately decide to stop using their platform, because per you that would also be "censorship".

[Krayt]

Do you speak about the pioneers in this research, or politically-motivated editors sitting around a room feeling the powah?

[Sarcastr0]

Your narrative is wrong - we select for editors who want the moolah. Pretty easy to see why they don't want their product to be seen as a venue for nonsense.

[jb]

No one is doing science on LinkedIn. There's plenty of ways to work out the actual risks involved with the vaccines and they intersect not at all with social media platforms.

[Armchair Lawyer]

No, they are COMMUNICATING science and sharing results, answers, and more on Linked in.

It's very common, especially as it's a professional networking site. It's common to link articles, research, and more as it directly links to others in your community and other professionals, like you, who can evaluate the claims.

Shutting down dissemination of information in such networks acts like shutting down newspapers or journals who espouse views the authorities disagree with. Like the Apple Daily.

[SimonP]

AL, you've linked a misinformation site.

Setting aside the clear pro-Trumpist slant of a site that is ostensibly "Just the News," the story you've linked treats the man's claims as credible, without any careful scrutiny of the posts he claims got him "deplatformed" or his claims to have "invented" technologies used in the mRNA vaccines. (Even his website admits that the latter claims are disputed.) It layers in commentary from his wife, of all people, and conflates it with a series of other right-wing commentators who claim to have been "de-platformed" for their own views (even though it has nothing to do with what the story is ostensibly about).

This is the same thing that the Washington Times and other misinformation sites do. They throw up an inflammatory headline but fail to do any real journalistic work in the body of the story, filling it instead with intimations and red herrings.

And now you're running into the comments here, foaming at the mouth, fomenting about some dystopian groupthink effected through social media.

[Armchair Lawyer]

The Washington Times, a "Newspaper"...which apparently you classify as "misinformation site".

The Apple Daily, probably another "Misinformation Site" you enjoyed seeing shut down.

When any unapproved sources of information and politically undesirable newspapers are regarded as just "misinformation sites" that you think should be limited...I'm a little worried about you and your authoritarian tendencies.

[Sarcastr0]

The Apple Daily, probably another “Misinformation Site” you enjoyed seeing shut down.

You're really going hard on the strawman here. It makes it look like you don't have a lot of substance you're willing to argue.

[David Nieporent]

Just The News is the vanity site of John Solomon, after he was fired from The Hill for being so awful a propagandist that even a publication with no standards couldn't stomach his stuff even when put in the Opinion section.

[Michael P]

"a scientist who credits himself as the inventor of mRNA vaccines" -- which is based solely on work he did while a grad student, with all the usual qualifications there.

He doesn't do research now, and he stopped doing research shortly after getting his Ph.D., according to German Wikipedia. That doesn't scream "good authority" to me. https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/vaccine/covid-vaccine-spike-protein-not-cytotoxic/536-60122437-eaaa-458e-919a-06fa96fdf6c8 discusses this in what seems like a thorough but accessible way.

[Krayt]

No discussion on Cosby? On impending Trump indictments? On the meta-issues with selective investigation and prosecution of political opponents, literally joyously picked up by state prosecutors, who had info referred to them, "just in case"?

Something something something use of IRS against political opponents? Wait, Nixon? Wait, Obama, twice? (The other was imnediately investigating S&P right after they downgraded US debt.)

Should be done nowhere.

On the other hand, he ran on "Lock her up", so live by the sword, die by the sword.

[Sarcastr0]

Your 'selective' is unsupported. The Trump org was playing in some pretty rarified space tax-wise, and under scrutiny well before Trump ran for President.

[Moderation4ever]

What your saying is true. If this was any other company this would be third page news. The attention here is not the crime but rather the accused.

[Armchair Lawyer]

The Trump tax investigation is pretty partisan, in my investigation.

They're looking to see if certain invididuals got "leased cars" from the organization, without reporting them on their tax returns. And seeking criminal charges?! This is weak sauce. It's civil at best, and a penalty.

Hunter Biden got a free ride to China on Air Force 2. Did he report it on his tax return?

[Sarcastr0]

You don't think massive and unreported benefits from corporate funds is a normal tax/fraud investigation?

I'm not a big white collar guy, but that kind of misappropriation/tax fraud is pretty commonly what CEOs go up for.

[Armchair Lawyer]

So...arrest Hunter Biden for failure to pay for his rides on Air Force 2?

How much does that typically cost? For a trip to China? A first class ticket to China is $20,000. So at LEAST that amount in undeclared income. Per trip. A Charter jet to China is $155,000.....

Should we check Hunter's tax returns and see if he declared that?

[Sarcastr0]

Jesus, your partisanship makes you say silly things.

I don't know anything about the policies regarding rides on AF 2, but 1) I'll bet you don't either, and 2) It's not unreported income.

Your analogy sucks.

[Armchair Lawyer]

If Hunter got an item of value for free, then that item of value would count as income.

If you company gives you free housing, that counts as income, no?
If your company gives you a free car, that counts as income, no?
If your company gave you free rides on the company jet, unrelated to business, that would count as income, no?

[Sarcastr0]

Well, you've uncovered a massive tax fraud scheme going back decades!

Or maybe you don't know what you're talking about.

[David Nieporent]

If you company gives you free housing, that counts as income, no?
If your company gives you a free car, that counts as income, no?
If your company gave you free rides on the company jet, unrelated to business, that would count as income, no?

Sure. Was the U.S. government Hunter Biden's employer?

[NToJ]

"Sure. Was the U.S. government Hunter Biden’s employer?"

So you're saying President Trump's children did fail to report income?

[Michael P]

Did Congress authorize that expenditure? Or would it have been income to the then-VP, as a benefit provided to his family? You may have uncovered a bigger and more substantial criminal conspiracy here!

[Sarcastr0]

Just because you don't know how federal budgets work doesn't mean no one does.

[Sarcastr0]

Also, as DMN has pointed out a number of times 'someone else spent money' is not the test for if something counts as income.

[I Callahan]

Hah!! That’s not the pot calling the kettle black or anything…

[David Nieporent]

On what theory would Hunter Biden be liable for taxes for his rides on Air Force 2? Now, Joe Biden might be liable for taxes for Hunter Biden's rides on Air Force 2, but why would Hunter?

[Armchair Lawyer]

That's a great point you bring up. Depends how it is characterized.

Let's say you receive a massive service. For the sake of argument, let's put a ride on Air Force 2 to China at the same cost as a First Class ticket to China. ~$23,000

Is this considered a gift, from Joe Biden to Hunter Biden? If so, Joe owes gift taxes on it.
Is it considered a fringe benefit Hunter is somehow getting in from the government? Then Hunter owes taxes on it.
Or is it considered more like a prize? In which case, Hunter owes taxes on it

What are the taxes on a free first class flight to China?
How would you characterize something like this?

[Sarcastr0]

You're working up quite a sweat trying to keep this analogy going.

[Brett Bellmore]

The thing is, it's not an analogy.

Say I've got a wealthy friend, and he gives me a $20 grand flight on his private plane? Somebody genuinely does owe taxes on it.

[Sarcastr0]

Ah. So it's whattaboutism. Whataboutism that is
1) common practice, unlike the Trump Org's actions
2) not even in the same ballpark of magnitude.

Also, did you see the indictment that dropped on the Trump Org CEO? Yeah, you may want to take a look before you argue it's normal stuff.

[David Nieporent]

Well, not exactly. And not at all, if he gives you a $15,000 flight on said plane.

[bernard11]

No, Brett. You don't owe a dime of tax if he gives you the flight.

If a someone gives you the flight as part of your compensation then you do owe taxes on it. Say you win the sales contest and get a trip to Hawaii for you and your wife.

That's taxable compensation. You pay income tax and the company pays withholding tax - which BTW the Trump Organization didn't do, because of course.

None of this has crap to with Weisselberg, of course. It'a all a massive distraction. The right's defense of Trump has gone form, "Look. Hillary Clinton!" to "Look. Hunter Biden!" It's moronic whatabouttery that has zip to do with ehat they are defending.

Weisselberg is charged with failing to pay tax on $1.7M, and you and A.L. are complaining about what might be a $20K plane ride which was not employee compensation to begin with, and the rules surrounding which are not clear in any event. Fucking idiocy.

Do we even know whether the President or VP are authorized to invite personal guests along on flights?

[SimonP]

Wow, even for an "armchair lawyer," your ignorance of the taxation of income is really striking. I can't comprehend how you feel entitled to say another word on the subject, honestly.

[bernard11]

They’re looking to see if certain invididuals got “leased cars” from the organization, without reporting them on their tax returns. And seeking criminal charges?! This is weak sauce. It’s civil at best, and a penalty.

Depends on the scope, I'd say. It sounds like Weisselberg got an awful lot of his compensation in the form of things like rent-free apartments, cars, tuition payments, and so on. That's more than a company car.

[Armchair Lawyer]

This is civil stuff. An audit on the tax returns. Maybe a civil penalty. The dude is a CFO of a major corporation. The things you're mentioning are a small percentage of his pay, at best.

Again, see Hunter Biden above. How much is a ride on Air Force 1 worth? Did Hunter pay taxes on it?

[Sarcastr0]

This is civil stuff.

Just because you feel it doesn't mean it's true.

[bernard11]

1. As I said, depends on the scope. Leona Helmsley went to jail for not reporting benefits she got from the company.

2. Weisselberg was paid about $800K a year, according to the NYT. That strikes me as very low considering, as you say, "The dude is a CFO of a major corporation." So maybe all that other stuff was intended to make up for the low salary, and was not "a small percentage of his pay, at best. " We don't actually know at this point.

3. Oh, STFU about Hunter Biden. Is that really your answer to everything?

[Armchair Lawyer]

"Leona Helmsley was sent to jail for not reporting benefits she got from the company"

It was just a tad more severe than that. One count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, three counts of tax evasion, three counts of filing false personal tax returns, sixteen counts of assisting in the filing of false corporate and partnership tax returns, and ten counts of mail fraud. Oh, the extortion charges were dropped.

Involved in that was charging over 8 million dollars in personal renovations to the company she owned....

[Armchair Lawyer]

2 .That strikes me as very low considering, as you say, “The dude is a CFO of a major corporation.” $800K a year strikes you as "very low"? But a company car lease somehow makes up for it?

3. "Shut up about Hunter Biden"
Why? It's an example of the super-selective persecution. Jesus, Hunter is getting $80,000 Diamonds from the Chinese as a "gift"...and not declaring those as income.

[SimonP]

$800k for a C-suite executive of a major corporation is very low. Trump Organization, by revenue, is about the size of Hormel, which paid $2.9 million to its CFO in 2020 (including salary, bonus, and equity compensation). It's not at all unreasonable to surmise that part of the deal Weisselberg (and, ahem, other Trump Org executives) was getting was a smaller comp package supplemented by generous "benefits" paid directly by the company.

[Sarcastr0]

Hey AL, look at the indictment:

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20982373/trump-organization-indictment.pdf

And then maybe reconsider the hill you're dying on.

[Bob from Ohio]

Its not Trump personally so few really care.

Amusingly trivial crime and a transparent attempt to get Weisberg to roll over.

[bernard11]

Massive tax evasion is not an "amusingly trivial crime"

a transparent attempt to get Weisberg to roll over.

Like that's never happened to anyone else.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Did you hear the one where the Russians gave Trump an $80,000 diamond, and Trump didn't declare it on his taxes?

[Brett Bellmore]

No, I didn't. Who anonymously told a reporter that one?

[Bob from Ohio]

"Massive tax evasion is not an “amusingly trivial crime”

Its not on that scale, its failure to properly account for fringe benefits on NY state returns.

A civil case but TRUMP!!!!

[Sarcastr0]

The sudden discovery if your expertise in NY white collar prosecution policies leaves me pretty skeptical.

[Bob from Ohio]

Ok smart guy, find another example.

Lots of corporations pay for their employees cell phones. The employee is then supposed to account for personal use and pay taxes on that value. Do you think many do and if not, when is NY going to prosecute them?

[David Nieporent]

I think none do. Given the costs of cell phones, do you think the value of their personal use of those phones is anything other than de minimis?

[Armchair Lawyer]

Well, with cell phone bills being like $100 a month, that often adds up to $1200 a year or so in free services.

[David Nieporent]

It's not the whole cell phone bill; it's only the value of their personal use of the cell phones.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Say they use it 50-50 business - Personal.

So, just $600 a year?

[bernard11]

How big is it, Bob?

Have you seen the documents or financial data? If not, why are you just throwing crap out there?

[Bob from Ohio]

Just going by press reports like everyone else.

He ain't Al Capone no matter how you slice it.

[Sarcastr0]

Ah. So you don't care about it being true, you just wanted to say it.

[David Nieporent]

Its not on that scale, its failure to properly account for fringe benefits on NY state returns.

No. You're lying. It's (allegedly, of course) deliberate tax fraud. Not "failure to properly account for." And it's not "fringe benefits." It's income. (Also, it's NY state returns because this is a NY state prosecution, but the conduct, if true as alleged, involves federal taxes also.)

[Commenter_XY]

Krayt....I fully expect Bill Cosby to haul Andrea Constand into court to claw back the substantial money he paid her to keep quiet. She violated that agreement.

[Illocust]

I've been thinking recently that pleabargaining should probably be illegal, because there is no check or balance on a DA abusing the power. Which due to human nature means its a power that gets abused more and more as time goes on. The problem is, that I can't think of a way it could be illegalized. At its most fundamental its just a handshake agreement that if a defendant pleads guilty then the DA won't argue for a higher punishment in court. You can't enforce a law against a handshake agreement.

[Queen Amalthea]

IIRC some states tried to bar plea bargaining a few decades ago (Alaska?).

[Moderation4ever]

Remember that most plea-bargaining require a judge to sign off. The Crosby case is different in that the agreement was not really signoff on and so it was vulnerable. I think there is need for legislation to define when deal is done and when it is not.

As to plea-bargaining itself, could we really deal with all the court cases if we did not use it as a tool to resolve cases. It has problem, but do we have an alternative?

[Brett Bellmore]

That's actually the problem: Plea bargaining enables and relies upon the over-criminalization of life. Without it, prosecutors would have to pick which cases were actually worth pursuing, and then actually prove them in a trial. Rather than just grossly over-charging and pleading down in return for a guilty plea.

[jb]

Yes--if we didn't have plea bargaining it would require us to actually think about which cases were worth prosecuting. Other than making a DA's life easier, what's the social value of a defendant choosing between wildly disparate "guilty" outcomes like six months of probation if they take a plea vs. ten years in prison if they go to trial and are found guilty?

[Illocust]

Hmmm, but even with a judge sign off, plea bargains are made by people under threat. There needs to be some way for the judge to be seeing what that threat is and if it could be seen as a legitimate one in just system. Do you want to roll the dice on a jury is one thing. Sign this guilty plea or we'll go after your mother is not a legitimate tactic for any justice system. (Much like under torture, people will often say anything to protect a loved one, so the confession would be suspect)

On your second point, no I don't think we could deal with all the cases that go through our current legal system, but that leads to the question of would we have so many bad laws if we had to expend the resources to prosecute them. We have enough resources to prosecute cases that have victims.

[bernard11]

but that leads to the question of would we have so many bad laws if we had to expend the resources to prosecute them.

Well, OK. But let's not assume the problem is too many "bad laws."

What percentage of criminal prosecutions are for what you would consider "bad laws," as opposed to something that pretty much everyone agrees should be a crime?

Data is sometimes useful.

[Harvey Mosley]

I don't have the percentages but any drug crime that doesn't involve a minor should not BE a crime. The same with prostitution between consenting adults. Those two are an easy start.

[Brett Bellmore]

Prosecutors generally plea bargain in order to avoid the work of a trial they might lose. The answer is to require all charges to be proven in a trial.

Would the explosion of trials render the current level of charging impossible to sustain, so that prosecutors would have to prioritize? Exactly.

[Queen Amalthea]

The problem with this is is that it's often the defendant who is desperate to get the case over with and avoid the lengthy process of a trial.

[Brett Bellmore]

Sure, that's true. But if the prosecutor had no choice but to either forget the case, or bring it to trial, he's going to be forced to, as I say, prioritize. So far fewer charges would be brought in the first place.

The problem is that even innocent defendants are desperate to get the case over, desperate enough to plead guilty to a lesser charge.

I will grant that the other half of my prescription is legally requiring the government to make acquitted defendants whole after the trial.

[Queen Amalthea]

Lots of defendants are in jail unable to make bail without trial. The prosecutor is living off tax money, I think I know who that would hit the worst.

I agree about over-charging though, but I don't think this fixes that.

[David Nieporent]

The problem is that even innocent defendants are desperate to get the case over, desperate enough to plead guilty to a lesser charge.

Maybe if your side weren't demagoguing the bail issue, so that so many of those innocent defendants weren't forced to sit in jail while they're waiting for the case to be over, then this wouldn't happen so much.

[Harvey Mosley]

I agree. "My side" is horrible on the bail issue. Bail should only ever be used to guarantee appearance at the trial. I also believe the right to a speedy trial should not be able to be waived. Add those two to the elimination of plea bargaining and it would work wonders on the criminal justice system.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Prosecutors generally plea bargain in order to avoid the work of a trial they might lose. "

They don't lose trials very often. Beating half wit PDs at trial is not to hard.

Its work load management, that's it.

[KenveeB]

"Prosecutors generally plea bargain in order to avoid the work of a trial they might lose. The answer is to require all charges to be proven in a trial."

Have you been a prosecutor? Most pleas are for the slam-dunk cases that there's no point actually going to trial because there's no possible defense and everything's obvious. Yes, there are pleas for cases you might lose, but certainly not enough for it to be "generally."

[David Nieporent]

Prosecutors generally plea bargain in order to avoid the work of a trial they might lose.

That's our Brett Bellmore: Dunning-Kruger to the Max. No, that's not why they "generally plea bargain."

[ReaderY]

I’ll repeat a thread posted last week.

Several circuit courts of appeals have held, as the law review article linked below explains, that bisexuals, unlike hererosexuals and homosexuals, are immune from federal civil rights sexual harassment liability. The reason is that federal civil rights law simply does not prohibit sexual harassment as such. It’s completely legal. It only prohibits discriminatory sexual harassment, harassment that treats one sex differently from the other.

Bisexual harassment is equal opportunity harassment. It does not discriminate, and is therefore immune from discrimination law. The law review article calls this the “equal opportunity harasser defense” or the “bisexual harasser defense.”

My question is this. It seems to me that a heterosexual or homosexual sued for sexual harassment is really being sued over his sexual orientation. That’s the only element that distinguishes legal from illegal harassment. Homosexuals and heterosexuals are liable, bisexuals are immune. And because Bostock held that sexual orientation is unseverably connected to sex, the bisexual harasser is immune, and the non-bisexual harasser liable, solely because of his or her sex. After all, the sole reason bisexuals are equal opportunity harassers and heterosexuals and homosexuals arenmt. is because of their sexual identity, their status, not their conduct.

The whole point of like of cases leading to Bostock is that a legislature can’t impose penalties on a status like gender identity by labeling it conduct.

It would seem that that would be a defense. Either sexual harassment law as it now stands is unconstitutional, or the Civil rights code prohibits judges from enforcing it, because hufges are independently prohibited from discriminating in their rulings.

Congress may well be free to pass laws prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace. But is it free to prohibit only “discriminatroy” sexual harassment, only sexual harassment done by members of one sexual orientation and not others? After all, companies can insulate themselves from liability by hiting only bisexuals as managers and supervisors. The law purposes what it incents. After Bostock, can a law whose purpose is to incent companies to hire only bisexuals to management roles really call itself a civil rights law?

If Congress is free to pass such a law, why wouldn’t a state be free to prohibit what it considers “discriminatory” marriage? Why should the label matter?

https://www.law.upenn.edu/journals/jbl/articles/volume7/issue2/Turner7U.Pa.J.Lab.&Emp.L.341(2005).pdf

[ReaderY]

Last week commenters on this thread flatly denied this situation exists. They quited a dictionary definition of sexual harassment and then said it has nothing to do with the genders of those harassed. True that. But the whole point, the whole problem, is that the dictionary definition of sexual harassment, but itself, isn’t illegal. Only DISCRIMINATORY sexual harassment is.

[Illocust]

The answer is it doesn't matter what the original justification for the law was. The original justification will be ignored in prosecution.

[ReaderY]

But several circuits have held that it does matter. That’s why the “equal opportunity harasser” defense exists. It’s currently a valid defense.

[swood1000]

I'll repeat a response I made last week that you didn't reply to.

As far as the constitutional question is concerned, is being sexually attracted to a single sex instead of to both sexes a suspect class? If not, then perhaps only a rational basis needs to be found to justify a law that singles such people out.

The argument of the heterosexual is, “If I were attracted to both sexes I would be treated differently.” But that doesn’t fall under Bostock because the person would not be treated differently if he were a different sex.

The law here does not actually prohibit defendant’s conduct as such, at all. It only prohibits it when done in a non-bisexual manner, that is, by a non-bisexual.

It does prohibit the defendant’s conduct, since the defendant discriminated on the basis of sex.

As far as whether the bisexual has a free ride, maybe some evidence could be amassed demonstrating that bisexuals, though attracted to both men and women, have different sexual feelings toward each group. If so, then he was attracted to the woman for reason peculiar to woman, and consequently because of her sex.

[ReaderY]

I’ll reply. Before we get to the constitutionalty question we have the Civil Rights Act itself. If it violates the Civil Rights Act to prohibit sexual behavior based solely on the sex it’s directed at, which is what sexual orientation discrinination does, then sexual harassment law as currently interpreted violates the Civil Rights Act, because that’s exactly what making bisexual status a defense to liability for secual harassment does. A law can’t be interpreted to violate itself.

Bostock’s inclusion of sexual orientation within the ambit of Civil Rights law is therefore at odds with the current interpretation of harassment stemming from the same law, which makes the question of whether sexual harassment is lawful or not depend solely on the harasser’s sexual orientation.

So you have to get through the statutory problem before uou reach the constitutional one.

If you can do that, then yes - the prohibition on sexual harassment can indeed be upheld without modification if the Supreme Court is willing to say sexual orientation is not in any way a suspect class. But that would seem to be at some tension nof only with its rulings on sodomy laws, gay marriage, etc., but Bostock’s holding that sexual orientation is to be treated as an element of sex. If statutes making private discrimination based on sex implicitly also prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, then it’s hard to understand why a constitutional prohibition on givernment discrimination based on sex wouldn’t do the same thing.

[David Nieporent]

then sexual harassment law as currently interpreted violates the Civil Rights Act,

This is gibberish. Law does not and cannot violate law — let alone itself!

Bostock’s inclusion of sexual orientation within the ambit of Civil Rights law

Your analysis is confused. Bostock does not include sexual orientation within the ambit of civil rights law. Bostock says that discrimination on the basis of the sex of who one of a particular sex sleeps with is discrimination on the basis of sex.

which makes the question of whether sexual harassment is lawful or not depend solely on the harasser’s sexual orientation.

No. It depends on the harasser's acts and motives, not his or her sexual orientation.

[ReaderY]

The fundamental issue here is that who a person sexually harasses is just as driven by their sexual orientation as who they sleep with.

That’s the fundamental issue. And if we accept this, it should be as unlawful to sue people solely because of their sexual orientation as it is to fire them.

The fact that the bisexual harasser harasses bisexually is as direct a result of bisexual status, and is not in any way independent of that status, as the fact that the homosexual dates homosexually. Saying I sued because he harasses men is no different from saying I fired because he dates men. The thing that makes the conduct suable or fireable, that distinguishes acceptable from unacceptable, is solely the person’s sexual orientation.

If the law forbid harassment as such, you could say there was some sort of conduct being prohibited independent of sexual orientation status. But it doesn’t. Harassment as such is every bit as lawful as dating. That’s the underlying problem, the smoking gun. Only the sexual orientation itself, the harasser’s sexual orientation is made illegal.

And judges absolutely can interpret laws in ways that create contradictions, e.g. a party is required to do something under one principle or interpretation but forbidden under another. Happens all the time.

[David Nieporent]

The fundamental issue here is that who a person sexually harasses is just as driven by their sexual orientation as who they sleep with.

I guess that's fundamental to something, but not to employment law.

Contrary to what you seem to believe, employment law does not ask what the harasser's sexual orientation is. A straight employer who harasses a male employee based on the employee's sex is just as liable as a gay employer who harasses a male employee based on the employee's sex.

[ReaderY]

Also, dating also depends on the dater’s acts and motives. How can it be distinguished from the dater’s sexual orientation? To say that a person’s tendancy to do sexual activities with a member of a particular sex can somehow be distinguished from their sexual orientation is exactly what Bostock forbids.

Again, if sexual harassment in of itself were illegal independently of the harasser’s sexual orientation, if it the law regarded sexual harassment as being itself wrong, then there could be distinguishable conduct. But again, it isn’t and the law doesn’t. The fact that the act of sexual harassment by itself is completely legal sexual conduct, sexual conduct that is made illegal based solely on the harasser’s sexual orientation, that’s the problem.

[ReaderY]

As to your second issue, that liability could occur if a bisexual subjectively thinks or feels differently about men than women, the requirement is not that a person’s subjecive feelings are different. Their behavior has to be different. If there is no disparate treatment of any kind, it’s just not a violation of the Civil Rights Act for a supervisor to write down racist thoughts in a private diary. It’s not even a violation to treat people differently in a minor way, such as )to use Justice Kennedy’s example) smiling whenever someone of one’s own religion passes by. The idea that people can be held liable solely for thoughts disconnected from any behavior seems very constitutionally problematic.

It seems to me that if Congress wants to prohibit sexual harassment, it has to do so without regard to sexual orientation. Simply labling one sexual orientation’s sexual behavior “discriminatory” and the same behavior when done by a different orientation “equal opportunity” doesn’t avoid the problem.

If the problem could be avoided that easily, states could get around Obergefelle simply by prohibiting what they might label “segregated marriage” and saying it’s the act of segregation, not the sexual orientation involved, that’s prohibited.

[swood1000]

The single-sex harasser is being charged with discriminating on the basis of sex. You are saying that the real offense is sexual harassment, that the discriminatory character of it adds nothing of substance to the offense, and that to let the bisexual harasser off is to impose a penalty on the single-sex harasser solely because of his single-sex status. But the legislature defined the offense as discrimination, not solely harassment, thus making unequal treatment part of the offense. You have the burden of showing that the importance of unequal treatment is legally insufficient to permit the law to punish only when it is present. Can you make that case?

[shawn_dude]

Discrimination based on sex also includes discrimination based on one's lack of adherence to traditional sex roles. That can cover a lot of various behaviors. But without question, someone who is known to be bisexual is therefore known to have sex outside of traditional sex roles for their gender.

[AtR]

Fascinating case out of Ohio of a judge requiring COVID vaccination as a condition for probation. Any thoughts on legality, constitutionality, and ethics?

https://local12.com/news/nation-world/ohio-judge-admits-hes-mandating-covid-19-vaccinations-as-conditions-of-probation-columbus-cincinnati-franklin-county-coronavirus-vaccine-mandatory-sentencing

[Greg J]

Held: Arizona’s out-of-precinct policy and HB 2023 do not violate §2 of the VRA, and HB 2023 was not enacted with a racially discriminatory purpose. Pp. 12–37.

HAHAHAHA

[Greg J]

I may have to check on on the ScotusBlog live blog, just to enjoy the whining

I really enjoy the current situation, where I can get the SCOTUS opinions just as fast as they can

[Greg J]

So far, the decision is looking good:

The size of the burden imposed by a challenged voting rule is highly relevant. Voting necessarily requires some effort and compliance with some rules; thus, the concept of a voting system that is “equally open” and that furnishes equal “opportunity” to cast a ballot must tolerate the “usual burdens of voting.” Crawford v. Marion County Election Bd., 553 U. S. 181, 198. Mere inconvenience is insufficient.

The degree to which a voting rule departs from what was standard practice when §2 was amended in 1982 is a relevant consideration.

1982, not 2020

The mere fact that there is some disparity in impact does not necessarily mean that a system is not equally open or that it does not give everyone an equal opportunity to vote. And small disparities should not be artificially magnified

Thus, where a State provides multiple ways to vote, any burden associated with one option cannot be evaluated with- out also taking into account the other available means

The strength of the state interests—such as the strong and entirely legitimate state interest in preventing election fraud

[Greg J]

AFP v Bonta:

THE CHIEF JUSTICE delivered the opinion of the Court with respect
to all but Part II–B–1, concluding that California’s disclosure require- ment is facially invalid because it burdens donors’ First Amendment rights and is not narrowly tailored to an important government inter- est.

[bernard11]

So Roberts continues his career-long assault on voting rights.

No big surprise there.

[Greg J]

AFP v Bonta is about teh Democrats assault on the 1st Amendment

Brnovich is about the Democrats decades long assault on voting rights. Note: anything that makes vote fraud easier is an assault on voting rights. Allowing a fraudulent vote is the exact same wrong as denying a person the right to vote, since that fraudulent vote cancels out a legitimate vote

[bernard11]

Note: anything that makes vote fraud easier is an assault on voting rights. Allowing a fraudulent vote is the exact same wrong as denying a person the right to vote, since that fraudulent vote cancels out a legitimate vote

Vote fraud is a negligible problem, as any number of investigations have shown. Just claiming that some practice will lead to a lot of fraud establishes nothing.

[Greg J]

Bzzt

Thank you for playing, now GFY

There's not the slightest reason to object to photo ID requirements, other than that you want to make it easier for people to impersonate other voters.

The fact that the Democrats fight tooth and nail against such requirements tells us there's a lot of fraud going on that hasn't been caught, and that teh "experts" you quote are just Democrat shills

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

It is just as logical to conclude that the fact that Republicans "fight tooth and nail" FOR such requirements tells us that they want to suppress voters who typically vote against them.

Even without photo ID requirements, it is extremely difficult to impersonate other voters. If you had any experience as an election judge, you would realize that. And the result of surviving all that difficulty is a single illicit vote. Why go to that trouble when there are much more efficient and effective ways to cheat?

[David Nieporent]

There's no "voting rights" issue here. And the Biden DOJ agreed that these laws were fine.

[jslinner]

Humans are unfit as judges. Limited intellect, biased, hypocritical. Bring on the machines.

[Greg J]

Kagan apparently has a major cry-fest going on in Brnovich at the majority not saying Democrats have a Constitutional Right to "collect ballots", do whatever they want to them, and then turn them in.

Sorry, but you can't claim to allow ballot harvesting, AND claim you care about the right to vote

Allowing massive fraud destroys the right to vote

[Sarcastr0]

Gloating is like masturbation. We all do it, but maybe let your spitefulness flag fly in public.

Though 5 times in a row is pretty impressive.

[Greg J]

The first post was pure unadulterated gloating

The rest were mostly bringing out key holdings in the case. isn't that what we should be doing in a law blog?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

This is gloating:

These limp nips by conservatives at the ankles of their betters will accelerate and intensify the stomping of right-wingers -- half-educated racists, superstitious gay-bashers, backwater xenophobes, downscale misognyists -- into political and societal irrelevance in the American culture war.

[Greg J]

Ok, more than one was gloating. 🙂

But not 5 🙂

[SimonP]

Yeah, we'll see how much gloating you do when your vote gets thrown out because you moved, but your state de-funded the electoral board and state offices responsible for maintaining the voter registry, so your move wasn't properly processed and you ended up voting provisionally, but failed to submit a notarized affidavit within three days of election day to the required election office, due to the fact that their website didn't include the right mailing address.

Conservatives love the idea that voting will be harder for black and brown voters. What they don't seem to grasp is that a system that makes politicians less beholden to their opposition is one where the politicians can ignore the wishes of their own constituents, as well.

[Queen Amalthea]

"Sorry, but you can’t claim to allow ballot harvesting, AND claim you care about the right to vote"

Sure you can. On it's face there's not only nothing necessarily bad about, say, me going to my shut in neighbors' house and turning in their votes for them it's a good thing in that it helps people whose consent matters to a legitimate government vote where they may not have otherwise.

[Illocust]

I really can't tell if this is sarcasm. It sounds like your making a very obvious euphanism for stealing your neighbors vote because you know they aren't likely to find out you did, but the world is crazy enough that you might be serious.

[Queen Amalthea]

People deliver things for people all the time without using those things fraudulently. You know, I actually do buy two shut-in neighbors groceries regularly. Never stolen from them.I don't see what would be wrong with me doing the same with their votes.

[Bob from Ohio]

You fully know we are talking about organized political efforts to collect many ballots and deliver to the elections board. Not helping out a neighbor.

[David Nieporent]

That's true, but the law does not distinguish. Only family members, household members, and caregivers may deliver other people's ballots — not neighbors.

[Greg J]

Which is perfectly fine.

Anyone "confined to their home" has a caregiver, who can take the ballot in, assuming they can't just mail it in.

The point of having secret ballots is that it makes things like voter intimidation and vote buying harder to do. The point of "vote harvesting" is to make them easier to do.

Vote harvesting should never be allowed

[Queen Amalthea]

That's just not true on its face. I don't intimidate or buy anything from my neighbors when I take money from them and bring things back for them.

Also, is the 'caregiver' 'vote harvesting?' Why not be concerned they are going to intimidate or buy the shut-in's vote?

I certainly don't think there's a constitutional problem with barring 'vote harvesting.' My argument is that it's not facially wrong.

[David Nieporent]

Also, is the ‘caregiver’ ‘vote harvesting?’ Why not be concerned they are going to intimidate or buy the shut-in’s vote?

Obviously the reason is because a caregiver can't do this en masse, so the same risk of ballot harvesting fraud isn't present.

[Greg J]

1: What the Democrats are doing isn't "going to help your neighbor", it's people collecting hundreds to thousands of ballots

2: Your neighbor can drop their ballots in the mail and mail them back. They don't need your help

[shawn_dude]

All of this angst would be more believable were it not for GOP anti-voting laws makig it illegal to give voters free bus rides from church to their polling place or, gasp!, handing out water to long lines at polling places.

You do realize we can see the GOP winking when they say this is for ::wink wink:: election fraud prevention ::wink wink::

[David Nieporent]

Republicans might be insincere when they enact some of these rules and claim it's about fraud, but Democrats are also insincere when they claim that these rules are voter suppression.

"Grandpa, tell me about what they did to you when you tried to vote."
"They turned fire hoses on us and set police dogs on us. And they told us that if we tried to vote we'd be fired and evicted."

"Dad, tell me about what they did to you when you tried to vote."
"I had to bring my own water with me when I stood on the voting line."

(Is there any law that "make it illegal to give voters free bus rides from church to their polling place"?)

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

The water thing in Georgia is clearly voter suppression by Republicans, since they are the ones who create the long lines by drastically reducing the number of polling places. And besides, the "No Electioneering Zone" already protects voters from electioneering if their place in line is within the zone. If it is outside the zone, electioneering is fine, just like someone walking from their car to the polling place. Why is a separate law needed for people outside the zone but in line? Only to make standing in the long line unpleasant enough to dissuade voters from doing it.

[David Nieporent]

The water thing in Georgia is clearly voter suppression

Except for the fact that it doesn't suppress any votes!

since they are the ones who create the long lines by drastically reducing the number of polling places.

No, that's not the way it works. Polling places — the number and location — are established by local election boards, not by the state. And while the state government of Georgia is of course run by Republicans, local election boards in urban areas where most Democrats live are run by Democrats, not Republicans.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Local election boards do not raise their own revenue and set their own budgets. They are at the mercy of county officials and state legislatures. The number of polling places they open and staff is entirely dependent on the budget they are given. I've been through this battle many many times, working for a board of elections in an area that ran politically counter to the state as a whole.

[David Nieporent]

Local election boards do not raise their own revenue and set their own budgets. They are at the mercy of county officials

And the counties where most Democrats live are run by (wait for it) Democrats.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

"Except for the fact that it doesn’t suppress any votes!"

I would suggest that both sides of that particular debate in Georgia disagree with you.

[David Nieporent]

I would suggest that both sides of that particular debate in Georgia disagree with you.

Do they? Or is it just an elaborate kabuki dance? Both sides benefit from pretending otherwise, in order to fire up their respective bases.

[Michael P]

Gasp! Those vicious anti-voting GOPers in New York State! What *is* this world coming to?

[Greg J]

More from Brnovich:

The disparate-im- pact model employed in Title VII and Fair Housing Act cases is not useful here.

Section 2(b) directs courts to consider “the totality of circum- stances,” but the dissent would make §2 turn almost entirely on one circumstance: disparate impact. The dissent also would adopt a least- restrictive means requirement that would force a State to prove that the interest served by its voting rule could not be accomplished in any other less burdensome way. Such a requirement has no footing in the text of §2 or the Court’s precedent construing it and would have the potential to invalidate just about any voting rule a State adopts. Section 2 of the VRA provides vital protection against discriminatory voting rules, and no one suggests that discrimination in voting has been extirpated or that the threat has been eliminated. Even so, §2 does not transfer the States’ authority to set non-discriminatory voting rules to the federal courts

No more BS comparisons of small impacts:
A procedure that appears to work for 98% or more of voters to whom it applies—minority and non-minority alike—is unlikely to render a system unequally open.

The kill shot:
But §2 does not require a State to show that its chosen policy is absolutely necessary or that a less restrictive means would not adequately serve the State’s objectives. Considering the modest burdens allegedly imposed by Arizona’s out- of-precinct policy, the small size of its disparate impact, and the State’s justifications, the rule does not violate §2.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Sounds like progressives are finally at the point where they get to explain to black women that black women are oppressing white men who feel feminine.

[Sarcastr0]

Do you specialize in finding anecdotes you like and posting 'As prophesied...IT BEGINS!'

[Greg J]

It's about time:

Even if the plaintiffs were able to demonstrate a disparate burden caused by HB 2023, the State’s “compelling interest in preserving the integrity of its election procedures” would suffice to avoid §2 liability. Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U. S. 1, 4. The Court of Appeals viewed the State’s justifications for HB 2023 as tenuous largely because there was no evidence of early ballot fraud in Arizona. But prevention of fraud is not the only legitimate interest served by restrictions on ballot collection. Third-party ballot collection can lead to pressure and intimidation. Further, a State may take action to prevent election fraud without waiting for it to occur within its own borders.

[Greg J]

Final shot:

The Court of Appeals concluded that the District Court committed clear error by failing to apply a “cat’s paw” theory—which analyzes whether an actor was a “dupe” who was “used by another to accomplish his purposes.” That theory has its origin in employment discrimination cases and has no application to legislative bodies.

[Brett Bellmore]

Think I'll head over to election law blog to enjoy the whining.

[bernard11]

Anything to keep those nasty city people from voting. Right, Brett?

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, it is entertaining to see them treating less than a half a percent difference in voting rates as "disparate impact" which desperately needs remedying. Sometimes I wonder if they ever have moments when they realize how insane they've become.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Enjoy these paltry, temporary blessings while you can, Brett, with the other racist voter suppressors.

When the Court is enlarged, the filibuster further diminished (if not eliminated), the House (with it, Electoral College) enlarged, two or three states admitted, the circuit and district courts enlarged, and the Republican Party locked out of national relevance in improving, liberal-libertarian, modern American, you can (1) remember these 'good old days,' (2) ask yourself whether it was worth it, and/or (3) hope for magnanimity from your betters.

[Commenter_XY]

Arthur, nobody is enlarging the SCoTUS. We both know that. The votes are simply not there.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

That unqualified declaration reminds me of 'segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.'

The American mainstream will continue to call the shots, and to win the elections with increasing frequency. The arc of progress is relatively predictable -- the filibuster threshold was 67 when I was younger, for example.

Conservatives should hope the liberal-libertarian mainstream is magnanimous in victory, but so far I see no signs they are acting in a way that would promote it.

[Greg J]

‘segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.’

Oh, you mean like the Democrat controlled Universities that have racially segregated housing, rest areas, a graduations?

Yeah, you Democrats are doing an effective job of keeping segregation forever, no matter how much we Republicans fight against it

[Commenter_XY]

Arthur...it is just math, and then actuarial math as the cherry on top. The Senate is 50/50. One or two of those Team D senators looks old enough to croak next week. Nobody is enlarging the SCoTUS. We both know that. The votes are simply not there.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Progress sometimes requires time . . . Weeks, months, maybe a few years in this case.

It is relatively easy for me to wait, because I have watched American progress develop — against the wishes and works of right-wingers in America — throughout my lifetime.

Winning the culture war promotes a healthy perspective.

Clingers wouldn’t understand.

[Brett Bellmore]

As it was originally, segregation is a Democratic obsession.

[dwb68]

Seems relevant given PennEast:

What happens when two private companies sue to condemn the same property? How is the judge supposed to decide that?

https://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-maglev-westport-20210630-hetpya4vtjfbhgsskh5fode7he-story.html

"

The proposed $10 billion, high-speed maglev train between Baltimore and Washington and a major waterfront housing development planned in the city’s Westport neighborhood are hurtling toward a legal showdown: Both would require the same land.

In a legal complaint whose outcome likely will decide which project moves forward, Baltimore-Washington Rapid Rail is seeking to condemn the 43-acre undeveloped property along Kloman Street, across the light rail tracks from Westport and the Exelon Generation station."

My prior is that Baltimore City is so corrupt and poorly managed, if the City is for it I'm against it.

On the other hand, I think Maglev is a waste of taxpayer money. Acela never panned out.

Maybe the dueling lawsuits will have the accidental result of cancelling both project.

[dwb68]

But the reality and history of Baltimore suggests that both projects will eventually go forward, meaning that the housing development will move forward, then people will get a Maglev train running through their back yard, then the development will be abandoned in favor of junkies and drug dealers.

[Bob from Ohio]

"What happens when two private companies sue to condemn the same property? How is the judge supposed to decide that?"

The first filed suit is lis pendens so the second suit loses.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY

This White, male, conservative
blog has operated for
21 DAYS
without publishing a vile
racial slur and for
2 YEARS
without imposing partisan,
viewpoint-based censorship.

Congratulations (I guess).

[Krayt]

Hooray! The end of foot voting and the beginning of one world government commences!

Don't worry, it's just about collecting money. Oh, wait. Most of these countries are steeped in corruption. Not your country though, dear reader. Your country has disinterested politicians out for the common good, and are not out to cheesily buy votes with the money of others so they can get elected, hold power, and their families' fortunes mysteriously go up at multiples of their official salaries.

[dwb68]

Pintrest will ban weight loss ads, because American obesity and heart disease are no longer a problem. I mean, we should all accept body diversity and the associated heart attacks, strokes, and cancer.

[ReaderY]

Sure. Suppose that a state passes a law that makes rape illegal for homosexuals and heterosexuals, but not bisexuals. Suppose it’s a general law, nothing to do with the workplace. The law prohibits “discriminatory” rape. A single act of homosexual or heterosexual rape is illegal; any amount of indiscriminate serial rape is fine, legislature has no problem with it.

Would such a law be constitutional? Assume it’s labeled a discrimination law, not a rape law. Is “the importance of unequal treatment” legally sufficent to justify treating different sexual orientations so vastly differently?

What about the same for a statutory rape law? In the statutory rape context, laws that prohibit homosexual teens from engaging in conduct that would be legal for heterosexual teens have already been struck down. But if government can attack discrimination by prohibiting “discriminatory” statutory rape, why can’t it equally promote gender diversity by prohibiting “non-gender-diverse” statutory rape, or attack segregation by prohibiting “segregated” statutory rape? Here too, government can say it’s not the sexual orientation itself that the law is aimed out, it’s the behavior the sexual orientation does that’s the problem, so long as the behavior the law attacks isn’t itself constitutionally protected.

Everybody can come up with fancy, civil-rights-ish-sounding labels to justify sticking it to sexual orientations they don’t like.

[ReaderY]

Sorry, this somehow got moved from a reply within my thread to a main comment.

[Shaun W]

Washington courts are ignoring the Supreme Court when it comes to Veteran’s Disability benefits in regards to divorce. Veterans are being ordered to indemnify the former spouse for loss of retirement income due to waiving a portion of their retirement to receive VA disability. When challenged, the appellate courts rule Res Judicata.

Even though Howell said “All such ordered are preempted.”

As many vets cannot afford an attorney, they are either pro se or don’t fight it at all.

[M L]

Facebook Asks: Is someone you know becoming extremist?

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