Thursday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[John F. Carr]

The government is moving the goalposts on vaccination so most of us are or soon will be legally as good as unvaccinated no matter what we got stuck with in the spring.

[Brett Bellmore]

There's starting to accumulate some evidence that you might end up biologically worse than unvaccinated, depending on what you got stuck with in the spring.

Influenza vaccination and respiratory virus interference among Department of Defense personnel during the 2017-2018 influenza season

Viral immunity interference is a known phenomenon. Apparently the way they've been handling the statistics in evaluating Covid vaccine effectiveness would mask it if it were happening, but it would explain why so many breakthrough cases.

A key point here is that the real risk kicks in for younger vaccine recipients, because they were at so little risk from Covid to begin with, that any immune interference will leave them worse off than they were unvaccinated. If you're middle aged or older, you're probably better off vaccinated, if you haven't had Covid yet.

[jb]

A paper published last year about a flu season before Covid existed is giving us new evidence about Covid vaccine effectiveness and risk?

[Absaroka]

It talks about coronavirii other than covid-19.

[Michael P]

"Virii" is not the plural of "virus" in any language. In English, "viruses" is proper. In Latin, "virus" apparently did not have a plural, or many of the other forms that normal Latin words had.

[Brett Bellmore]

It was illustrating the phenomenon. It's really hard to find anything on immune interference and Covid, at least using Google. They're burying it.

[Absaroka]

I think this might be the complete paper.

I'm not sure I follow the issues, but note this from the conclusions: "The overall results of the study showed little to no evidence supporting the association of virus interference and influenza vaccination."

[David Bremer]

Huh... it's almost like the government thinks the efficacy of the vaccine wanes after six months. Wonder where they got that crazy idea.

[Ben_]

Why should anyone willingly go along with any of their ideas when their ideas turn out wrong six months later?

Because they’re kind and respectful? Because they'd never intentionally lie? Because they've taken oaths and can be trusted to keep them?

[David Bremer]

Who is the "they" in your comment?

[Ben_]

The government

[David Bremer]

Okay, I'll listen to the scores of trained medical doctors working in private practice who say the same thing. Problem solved.

[Ben_]

Despite them being wrong repeatedly.

Go ahead and listen to whomever you choose. Leave the rest of us out of it.

[John F. Carr]

The government is issuing these orders and approvals because the people want them. It's an opinion poll on what the facts are, and in the blue states at least the opinion poll says shoot me up and order them to get shot up too. It's probable that a booster shot is better than nothing, and it's possible that it would pass a cost-benefit analysis, but the reason for all this activity is because people demand their medicine. So Biden committed to more shots ahead of the scientific recommendation and governors committed to more shots ahead of the CDC recommendation.

I liked Katherine Eban's book _Bottle of Lies_, about the Asian pharmaceutical industry. When the patent for Lipitor expired the FDA approved generics by companies that were not capable of manufacturing safe and effective drugs. The need for cheap medicine outweighed the need for real medicine. Billions of dollars were at stake.

[Brett Bellmore]

There is no "the" people in any meaningful sense. Some people want them, some people don't, and, importantly, Biden didn't actually run on issuing these orders.

You could call this the "bait and switch" administration, because there's actually very little they're doing now that they ran on doing.

[Illocust]

So I take it still no verdict on the Rittenhouse case? That's very concerning considering how it's a textbook case of self-defense. Maybe we are all lucky and the jury is arguing over whether they should declare him innocent or not guilty, but I doubt we are that lucky.

[ThePublius]

I fear some jurors are consider the ramifications of a verdict rather than his innocence or guilt.

[Commenter_XY]

My thought exactly.

[Sarcastr0]

Sometimes what you want doesn't carry the day and it's a legitimate thing and not a stolen election or juror intimidation.

[Bored Lawyer]

And sometimes when people openly threaten jurors in a pending case with retaliation, that affects their deliberations. One wonders if the politics of this case were different if you would be so blase about juror intimidation.

[Sarcastr0]

So like if he's found not guilty if I'll call the jury racist?

Nope.

[not guilty]

What facts here suggest threatening jurors with retaliation? Please be specific.

[A Thinking Mind]

That's a lame way to put it, though. It's not about me being on a specific team and rooting for them to win. It's that justice should be done because this is a clear case of self-defense. He shouldn't even be on trial, much less facing years in prison for defending himself against people who attacked him while he was fleeing.

[Sarcastr0]

Everyone keeps calling this clear or textbook self defense.

I don't think this is a very normal case. I think that's more what you feel than what is.

[Armchair Lawyer]

It's troubling. It should be textbook self defense. A child-molesting felon screams "I'm going to kill you" and chases down an underage kid in a dark parking lot at night. The kid runs, is cornered, and then has no option but to shoot to defend himself, as the felon lunges for the gun to take it away.

But there's so much political pressure that some of the jurors feel they need to convict him on something, or else there will be riots.

[David Bremer]

Unless we have reason to believe that Rittenhouse knew that the person chasing he was a child-molesting felon, that's an irrelevant part of the story.

[Armchair Lawyer]

You know, I don't think it is.

It speaks to the state of mind and type of person that Rosembaum was. How likely it was that he was "somewhat disturbed" and willing to charge a person with a firearm.

[IPLawyer]

You're a moron

[Armchair Lawyer]

Who is more likely, in your opinion, to charge someone with a firearm with ill intent.

A child-molesting felon who is off his meds?

Or an upstanding person, with a record of civil service, and who doesn't have so much as a speeding ticket?

[IPLawyer]

You are continuing to prove my point, thank you.

[Armchair Lawyer]

If all you have are insults, as opposed to responding to the valid reasoning under 404 A2b, "a defendant may offer evidence of an alleged victim’s pertinent trait"

Then you really don't have anything at all.

[Life of Brian]

You have to cut him a bit of a break. Even if he's in litigation at all, evidence law in IP cases generally doesn't stretch much beyond the business records exception and a lot of overwrought whining about 403 for problematic exhibits.

[David Nieporent]

"He is sexually attracted to children" is not a "pertinent trait."

[Armchair Lawyer]

Rule 404. Character Evidence; Other Crimes, Wrongs, or Acts
Primary tabs
(a) Character Evidence.
(2) Exceptions for a Defendant or Victim in a Criminal Case. The following exceptions apply in a criminal case:
(A) a defendant may offer evidence of the defendant’s pertinent trait, and if the evidence is admitted, the prosecutor may offer evidence to rebut it;

When a defendant charged with murder or manslaughter admits killing the
person, but claims she acted in self-defense, evidence of the violent or dangerous
character or reputation of the decedent is relevant. Thus, under FRE 404(a)(2),
an exception to the propensity rule is made when the accused in a homicide case
claims self-defense and attempts to offer character evidence of the decedent.
FRE 404(a)(2) permits the accused to introduce “[e]vidence of a pertinent trait
of character of the victim of the crime . . . .” This exception provides one of the 39
few situations where character evidence is admissible to allow the jury to infer
that a person indeed acted in conformity with his character on a specific
occasion. A risk of prejudice still exists, yet the probative value of the evidence 40
usually outweighs this prejudice

https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/ilr/pdf/vol32p1437.pdf

[Armchair Lawyer]

Apologies, here is A2

(B) subject to the limitations in Rule 412, a defendant may offer evidence of an alleged victim’s pertinent trait, and if the evidence is admitted, the prosecutor may:

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Legally speaking: you're completely wrong as usual.

Self-defense claims are evaluated based on what the defendant knew at the time.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Again, it's relevant to how Rosenbaum was acting at the time.

One might expect a child-molesting felon to potentially be acting somewhat different than, say, a boy scout who had never had so much as a jaywalking fine. Especially if there's any debate how Rosenbaum was acting.

[DonP]

At least Rosenbaum died the way he lived. Trying to touch another unwilling minor boy.

[David Bremer]

It's not relevant, and there's a reason why the rules of evidence prohibit that type of evidence.

More important, as Jason Cavanaugh noted, self-defense is evaluated based on the defendant's knowledge/perception.

[Armchair Lawyer]

But, if there is a question about those perceptions, about the actions at the time.

Then the jury needs to make a judgement call on whose perceptions are more accurate. And in doing that, knowing the character, capabilities, and predispositions of the individuals involved may help tremendously.

If there is no question as to the events, then it doesn't matter. But if there is, then it does matter.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Under the Federal rules of evidence, there are specific exceptions.

See 404 a2 below.
" a defendant may offer evidence of an alleged victim’s pertinent trait"

(a) Character Evidence.
(1) Prohibited Uses. Evidence of a person’s character or character trait is not admissible to prove that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character or trait.
(2) Exceptions for a Defendant or Victim in a Criminal Case. The following exceptions apply in a criminal case:
(A) a defendant may offer evidence of the defendant’s pertinent trait, and if the evidence is admitted, the prosecutor may offer evidence to rebut it;
(B) subject to the limitations in Rule 412, a defendant may offer evidence of an alleged victim’s pertinent trait, and if the evidence is admitted, the prosecutor may:
(i) offer evidence to rebut it; and
(ii) offer evidence of the defendant’s same trait; and
(C) in a homicide case, the prosecutor may offer evidence of the alleged victim’s trait of peacefulness to rebut evidence that the victim was the first aggressor.

[NOVA Lawyer]

Armchair: "One might expect a child-molesting felon to potentially be acting somewhat different than, say, a boy scout who had never had so much as a jaywalking fine."

But that's not the type of character evidence you can admit under Rule 404. You cannot just show that the victim was a "bad guy", Rule 404 allows evidence (in a case like this) that the victim had a propensity for violence where the defendant claims that the victim initiated the aggression. The circumstances of the felony (child molestation / sexual assault / ???) would be relevant. I keep seeing you and others say child molestation, which is disgusting, but I am not sure demonstrates the type of propensity to violence that the Rule contemplates.

Moreover, there is always an additional rule: whether the probative value is outweighed by the prejudicial value of the evidence. Fed.R.Evid. 403 ("The court may exclude relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of one or more of the following: unfair prejudice, confusing the issues....). It's hard to think of something more prejudicial than evidence that a person has molested a child. I think most of us would reflexively think "well fuck him" and, even if we tried, not sure we're ever going to evaluate his conduct dispassionately.

The other aspect is the Rule generally requires that the testimony be general reputation evidence, not specific instances. So, even if all of the above didn't keep it out, you still couldn't admit that he was a child molester. It would be more general about whether he had a propensity to be violent (such as when he was off his meds, perhaps).

The other part, if evidence of Rosenbaum's character was allowed, then the prosecution would seem to be permitted to admit evidence of Rittenhouse's character which might then include the video just a few days before of him wishing he could shoot some looters.

(For what it's worth, based on my very limited exposure to the actual facts presented to the jury, I think Rittenhouse probably should be acquitted of the most serious charges, particularly including having killed Rosenbaum. That does look to me, again based on limited info, like self-defense under the instructions given. But 404 isn't just license to pull all of the skeletons out of a victim's (or defendant's) closet and parade them in front of the jury, no matter how hideous....or, rather, especially if they are particularly hideous.)

[Sebastian Cremmington]

It was essentially “suicide by cop”…an ethical prosecutor would have seen it that way but this prosecutor is unethical. At the trial I don’t know how to get the fact Rosenbaum was a suicidal ped0 to the jury without a mistrial being declared.

[Currentsitguy]

It's relevant if the jury is considering provocation. Presumably a person released from a mental institution might not meet the reasonable person standard.

[David Bremer]

Maybe, depending on the circumstances (e.g., is the question whether the response was actually the result of provocation). But Armchair Lawyer's comment wasn't talking about provocation. He even later said that he was using the evidence to show whether Rosenbaum was acting aggressive (not whether he was responding to provocation). It's not relevant to that issue.

[Armchair Lawyer]

It's relevant to
1) Who started the confrontation
2) The assertion that Rosenbaum threatened to kill Rittenhouse
3) The assertion that Rosenbaum attempted to physically take away the rifle from Rittenhouse.

[John F. Carr]

If memory serves (and note I don't make a habit of shooting people in self defense and I don't take CLE classes on homicide) my state allows character evidence to be introduced if there is doubt over who started a fight. If I shoot preemptively I had better have some evidence that I knew the reputation of the guy I shot. If I testify he pointed his gun at me I can introduce his reputation for dangerous gunplay.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Unless we have reason to believe that Rittenhouse knew that the person chasing he was a child-molesting felon, that's an irrelevant part of the story.

Right, because when the prosecution is hanging it's hat on a "provocation" argument the state of mind and tendencies toward unprovoked criminal acts of the individual they're claiming was "provoked" are completely irrelevant.

[Michael P]

It's really quite sad that the prosecution is arguing that Rittenhouse provoked the guy who charged an armed crowd earlier that evening while shouting "shoot me, n-----”, and who decided to chase down Rittenhouse for putting out a fire that said guy started. It shows how little the prosecutor's office cares about facts in this case.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

It shows how little the prosecutor's office cares about facts in this case.

Unfortunately, that's just the tip of the iceberg that is the prosecution's lack of regard for the facts...or anything even remotely resembling ethics.

[M L]

It's not an irrelevant part of the story at all.

I agree that it's not relevant as direct evidence of Kyle's state of mind. But that's not the same thing as being an irrelevant part of the story. As far as evidence, the fact that Joseph Rosenbaum raped 5 boys aged 9-11 and then raped inmates in prison, illustrates his propensity to act in a violent manner.

[Seamus]

That all may be true, but if Rittenhouse didn't know it, it gives us no insight into whether Rittenhouse reasonably believed that his use of deadly force was necessary to avert an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury.

[M L]

It is evidence of Joseph Rosenbaum's propensity to act in a violent and threatening manner, as a great deal of video and other evidence and witness testimony indicates he did on that night toward Kyle Rittenhouse, which is the entire basis of the self-defense claim. I imagine the particular details of the events surrounding his crimes as well as his actions in prison could be important as well.

Now, I realize that the likely prejudicial effect may outweigh the probative value, and there are many other rules of evidence that I don't remember, and I'm not making an argument about admissibility under any state or federal rules. But it's not an "irrelevant part of the story."

[Sarcastr0]

Dude, you know why that law about prejudice exists, yes? And yet you continue to basically argue the victim deserved it.

You suck.

[M L]

Whether a five-time child rapist deserves the death penalty would be a fair question.

But that's not what we're discussing here by any stretch of the imagination, as you know. Your deliberate strawmanning and/or inability to read is egregious.

[Sarcastr0]

You went to law school, you know why the propensity evidence is not permissible, and neither is prejudicial evidence.

And no, that evidence would not be used to prove 'oh he likely did this because he was that sort of person.'
And prejudice comes in *exactly* to avoid the argument the victim did it. A question you certainly seem OK suggesting, and then considering.

AL and Brett, well they don't really know evidence procedures and policies. But you know better, and don't care.

As I said, you suck.

[M L]

"propensity evidence is not permissible"

What? That's not correct at all, it can be admissible. Armchair Lawyer cited one of the rules above.

"neither is prejudicial evidence"

Wrong again. A court may exclude relevant evidence IF the probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudicial effect.

Anyway, as I already said if you were able to read, I wasn't making an argument about the admissibility of evidence. In a Venn diagram, you have a small circle for admissible evidence in a court case. Around that is a larger circle of "relevant" evidence (which need not be admissible). Then an even larger circle around that is the broader "story" of the events and humans involved, such as what might be covered in a book or some long form journalism written on the broader story.

[Sarcastr0]

So you never took evidence or something?

Prejudicial evidence means when it's prejudice outweighs it's probative value.

And propensity evidence is indeed never allowed.

Are you even a lawyer, or just lying about it?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"And yet you continue to basically argue the victim deserved it."

To be clear, Rittenhouse was the victim. Rosenbaum was the perp.

And I'm hearing lots of folks saying that the victim deserved to be attacked for bringing a gun to a riot.

[Sarcastr0]

Of come off it - that's not the baseline assumption. The dead guy is assumed to be the victim, even if you would prefer to write a different story.

[TwelveInchPianist]

What baseline assumption? Every case has unique facts.

No one assumed that the 19 hijackers were victims just because they were dead, that would be ridiculous.

And in this case, the two dead guys were the perps, and the young man who was forced to defend himself is the victim.

[Absaroka]

"The dead guy is assumed to be the victim, "

I don't think people should be making assumptions one way or the other.

Granny Smith calls 911 - 'Someone is breaking down my door, please help!' ... (sounds of door breaking) ... (bang!) ... the police arrive, and a 250 lb 25 year old is laying inside the door dead, knife in hand. One of the officers says 'Hey, I know this guy, there is a warrant out on him for a previous home invasion'.

Dunno about you, but I'm not sure I'd be assuming he is a victim at that point. It kinda looks like a crook picked the wrong Grandma. Or not. Process the scene, gather the evidence, etc, etc. I mean, maybe Granny has a thing for young bad boys and had been having an affair with him, found out he was cheating on her and texted him that she was having a heart attack and needed help and that's why he broke down the door, she shot him, and put the knife in his hand.

Dunno how many cops you know, but the experienced ones I have known have been surprised enough they don't really like to make assumptions. Once you make assumptions the confirmation bias kicks in.

[Brett Bellmore]

Evidence of whether Rosenbaum likely attacked Rittenhouse is entirely probative as to whether Rittenhouse reasonably thought he was being attacked. It goes to what he was probably witnessing at the time.

[Sarcastr0]

Propensity evidence is not allowed because humans love to overvalue it.

[Brett Bellmore]

Propensity evidence if absolutely allowed, under limited circumstances.

B. Federal Rule of Evidence 404(a)(2) – The Mercy Rule

"Federal Rule of Evidence 404(a)(2) provides that
The following exceptions apply in a criminal case:

...

(B) subject to the limitations in Rule 412, [Rape shield law, not relevant here.] a defendant may offer evidence of an alleged victim’s pertinent trait, and if the evidence is admitted, the prosecutor may:
(i) offer evidence to rebut it; and
(ii) offer evidence of the defendant’s same trait;"

So, what we've got here is exactly the circumstance under which propensity evidence IS permitted.

[Sarcastr0]

Evidence of a person's character or a trait of his character is not admissible for the purpose of proving that he acted in conformity therewith on a particular occasion, except:

404(a)(2) proviso refers to when the evidence of a trait is offered for some purpose other than showing propensity.

[Bored Lawyer]

But the fact that someone on the ground, a journalist, observed him on the very same night and concluded he was acting erratically is most definitely relevant.

[Sebastian Cremmington]

It’s relevant when deciding to charge—so in the Zimmerman case Zimmerman was behaving erratically while seeing the teen Trayvon get spooked and Zimmerman continued to behave erratically…and so the Sanford PD recommended manslaughter charges.

[ThePublius]

The child-molesting part is immaterial, as it doesn't bear on the events, and the jury was not informed of that. But I agree, textbook self defense. Likewise with Gaige Grosskreutz, who testified under oath that Rittenhouse only shot him when he pointed his handgun at him. Huber smashed Rittenhouse in the neck with a skateboard and then reached for the gun as he was shot.

[Armchair Lawyer]

In hindsight, I think the jury should have heard about it, because it speaks to the character of Rosenbaum, and how he may have acted belligerantly.

Let's say, instead of Rosenbaum, it was a little old, 100 pound lady who was "charging" Rittenhouse. That wouldn't be believable.

But someone with a criminal record, who had a history of poor decisions? That's relevant I would think.

[ThePublius]

I don't think its relevant since Rittenhouse couldn't have known that, unless he knew Rosenbaum, and knew his criminal and psychiatric history.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

I don't think its relevant since Rittenhouse couldn't have known that, unless he knew Rosenbaum, and knew his criminal and psychiatric history.

What the hell does what Rittenhouse did/didn't know about Rosenbaum have to do with the jury evaluating the likelihood of the latter being a normal, reasonable human being who was probably "provoked" into attacking the former?

[ThePublius]

"What the hell does what Rittenhouse did/didn't know about Rosenbaum have to do...."

It has EVERYTHING to do with evaluating a self defense position, since it hinges on what was in Rittenhouse's head when presented with the threat. Anything he didn't know about Rosenbaum has no bearing. It's not how the jury perceives the threat, it's how they believe Rittenhouse perceived the threat.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

"What the hell does what Rittenhouse did/didn't know about Rosenbaum have to do...."

Did you run out of literacy at that point, or were you being intentionally dishonest in omitting the rest of that sentence that made it clear that I was talking about the prosecution's "provocation" argument?

[ThePublius]

You are an insulting guy, who also doesn't get it. This thread wasn't about the provocation part, it was about Rosenbaum's criminal history.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

You are an insulting guy, who also doesn't get it. This thread wasn't about the provocation part, it was about Rosenbaum's criminal history.

And you wonder why you're earning insults.

The thread is about whether or not what Rittenhouse did was legally self-defense, which largely hinges on whether or not Rosenbaum was "provoked" into chasing and assaulting Rittenhouse, as opposed to Rosenbaum simply being more predisposed to such behavior than the average reasonable adult...which makes Rosenbaum's mental health issues and violent criminal history relevant.

Let us know what part of that is just too difficult for you to understand...or if you're being intentionally obtuse, and therefor dishonest.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Addendum:

In the event that you're really as thick-skulled as you're making yourself out to be, what Rittenhouse did/didn't know about Rosenbaum's character/propensities is not relevant to his reasonable belief that he was acting in self-defense. It is relevant to the jury's evaluation of the prosecution's "provocation" argument, which is absolutely critical to determining whether or not he is entitled to a self-defense claim.

I don't know how to make that any simpler or clearer.

[ThePublius]

It's a shame you find it necessary to insult and bully in an attempt to make your point; it diminishes your credibility. It's also a shame that you so sincerely believe that your interpretation of the situation is the one, true, correct one. It's not the only one, and it's not necessarily correct.

That said, determining whether the self defense claim is legitimate is multi-dimensional, and the temporal context is important. The prosecution brought up the provocation angle late in the trial, and given the video evidence and time and distance between the supposed provocation and the shooting is immaterial, in my view. The remaining self defense justification is only what's in Rittenhouse's head at the moment he's cornered and Rosenbaum lunges at him.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

It's a shame you find it necessary to insult and bully in an attempt to make your point

Ah, the old, "I'm such a child that I'm easily bullied by words on a computer monitor" plea.

It's a shame that you're in more of a hurry to post ill-informed comments and presume to educate others rather than first attending to the Mack truck-sized holes in your own knowledge of the subject at hand.

That said, determining whether the self defense claim is legitimate is multi-dimensional

Yes, which is why your continued insistence on ignoring the current lynch-pin of the prosecution's case in order to claim that something that is very much relevant to it is actually irrelevant to the case as a hole is so asinine.

The prosecution brought up the provocation angle late in the trial

But well before this thread was created and you made your comments about it.

and given the video evidence and time and distance between the supposed provocation and the shooting is immaterial, in my view.

The case...including the prosecution's provocation argument...is in the hands of a jury that you're not sitting on, making your view the most irrelevant thing in this whole thread.

[Michael P]

The relevant question is not self-defense as a whole, but the provocation part of it. Did Rittenhouse do anything that a reasonable person would treat as a provocation that excludes later self-defense? Or did Rosenbaum act aggressively for some reason other than provocation? The defendant's knowledge has nothing to do with whether the defendant provoked an attack.

[Seamus]

The prosecution needs to provide evidence of provocation, in order to be able to argue that Rittenhouse began the encounter, which would mean he is no longer privileged to use deadly force. More than that, they need to prove provocation beyond a reasonable doubt. The evidence they actually provided is more of a Hail Mary pass than anything like evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, but if the rumors are true, there are a couple of jurors who have seized on that evidence and are clinging to it to justify a verdict that would keep the mob from burning their houses down.

[A Thinking Mind]

The jury requested specifically that evidence to review, which is the disputed evidence in this case. That's really not a good sign for Kyle and it says a lot about his defense team. That still photo that the judge described as a useless blur was one of a few bits of evidence requested for review.

[ThePublius]

From chapter 939 of Wisconsin statues:
"A defendant may demonstrate that he or she was acting lawfully, a necessary element of an accident defense, by showing that he or she was acting in lawful self-defense. Although intentionally pointing a firearm at another constitutes a violation of s. 941.20, under s. 939.48 (1) a person is privileged to point a gun at another person in self-defense if the person reasonably believes that the threat of force is necessary to prevent or terminate what he or she reasonably believes to be an unlawful interference. State v. Watkins, 2002 WI 101, 255 Wis. 2d 265, 647 N.W.2d 244, 00-0064."

Note it's what the person defending themself "reasonably believes," not what the jury beleives.

I hope this is clear now.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

I hope this is clear now.

I hope it's clear now that you don't have any idea what you're talking about.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Anything he didn't know about Rosenbaum has no bearing. It's not how the jury perceives the threat, it's how they believe Rittenhouse perceived the threat.

Try to keep up. The prosecution ended up hinging its whole case on a "provocation" argument, which makes the likelihood that Rosenbaum would likely not have attacked Rittenhouse had the latter not somehow "provoked" him into it very, very relevant...which makes Rosenbaum's mental health and criminal tendencies also very, very relevant.

[Sebastian Cremmington]

Rittenhouse could have injected that fact under cross—he could have exasperatedly stated that he didn’t know a suicidal ped0 would lunge for his gun…and then the judge would declare a mistrial.

[David Nieporent]

No. That's not how it works. Whether Rittenhouse provoked Rosembaum is evaluated by looking at what Rittenhouse did, not what Rosenbaum was likely to have done.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Again, it's relevant to how Rosenbaum was acting at the time.

One might expect a child-molesting felon to potentially be acting somewhat different than, say, a boy scout who had never had so much as a jaywalking fine. Especially if there's any debate how Rosenbaum was acting.

[Pettifogger]

Re speaks to how Rosenbaum may have acted

Maybe I'm not following closely enough, but is there any dispute re how he acted? If not, then no such evidence needed. If so, tough call, because the connection is attenuated.

[Armchair Lawyer]

There is actually some dispute.

-Binger zeroed in on the killing of 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum, who was the first "man gunned down that night and whose shooting set in motion the ones that followed. The prosecutor repeatedly called it murder, saying it was unjustified.
-The prosecutor reminded jurors that Rittenhouse testified he knew Rosenbaum was unarmed. Binger also said there is no video to support the defense claim that Rosenbaum threatened to kill Rittenhouse.
-Binger disputed the contention that Rosenbaum was trying to grab Rittenhouse’s rifle. “Mr. Rosenbaum is not even within arm’s reach when the first shot occurs,” Binger said. He rejected the claim that Rittenhouse had no choice but to shoot, saying he could have run away."

https://apnews.com/article/kyle-rittenhouse-jacob-blake-wisconsin-kenosha-homicide-a5ee515a50f77ea4993bf7176859ef57

Again, the prosecutor is disputing several of the actions. The death threats, and the fact that Rosenbaum was grabbing for the rifle.

The mindset and type of person Rosenbaum was may help the jury decide what was the more likely series of events.

[Krychek_2]

The evidence points to this being a careful jury that's taking its job seriously, as shown by their request for clarification of the judge's instructions and to view the video again. I don't think they went in there with their minds made up.

[jb]

Self defense for the homicide charge, sure. Recklessly Endangering Safety, less clear and the standard for self-defense is different.

At a minimum, there's 36 pages of jury instructions. A careful jury is going to take a little while to work through the issues even if you've already made your mind based on a much less comprehensive review of the evidence.

[Michael P]

The judge said that if the first shooting was legitimate self-defense, the reckless endangerment charge fails because shooting was justified.

[jb]

The jury instructions literally say the opposite of that (from page 8 https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-jury-instructions-in-kyle-rittenhouse-trial/e32f975c-0af3-4382-80fa-5f4edc8003cc/):

There is evidence in this case that the defendant was acting in self-defense as to Joseph Rosenbaum. The fact that the law may allow the defendant to use force in self-defense as to Joseph Rosenbaum does not necessarily mean that recklessly endangering the safety of Richard McGinnis was lawful.

[TwelveInchPianist]

From page 9:

"If the defendant was acting lawfully in self-defense with respect to Joseph Rosenbaum, his conduct did not create an unreasonable risk to another."

Some parts of the instructions are quite confusing.

[jb]

Agreed that is confusing! And may explain why it is taking the jury a while to figure things out.

[NOVA Lawyer]

Yeah, I thought those two lines said exactly the opposite thing when I read them. Who let that through? I mean, the second one is more directive, so I'm assuming the jury will go with that ("does not necessarily mean" versus "did not create an unreasonable risk").

[Absaroka]

@Sarcastro - a while ago you had asked for tools that would identify bad statistical practices in research papers. Have a look at the section titled The Scientific Takeaway for some more techniques.

(the article is a long look at ivermectin studies. I'm not particularly interested in that debate, but if you are, by all means read it. But, mostly, it's a wonderful example of how to read scientific studies, and how much work you have to do to tell if a study is worthwhile or not.)

[Absaroka]

Also, that article links to a nice example of the fingerprints people leave when they fake data.

[Don Nico]

Nice example, thanks for the cite

[Sarcastr0]

Thanks.

Did you here the recent one about the spider behavior researcher who turns out to have likely fabricated the data for everything he ever did in his career?
https://www.science.org/content/article/spider-biologist-denies-suspicions-widespread-data-fraud-his-animal-personality

[Absaroka]

Beats spending days squinting at spiders, I suppose.

The question is what to do. One of the articles I linked proposes that it become a norm for raw data to be posted, both so other researchers can look at in novel ways, and so bored stats majors can look for telltale anomalies. That sounds like a good idea, although it might just lead to an arms race - it's not like the odometer researcher couldn't have put just a little more effort into making his faked data plausible.

[Sarcastr0]

There is already a law, actually - or an EO at least. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf

Compliance is really rough though. Raw data is really hard to interpret with associated metadata. Which often requires a database dedicated to the type of science at work.

Worse, more and more data requires proprietary algorithms to make head or tail of.

Also, where would it be posted - that's a lot of storage space!

Though it may be good to post it uncleaned for the bored machine learning gurus to go to work looking for fraud.

[Don Nico]

S_0,
The problem with that EO, is that much data from major experiments is extremely large. Chemistry data is frequently processed initially through proprietary software the licenses for which are in the range of 1$10-$20K per year and without which "raw data"is nearly useless.
OSTP made no suggestion of how the storage of data was to be stored and funded. By default it would be by the researchers' home institution and paid by raising overhead rates.
You mentioned many of the problems in your post. In the end (up to 5 years ago) the DOE asked that if one posted graphs, numerical values should be supplied in as supplementary data.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, it sucks when you get audited by both OMB and the GAO to see if you're doing the impossible like they asked.

[Armchair Lawyer]

What standard should the Biden Administration and FBI be held to in their "raid" of Project Veritas and its founder James O'Keefe.

While some may disagree with O'Keefe, he is a journalist with a habit of doing in depth investigations in certain areas. But this particular raid is...troubling. It regards a diary from Joe Biden's daughter. Supposedly it was stolen and somehow acquired by Project Veritas. The Project didn't publish anything on the diary, and handed it over to the police.

But now they're subject to pre-dawn raids with O'Keefe being handcuffed in his underwear? Is the Biden administration's FBI running roughshod over the rights of journalists and pursuing "political enemies"?

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/13/raid-veritas-okeefe-biden-press-521307

[ThePublius]

"Is the Biden administration's FBI running roughshod over the rights of journalists and pursuing "political enemies"?"

Yes. The FBI has been corrupt since its inception, and should be disbanded, the labs being spun out first. It is the US equivalent of the Stasi. I am not employing hyperbole when I say that. It is a nefarious enforcement arm of the Democratic/progressive movement, and is dangerous to liberty and justice.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Not to mention the FBI being used to silence concerned parents at school board meetings.

And it's especially troubling that FBI types (who are also CNN commentators and Yale professors) can't tell the difference between saying "Let's go Brandon." and "Long Live ISIS".

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"Not to mention the FBI being used to silence concerned parents at school board meetings."

Tucker Carlson is neither reputable nor a news source.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Tucker Carlson is neither reputable nor a news source."

Of course not. Fortunately some of us can read the NSBA letter, the order from Merrick Garland to the DOJ, and the subsequent retraction of the letter and apology from the NSBA, and form our own conclusions.

[David Nieporent]

What conclusion did you form about anyone being silenced by the FBI at school board meetings?

[TwelveInchPianist]

I concluded, as any reasonable person would, that there is a complete lack of evidence of any spike in threats against school boards, and especially a lack of evidence that would justify federal involvement. The incidents described in the NSBA letter were mostly protected expression, and one incident was a school board's effort to cover up a rape.

The NSBA further demonstrated this when it repudiated its letter.

Based on the lack of evidence justifying legitimate federal involvement, I concluded that Garland's order to the FBI was likely pretextual, and designed to chill free expression.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Not to mention the fact that, shortly after the raid, privileged documents were leaked to the NYT, who is being sued by Project Veritas in an unrelated matter. The NYT should be compelled do disclose where they got the documents.

[Armchair Lawyer]

I mean, who approved this raid? What's the paperwork behind it? We really do need to know.

A pre-dawn raid on a journalist, handcuffing him in his underwear, over a diary? One that was handed to the police by the organization?

[David Nieporent]

shortly after the raid, privileged documents were leaked to the NYT,

False.

[TwelveInchPianist]

What's false? The FBI raided O'Keefe on Nov 6, the NYT published the documents on Nov 11. A court has at least preliminarily found that the documents were privileged.

It's true that I can't show that the docs were leaked between 11/6 and 11/11. Was that your beef?

[Illocust]

It doesn't matter, because there will be no consequences to the FBI or Biden.

[Brett Bellmore]

It isn't just a case of the raid; Privileged information obtained in the raid got leaked.

Federal judge orders DOJ to halt data extraction from James O'Keefe's phones following FBI raid

""The DOJ has specific regulations about this. There's also a federal statute called the Privacy Protection Act that protects journalists and their information from exactly this type of thuggish behavior that the DOJ has done in this case. And they have blown federal law, they blown the Constitution, they blown due process and civil rights and now they're so easily communicating in some level for sure with the New York Times," Dhillon added.

Dhillon was alluding to the Times' reporting on the FBI raids of O'Keefe and two Project Veritas associates as well as the publishing of confidential communications between the guerilla news organization and its attorneys."

In fact, getting their hands on all that internal information might have been the only purpose of the raid. They now know all of the investigations Veritas is currently conducting, and are in a position to compromise them by warning the targets.

[Armchair Lawyer]

So, let's find who approved the raid, and they should be potentially fired...or up on charges.

[FourteenFour]

there is an endless supply of sycophants that nothing would come out of going after the person who approved the raid. another would be there in an instant to replace them.

this isn't about the law , this about having people submit

[David Nieporent]

It isn't just a case of the raid; Privileged information obtained in the raid got leaked.

False.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

At this point, continuing to ask whether or not the FBI has become a political weapon is like saying, "I wonder if I should see a doctor?" while you're coughing up blood.

[M L]

They are deeply corrupt.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Well, every FBI director has been a Republican . . . what could anyone have expected?

[Ben_]

Rigorous adherence to objective standards is for principled individuals. Do you think you will see that, given the type of people in charge?

I will guess that DoJ does whatever rabid Twitter blue-checks might say they want, except for actions that might cause DoJ individuals to have to face a judge or jury.

And blue-team commenters will see it and change the subject rather than condemn the actions, no matter how abusive they are.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Not to mention the fact that, shortly after the raid, privileged documents were leaked to the NYT, who is being sued by Project Veritas in an unrelated matter. The NYT should be compelled do disclose where they got the documents.

[Brett Bellmore]

By who? The very government that gave it to them?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Hopefully the NYT will be compelled to divulge that information.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Compelled by the court hearing the lawsuit.

[Aaron]

Grounded For Life is an underrated sitcom that was a unique snapshot of the transitionary time between 90s and 2000s American culture.

[jimc5499]

Project Veritas stated that they didn't publish the Diary because they couldn't confirm that it wasn't a fake. I'm pretty sure that the raid confirmed that it was real.

If you want the real problem with the FBI, just read some of today's other posts. To move up in the FBI you have to have a Law degree. With some of the articles here about law schools, is it any wonder why the FBI is the way that it is?

[IPLawyer]

Have you been to law school? Pretty asinine to let the histrionics about ~6 incidents at ~6 law schools over the past year (which are completely blown out of proportion) leave you with the impression thats how law schools are. I graduated from law school in the liberal hell-hole that is NYC in 2019 and I have yet to be asked my pronouns...

[Life of Brian]

I graduated from law school . . . in 2019

Given the level of pompous vitriol we've seen from you, I think this shred of likely unintended candor about your arrogance/experience ratio needs no further comment.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Is random capitalization still a form of lack-of-virtue signaling among clingers . . . or merely a consequence of illiteracy?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Perhaps he forgot to proofreed his post, Arthur.

[ThePublius]

What about the substance of the Ashely Biden's diary? Why no discussion anywhere about that? It apparently reveals that she as in rehab for sexual trauma and in the diary mentions "inappropriate showers" with her father, President Joe Biden. "On the pages of the diary, she also asks herself the question: "Have I been abused?", And she herself answers it: "I think so.""

If this was Trump...OMG, he'd be excoriated in the media and impeached my the house, maybe even charged criminally! Buy, Joe Biden - nothing to see here.

[ThePublius]

s/Buy/But

[Sarcastr0]

No mention of age, so this is just bullshit.

[Bored Lawyer]

At what age would you consider it appropriate for a father to shower with his daughter? 2? 12? 22?

[ThePublius]

She was 12. Is it bullshit now?

"Joe Biden 50, would get her to take showers naked together when she was 12 years old. She writes "probably not appropriate"
Ya think!?"

https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/ashleybiden?source=feed_text&epa=HASHTAG

[Don Nico]

It does sound gross, but I refused to use FB in any way shape or form

[ThePublius]

Sarcastr0, here's a link to the pdf of the diary, read it for yourself:
https://nationalfile.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Alleged-Ashley-Biden-Diary-Full-Release-NF-WM-Rev2.pdf

[Sarcastr0]

So I presume this is why you're not going full pedo Biden, but trying to work the contrary to fact Trump media bias victimization hypothetical.

[ThePublius]

What? Your response is "but Trump?"

[Sarcastr0]

No, my response is pointing out that YOUR take is 'but Trump.'

[Sarcastr0]

If this was Trump...OMG, he'd be excoriated in the media and impeached my the house, maybe even charged criminally!

Not exactly 'OMG Biden is a pedo' even as you work hard to blow smoke in that direction.

Not a shred of consistency or integrity to ya on this one!

[TwelveInchPianist]

Well, there was a fair amount of speculation about Trump and his daughter based on much less evidence than we saw here.

[gormadoc]

Stephen Lathrop, a while back you asked about my pessimism for prairie conservation. I'm not an expert but the guy who wrote this is: https://prairieecologist.com/2021/10/25/what-happens-if-we-lose/ Simply put, there's no real way to get back the prairie that was. Cattle are not bison, coyotes are not wolves, and yearly fires are too intense for small animals. We're going to have to settle for something if we don't want to end up with fragile miniature ecosystems. The situation is particularly dire for eastern prairies of which there is very little left, most of it being divided and converted into farmland. The shortgrass prairies will probably survive a good while though; a lot of that is very well-managed by landowners.

[Ben_]

Why is any specific historical ecosystem state of existence the best and most correct answer?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Ben_, start by acknowledging that your survival, and the survival of any civilization of which you are a part, is utterly, completely dependent on wild nature. If you can do that, you ought to be able to work out the answer for yourself. If you think otherwise, no one will be able to explain it to you.

[Ben_]

Understood: it’s a religious belief that must be taken on faith.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nope. You could learn it empirically. But if you are starting from scratch, it might take you decades. It takes first-hand experience of nature, with emphasis on visiting and revisiting particular places, to see what results when this happens and when that happens, and putting the patterns together.

Try to learns the skills of a successful angler. Learn to identify birds, and figure out what kinds of habitats they favor, when they nest and when they migrate. Figure out what each species eats. Get out and see how many species of reptiles and amphibians you can find. Pay attention to insects, and the plants various species favor.

And of course it doesn't hurt to read some of the classics from the early days of ecological insight, maybe starting with Thoreau's naturalism essays. Read the non-fiction work of Wallace Stegner. Read Aldo Leopold. Among more recent publications, you can take your pick of hundreds of informed discussions of ecological investigations and insights. Read E.O. Wilson about ants. See if you can spend a year or two working on a small farm which practices diversified agriculture.

Learning this kind of stuff used to be the ordinary life curriculum of almost every human alive. Not so much anymore.

By the way, do you really think that your survival is not dependent on wild nature? Is that actually hard for you to accept?

[Ben_]

Clearly not a religion. Clearly.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Ben_, I asked two questions at the end. How do you answer?

[Ben_]

I didn't read that far.

No, we can grow whatever is needed. Almost all the "wild" natural processes can be replicated in agriculture. Certainly more than enough of them for "survival".

There are millions of square miles of wilderness on every continent anyway, so "without wild nature" is also not realistic.

And an ecosystem doesn't have to be exactly the same as it was in the year 1721 for it to be a fully-functioning ecosystem. Nature isn't perfectible. It's just a bunch of stuff that happens. Change it and it's still nature.

[Sarcastr0]

Honestly, your continued repeating of the same thing regardless of external input looks more like religious ritual than anything in climate science.

But of course neither is religion. There is nothing metaphysical or supernatural being posited.
Evidence you're super duper sure is wrong is still evidence, and not faith which is definitionally not phenomenologically provable.

[Ben_]

Lots of it is faith-based. You can see it in the idea that one specific state of nature is somehow ideal. Based on what? Faith. Or if not faith, something indistinguishable from faith. No one studied all the alternatives and measured outcomes to decide.

For climate, it's also clearly faith-based and ritualistic. A recent climate-change action:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/los-angeles-climate-change-restaurants-ban-condiments-california

Did they do a study and conclude that that banning courtesy ketchup would have a meaningful impact? No. It's not an action that anyone can rationally say leads to any meaningful effect at all. What explains the motivation then?

I have an explanation for it that precisely fits the behavior pattern: it's a religion and this type of thing is a religious gesture. You don't have any explanations to explain the behavior. You have no thoughts on it at all.

[Sarcastr0]

Not wanting big changes from our current climate isn't a faith-based ideal.
Beyond the massive risk, the transition will screw with conditions our global infrastructure relies on.

This may be your dumbest take ever.

[Ben_]

You changed the subject from the specific behavior in question.

Are ketchup packets significant to the Earth's climate or aren’t they?

Explain the science or rationality in banning courtesy ketchup packets. No hand-waving, no changing the subject. It’s either something that makes sense based on rational understanding of cause and effect or it’s not. And if it’s not, what’s your explanation for it? Because my explanation fits very well.

[Sarcastr0]

I was responding to your comment: You can see it in the idea that one specific state of nature is somehow ideal. Based on what? Faith.

So seems more like you're changing the subject?

I don't think we're very good at figuring out the utility of symbolic policies in leading larger change, but that's not a religion.

[Ben_]

So you have no explanation but you reject the explanation that fits the behavior. Without saying why (except perhaps that you have a very, very specific definition of religion, carefully chosen to categorize climate efforts outside the bounds of religion for argument's sake).

What is the rational explanation for choosing a very specific natural state as the one true state of nature that must be maintained at all costs then? Did you study the alternatives for likelihood and some specific metric of value? What metric?

If you want to characterize naturism (or ATF ever you want to call it) as motivated by mindless fear of change, that’s an explanation I guess.

[Stephen Lathrop]

What is the rational explanation for choosing a very specific natural state as the one true state of nature that must be maintained at all costs then?

I have not done that. I advocate not stasis, but adherence to principles:

1. To maximize abundance of species, abundance within species, and diversity among species.

2. To practice bias against irreversible policies which notably alter the environment or ecological systems.

3. To apply the cautionary principle, especially in cases of proposals to engineer environmental variables.

4. To impose a test of reversibility on all major environment-affecting decisions, at least until ecological knowledge is far more advanced than it is at present.

You propose to mastermind natural systems. To give you a sense of the scope of problems which remain before that can happen, consider:

A swallow is made out of a few ounces of bugs—which is a lot of bugs. We are not yet able even to estimate what value a swallow adds to our agricultural efforts. We do spend plenty on methods to poorly approximate the experience of relying on abundant swallows (among similarly unmeasured other classes) to keep crop-damaging bugs in check.

When we use those (typically chemical) invented methods, they diminish abundance among swallows. The swallows get less to eat—or almost nothing to eat. If that process goes too far, and some subset of swallows, or all the swallows, go extinct, we become irreversibly dependent on the chemicals—which do not deliver bug protection qualitatively similar to methods historically relied upon to develop our agriculture. Those differences have implications, and we don't know them. Cannot even guess.

Long before we learn enough to grasp the long-term implications of our newfound chemical reliance, we become stuck permanently with the decision to use it. Of course, your counter-premise is expressed this way:

No, we can grow whatever is needed. Almost all the "wild" natural processes can be replicated in agriculture. Certainly more than enough of them for "survival".

To replicate after extinguishing them the wild natural processes swallows brought to agriculture, you must bring swallows back. Nothing ever invented is as selective, or as sensitive to the presence or absence of insects, or as finely tuned to arrive right on the spot at the very moment the need will arise, or as inexpensive. Nothing even close to that has ever been created by humans. Not even specifications needed to do it have ever been approximated.

So in context of actual experience, your view amounts to confidence in either the reversibility of extinctions, or the invention of miraculous creations whose characteristics you cannot even begin to specify, let alone accomplish. I will tell you when engineers will be able to deliver such miracles. It will happen when you can deliver to an engineer a few ounces of bugs, and get back a fully functioning swallow, able to flock, to reproduce, to migrate, to choose which bugs to eat, and actually to catch them on the wing, by the thousands.

If that happens, and can be generalized, you will find me less stubborn about venturesome environmental experiments. Until then, Ben, your advocacy will remain ignorant, heedless, and unwise—unimaginative, too, if you keep up with the hackneyed, "environmentalism is religion," bit.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Thank you for that, gormadoc. I have followed some of that work, though not closely. I find myself wanting to withhold judgment, while also conceding good points where they are.

I certainly agree that any large scale restoration is a very long term project, at best, and maybe impossible. About bison and wolves we have the advantage of knowing they still exist. At least the wolves have shown themselves to be somewhat adaptable, and they have proved aggressive recolonizers. In the wild, bison apparently need inordinate scale, to accommodate unpredictable whims about occasional mass relocations.

I remain quite radical in my ambitions for the scale of what might be attempted—but not in any time frame short of centuries. We know so little about ecology that it seems inevitable that many resources critical for complete restoration are already missing, without our knowing they ever existed.

So I guess my view overall is a chaos of paradoxes and forlorn hopes. It is held together, if at all, by certainty that actively destructive natural resource trends will prove worse if continued than the result we would get if those trends were throttled back or discontinued. Everywhere I see large tracts which were extensively developed (mostly for farming) during the 19th century, but later neglected for decades, the natural tendency seems to be ecological improvement.

Against that is the imposing knowledge that today's farming is a far worse menace to ecological health than anything practiced before chemical-dependent agriculture became the norm.

Note also that I have just been discussing natural systems on land. What goes on in the oceans would seem impossible to ignore, if we weren't proving year-by-year that we will ignore it.

I recently read an observation from an entomologist. He said something like, "If humans were wiped out, in a few thousand years the world would look almost as if humans had never existed. If insects were wiped out, it would deliver a natural catastrophe from which the world would never recover." For better or worse, I expect that summary is correct. Better to heed it. Worse to ignore it.

[Stephen Lathrop]

gormadoc, a few further thoughts after returning to read more carefully your linked article.

The article advocates against a point of view which ought to be rejected as too limited anyway. So it is a good article.

Management of inevitable natural transitions can be wiser than trying to impose stasis. I just read another article yesterday, about efforts in Massachusetts to encourage in a few open-field places the kind of transition to shrub-dominated habitats the article mentions. The reason for it being an attempt to preserve a species of rabbit I have undoubtedly seen, but did not know existed—the New England cottontail. Turns out they are subtly different in appearance from Eastern cottontails, but sharply different in lifestyle and habitat requirements. New England cottontails, I learned, have suffered notable decline because land development happenstance has worked against them, filling up abandoned farms with subdivisions where Eastern cottontails can thrive, but where New England cottontails cannot.

More generally, two natural history concepts cannot be ignored. They are hydrarch succession and xerarch succession. Summarized, they describe respectively two tendencies of ecosystems to change according to recognizable patterns.

Hydrarch succession describes how nearly nutrient-free lakes and ponds evolve to become more nutrient rich over time, thus supporting more plant and animal life, but eventually filling up with the detritus that process produces. It goes from water, to swamp, to bog, to meadow, to dry land. It is a natural evolution from a wet environment toward a drier one.

Xerarch succession is sort of the opposite. It starts out with dry habitat, like desert country, maybe with sand dunes, and evolves by invasion of plants—initially drought tolerant plants, but later toward plants with greater water demands, until arriving at a forested condition.

Interestingly, there was one photograph in the article you linked where both kinds of succession were clearly visible simultaneously. It was the one showing the pond in the Sandhills of Nebraska. The Sandhills are just what the name implies—former Sahara-like sand dunes with a thin veneer of drought-tolerant grass to stabilize them, like the background in the photo. Thus, an early stage in xerarch succession. But because of a remnant water table from the last ice age, low points in the Sandhills feature ponds of open water, with one pond in the foreground of the photo shown in an intermediate stage of hydrarch succession.

There is rarely any good reason for land managers to try to impose stasis on such dynamic natural processes. Most of the wisdom needed to support natural diversity and ecosystem stability comes from learning when to leave things alone—which is most of the time, and on as broad a scale as can be managed.

[MP]

Local Free Speech story:

Exeter Teen Disciplined For Expressing Catholic View On Gender

M.P. had an exchange with a progressive student, who is described as not being transgendered, on a school bus. During the conversation, M.P. relayed his belief informed by Catholic teaching that there are two genders, male and female. This exchange was followed by a conversation between the two students over a text messaging app. That's when the progressive student then got Dovholuk involved.

Clear viewpoint based suppression. Here is the policy:

The intentional or persistent refusal to respect a student's gender identity (for example, intentionally referring to the student by a name or pronoun that does not correspond to the student's gender identity) is a violation of this policy.

The policy itself is questionable in its Constitutionality. But even worse here, the student in question was expressing his beliefs to another non-trans student. There was no specific "mis-gendering" here. Simply an expression of belief to another "cis" student (I cringe at writing "cis", but here we are).

The orthodoxy shall not be questioned.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Bigots -- including bigots who are delusional enough to believe that bigotry is somehow improved by a cloak of childish superstition -- have rights, too.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I love how the left suddenly decided that the idea that there are two sexes, a view held by the vast majority of people in the world, is bigoted.

[Ed Grinberg]

If you try hard enough, you can come up with a way to describe every single conservative (i.e., normal) position as "bigoted." New York Times does this regularly.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

It's not difficult to describe conservatives as bigoted.

Gay-bashers are bigots; a cloak of religion does nothing to improve that bigotry.

People who favor race-targeting voter suppression are bigots.

People who oppose immigration because they oppose the trajectory that soon will eliminate a White majority in America are bigots.

Racists who display Confederate flags, push to preserve Confederate monuments, and the like are bigots.

"Traditional values" and "conservative values" fans -- with the related old-timey misogyny, preference for (certain) religion in government, and the like -- are bigots.

Fans of Fox News -- which predictably and misleadingly lathers racists, Muslim-haters, homophobes, and xenophobes -- tend to be bigots. OAN and Newsmax fans tend to be bigots, too.

Birthers are bigots. The Federalist Society features plenty of bigots. Trump supporters tend to be poorly educated bigots.

Some conservatives are not bigots. But every conservative appeases bigots and is bigot-friendly and or bigot-curious.

It's a large part of the reason conservatives are destined to lose the American culture war. Centuries of experience -- including successive waves of bigotry -- indicate our bigots do not win in America, not over time.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Wait, I didn't see people who believe that there are two genders in that list, Arthur.

Could it be that you don't believe that people who think there are two genders are bigots?

I hate to break it to you, but that probably makes you a bigot. And maybe Conservative.

[rsteinmetz]

I cringe to read "described as not being transgendered" It's almost as if they were expecting a majority of persons to be transgendered.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

I cringe to read "described as not being transgendered" It's almost as if they were expecting a majority of persons to be transgendered.

It's kind of like so many media outlets' apparent need to point out that the Rittenhouse jury is "overwhelmingly white", as though that's noteworthy in a city whose population is also overwhelmingly white, and in a case where the defendant and just about everyone else involved are white.

[rsteinmetz]

I live in the South in a city that is majority black. Whenever I travel in the North I always wonder where all the black people are.

Wisconsin is I think about 85% white 6% black 6% Hispanic 2% Asian and 1% American Indian. At 8.33% single person of color on a 12 person jury closely reflects the makeup of the community.

[ThePublius]

Of course both sides of the great political and philosophical divide in the US think they are right, and logical, and moral. But I find the fuel price situation particularly troubling.

Biden and his party and the progressive movement he represents have made it a policy to stifle domestic fossil-fuel energy production and transport. He issued orders to halt new oil and gas leases on federal land, stopped the Keystone XL pipeline development, has declared war on fracking, and his nominee for comptroller of the currency (in hearings today) has declared it a goal to bankrupt oil and gas companies. And now that we've gone from an independent, net exporter of energy to one reliant again on the middle East, he's blaming it on oil and gas companies colluding and price gouging! And, his whole party is behind this! Is this insanity, or just plain evil?

[John F. Carr]

Biden is responding to conflicting orders from the people. As on many issues, Americans signal one thing and act the opposite. The daily weather report has to include a cry about climate change / crisis / emergency implying a need to end fossil fuel use. But threaten to raise fuel prices and hear the outrage. The "red" folks see a money grab. The "blue" folks fear the price increase will have its intended effect and the Poor will be incentivized to cut consumption. And the middle class gets angry enough to pick up the phone or click a button and vent at politicians.

[Brett Bellmore]

So it's not Americans signaling one thing and acting the opposite. It's one set of Americans signaling one thing, and a different set of Americans not acting consistently with that signaling.

[John F. Carr]

The number of people in both camps is too great to blame it on disjoint groups. Gas prices are scary to politicians even in parts of New England where Republicans are weak.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Perhaps America should abolish taxes on gasoline and replace them with taxes on used pickup trucks, tobacco, street pills, Slim Jims, marriage licenses for cousins, Chick-fil-A, cowboy hats, do-it-yourself oil change kits, gun bashes, and country music.

[Ben_]

Because going along with the climate religion culturally is one thing but actually being happy to make meaningful sacrifices for it is another. Not everyone in New England is so devout.

[Ben_]

It’s the climate religion. It’s right because fossil fuels are sinful, and that justifies more-or-less whatever.

Many religious beliefs and practices seem odd to unbelievers. But they make a kind of sense when understood within their religious context.

[TwelveInchPianist]

It sounds like Heather Gerken at Yale is addressing the recent incidents of abuse of power by revisiting the norms around secret recording and sharing confidential conversations.

[Michael P]

What makes the conversations confidential? If school employees are threatening students within the scope of their employment with the school, that seems to release the targeted students from obligations of confidentiality as to the threats. Except in the case of students who were threatened with repercussions unless they lied about a professor's behavior, I don't think third parties were clearly identified in the controversial conversations.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Yup. And in any event, any confidentiality should be in favor of the student, not the admin. Schools shouldn't suppress information about the administration's interaction with students.

[rsteinmetz]

Is Connecticut a one party state or a two party state for purposes of recording conversation?

[Brett Bellmore]

One party for in person conversations, and for telephonic conversations only for criminal liability purposes. For civil liability they're all party for telephone conversations.

[M L]

David Dorn.

Jessica Whitaker.

Aaron Danielson.

Secoriea Turner.

Chris Beaty.

Bernell Trammel.

All people apparently killed by BLM/Antifa "protestors." Yet for some reason, the media did not obsess over these events and make them into a huge story from day one, like they did with Rittenhouse, or in some cases even cover them at all. I wonder why that is?

[bernard11]

In the early hours of June 2, 2020, David Dorn, a 77-year-old retired police captain, was fatally shot after interrupting the burglary of a pawn shop in The Ville, St. Louis.[2] The incident occurred on the same night as protests in St. Louis, Missouri over the murder of George Floyd. However, the protests were several miles away and had disbanded a few hours earlier near the Metropolitan Police Headquarters downtown when police violently clashed with protestors.

The rest of the list is pretty dubious also, except Danielson. "Apparently" is an outright lie. No surprise there.

[Michael P]

Jessica Whitaker was shot and killed for saying "all lives matter" in response to BLM harassment. Secoreia Turner was shot and killed at an illegal roadblock set up and manned by BLM protesters. The reason that Bernell Trammell was shot and killed is unclear, but it was right outside his publishing house, where he was a vocal supporter of President Trump (as well as Black Lives Matter).

Not very dubious, you liar.

[Sarcastr0]

That's the uncorroborated testimony of her family, so maybe don't go off half-cocked.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"That's the uncorroborated testimony of her family,"

What? Presumably there's a body with a bullet hole that corroborates the testimony.

[NOVA Lawyer]

How does the prove what she said before the bullet entered her body?

[TwelveInchPianist]

It doesn't. I corroborates the testimony that she was shot for saying "all lives matter".

[NOVA Lawyer]

Sorry, wrong again. It just corroborates that she was shot. The why is still based on her families' testimony which itself is assuming correlation of the alleged utterance equates to causation, which itself is a stretch.

Just admit your "a bullet hole" was stupid trolling.

[NOVA Lawyer]

And that causal chain is all the more dubious as you and Michael are failing to acknowledge that Doty-Whitaker's group used a racial slur which they admit started the confrontation, more things were said, both groups were armed, they separated, and, allegedly, the second group fired the first shot (hitting Doty-Whitaker) followed by return fire (allegedly) from the racial slur using group.

I mean, they did admit to using a racial slur, so I guess that adds to their credibility. But it still remains their word that the other side shot first after the groups had separated. And, more relevantly to your stupid point, it's pretty clear the use of a racial slur was the most provocative thing the family admitted saying.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Sorry, wrong again. It just corroborates that she was shot."

Lol. I can see you down in NOVA now.

"Sure, your honor, my client told the police he strangled a woman in the park. And the police did find a strangled woman in the park. But the body just corroborates that the woman was strangled, it doesn't corroborate that it was my client who strangled her. So that's an uncorroborated confession and my client can go home, right your honor? Right?"

[David Nieporent]

That's not even the testimony.

Jessica Doty Whitaker and three friends were hanging out along the Indianapolis Canal Walk at about 3 a.m. on July 5, WXIN-TV reported.

They argued with another group after one of the people Whitaker was with used a racial slur, her bereaved fiancé, Jose Ramirez, told WXIN.

A racially charged confrontation ensued with the other group, during which the suspect’s group shouted, “Black Lives Matter,” and someone in Whitaker’s group — possibly her — said, “all lives matter,” Ramirez said.

Guns were whipped out, and both sides, seeing that all were armed, backed off, he said.

“It was squashed, and they went up the hill and left, we thought, but they were sitting on St. Clair waiting for us to come under the bridge, and that’s when she got shot,” Ramirez told WXIN.

So it would be just as accurate — but still speculative — to say that Jessica Whitaker got killed for yelling racial slurs at people at 3 am and then pulling a gun on those people.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ny-jessica-doty-whitaker-shot-dead-indianapolis-all-lives-matter-20200713-jcm5oyjca5fz5kge4qtlhh7dnu-story.html

[NOVA Lawyer]

In addition to bernard's valid point, there are other problems with both the list and your interpretation of why those cases were treated differently by the media.

First, they were covered in the media, which is how they can be googled to find news stories which set forth the allegations.

Second, You raise Secoreia Turner as a clear example of BLM/Antifa protestors killing someone, but that is not established, from what I saw. Importantly, the alleged murderers were members of a gang, which is quite likely the far more relevant (and only reasonably well-established) group association they have.

Third, I am pretty sure there are zero people claiming the two alleged gunmen were the real victims here and that 8-year Secoreia Turner was the aggressor. In other words, there's no left/right split.

The people who are against violence in general think the gunmen are scum.

The people who don't like guns think the gunmen are scum.

The people who want black children to be safe and grow up in a fair and equal society think the gunmen are scum.

There is basically no constituency that thinks the gunmen are anything but hideous murderers.

That's obviously different from the Rittenhouse case where there is a sharp divide on guns, the use of violence or threats of violence in response to property damage, protestors versus violent suppression of protests, and the different politics of Rittenhouse and at least some of the people he shot. None of those headline grabbing, conflicting outrage inducing aspects are at play in your Secoreia example.

In short, bernard seems to be right, you're being extraordinarily dishonest. That, or you didn't think very hard about this at all.

[Michael P]

The standard put forward was not "people who were killed by bad guys". It was "people apparently killed by BLM/Antifa "protestors."" The fact that they were also gang members, for example, does not change that.

But hey, you admit that people who killed an eight-year-old kid are bad. There is hope for you yet, even if you didn't take the effort to read the thread well.

[NOVA Lawyer]

Michael,

Now you're just grasping. Your point was "people apparently killed by BLM/Antifa 'protestors'" which, as pointed out (but you don't address), is very much in dispute.

But your point was also that such killings, assuming they happened, "or some reason, the media did not obsess over these events and make them into a huge story from day one, like they did with Rittenhouse." I explained in detail why the media did not "obsess" over the killings you raised in the same way "they did with Rittenhouse."

Maybe try to follow your own thread. (Or, more likely, just be honest that your original point was bullshit, which I take you get at this point, but you are too cowardly to admit.)

[Michael P]

I don't address bad-faith disputes, which is all you have. The media jumped all over Rittenhouse because he looked like a bad guy to bigoted media hacks. The media was very quiet about the other murders because they were inconvenient to the narrative. It had nothing to do with controversy.

In fact, every single one of your distinctions for Rittenhouse is dishonest. Rittenhouse and the people he was with didn't use violence or threats of violence to stop protests or in response to property damage. The Whitaker and Danielson and Beauty and Trammell shootings all had at least as much of a "political differences" angle.

You're focusing on the Turner example alone because you apparently think that people agreeing on gang bangers being bad makes the story less newsworthy than manufactured outage over self-defense. That's wrong. If the media wanted to cover the Kenosha shootings honestly, they would have focused on the fact that one of Rittenhouse's pursuers shot first, on the fact that all of his attackers had criminal histories, on the fact that Grosskreutz was illegally carrying a pistol that he pointed at Rittenhouse, and more.

It's pretty clear that I'm not the one who is hiding behind stupid evasions to avoid admitting error and bias.

[NOVA Lawyer]

Glad you admit my disputes aren't bad faith, as you did address them.

bernard pointed out the Dorn example was bull and, you've stopped listing it, so I assume you now agree.

The first one I googled was Secoreia Turner and that was bull. You've now complained that I am "focusing on the Turner example alone". No, it's just the first one I googled. So then I'm done googling your supposed examples because the only two that have been checked are bogus, which you've essentially admitted. (Note how you shift from the Secoreia Turner incident isn't being covered as much to, well, the Rittenhosue trial was covered improperly.)

You're arguing in bad faith. The examples you raised were all different in ways that made them less prime for are 24/7 outrage cycle (one more quite salient fact is that almost every aspect of the Rittenhouse case was videotaped so it isn't just the disputed rendition of a family member or the shooter or whoever) that had nothing to do with which narrative was being pushed. Unless I'm mistaken, the right wing media has also been overly focused on Rittenhouse, which just buttresses the point that there are factors beyond "the media chose this one because it pushes a narrative."

You've lost all credibility. You just move goalposts and try to play a shell game. Goodbye.

[NOVA Lawyer]

Michael P,

You are proving to be an incredibly unreliable commenter. From the local news report in July, based on the families' statements because the police said nothing: "[Ms. Doty-Whitaker's fiancé] said someone in their group used a slang version of the N-word, which prompted a confrontation with a group of strangers." But that doesn't have quite as nice a ring to it as it was the "all lives matter" (allegedly also spoken) as the utterance that resulted in violence (and both groups were armed and both sides fired shots, Doty-Whitaker's allegedly fired second, but theirs is the only version we have, apparently).

[M L]

He was killed by looters who were taking part in the widespread looting. Admittedly, the line between looters and "protestors" can be confusing.

[Ed Grinberg]

The media is on the side of BLM/Antifa (i.e., is against normal people). When BLM/Antifa hurts people, they try to find a way to blame the victim or, if they can't, pretend that it never happened. "Mostly peaceful!"

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Right-wing bigots were "normal people" -- in the sense of common, with popular ideas -- 60 or 70 years ago, Ed Grinberg. Today, after a few generations of liberal-libertarian mainstream progress, our vestigial right-wing racists, gay-bashers, misogynists, Muslim-haters, xenophobes, and anti-Semites operate at the dwindling fringe of American society. Today, the "normal Americans" prefer reason, tolerance, science, education, modernity, inclusiveness, and progress, while those who favor bigotry, backwardness, ignorance, superstition, and insularity are ineffectual misfits.

[Sarcastr0]

You do love your ginned up martyrs, eh?

[LawTalkingGuy]

There are too many ways to work around the “other acts” prohibition in Rule 404. If we’re going to have that many exceptions there is no point to the rule. The concept of a curative jury instruction directing them to use the evidence for the specified purpose but not to use it to determine they have a propensity to commit an act, is a fiction. It would be better to just let it in and let the attorneys argue over the weight it should be given.

[Commenter_XY]

LTG....what ever became of that story regarding Judge Pryor's law clerk?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Isn't it obvious from the course of that episode that Judge Pryor, the racist he hired for a job involving public administration of justice, and all of the other fledgling bigots engaged in serious introspection, resolved to improve their conduct, prayed on it a spell, and have become better persons?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Isn't it obvious from the course of that episode that Judge Pryor, the racist he hired for a job involving public administration of justice, and all of the other fledgling bigots engaged in serious introspection, resolved to improve their conduct, prayed on it a spell, and have become better persons?"

Sounds like a decent presumption for all twitter peccadillos, whether they be from law clerks or College Democrats. Although reflection can take the place of prayer if desired.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If no church is handy, could that reflection occur at a Federalist Society fried chicken trap house?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Why not? Fried chicken is delicious.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

And Republicans, conservatives, and Federalist Society members are fond of emails depicting a black President chasing a bucket of fried chicken. That is part of why strong educational institutions should reconsider having quite so many bigots on campus.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Dems on the house judiciary committee have requested the Chief Justice and the most senior active judge on the 11th Circuit (Pryor is Chief Judge) to look into it.

[Commenter_XY]

Well then they'll look into it. I have not forgotten about it. I figured I would ask.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Which of the conservatives on the Supreme Court, after examining the record, will hire her next year?

[David Nieporent]

The funny thing about that story is that she's first going to clerk for a district judge… but that judge has gotten a complete pass because Pryor is a bigger target.

[M L]

Exact words of the FDA panel committee member as they gave the emergency use authorization to vaccinate 5 to 11 year olds with relatively new MRNA COVID vaccine:

"We’re never going to learn about how safe the vaccine is unless we start giving it, and that’s just the way it goes."

[Sarcastr0]

Scientifically, this is absolutely true, unless you want trials to take literally a lifetime.

I'm not sure of the cost-benefit for children myself, but this quote is a pretty dumb one to use.

[M L]

Not really. They used to take 10-15 years to test safety more fully.

[Krayt]

Which probably made the FDA a bigger mass murderer last century than all tyrants combined.

See, if it rolls out too quickly and people are injured or killed, that sucks, but is detected and dealt with.

But every drug taking 10 years or more, that's a decade with no benefit. For mediocre heart or cancer or other drugs or treatments, that can effortlessly spill into millions of needless deaths worldwide.

But a sob story death in front of the cameras is worth two in the bush...I mean 200,000 needless deaths in the normal, unaltered course of history.

Congrats, lawyers and politicians. Thanks for your "help".

[M L]

Well, yeah. The FDA should not be running a command and control industry, but it has for a long time. There is probably nothing to do but dissolve it totally.

People should be able to take new drugs or other medical treatments if they and their doctor want to.

People should be able to take OLD drugs for new treatment applications if they and their doctor want to.

People should be able to NOT take any drugs or other substances if they so choose.

The government doesn't need to be PRETENDING they, and they alone can and must determine safety with any degree of certainty, and decide what's best for everyone, whether that's in 6 months or 15 years. The government doesn't need to be reversing basic principles of liability to grant immunity to big pharma (i.e. to themselves, lining their own pockets given the revolving door). And the government certainly doesn't need to be forcing and mandating that people (purportedly free people in a free country, what a joke) inject whatever substances they want to come up with into their bloodstream, while taxing them and forcing them to pay billions for the privilege, at whatever prices they set.

[Sarcastr0]

You don't care about regulation for efficacy at all.

You do know information imbalance is a cause of market failure, right?

I want more regulation of pharma as well, but the tort system isn't really great at that.

[Sarcastr0]

That hasn't been the case for at least 15 years.

And it's easy to see the cost-benefit as to why.

[M L]

“The FDA protects the big drug companies, and is subsequently rewarded, and using the government’s police powers, they attack those who threaten the big drug companies. People think that the FDA is protecting them. It isn’t. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it is doing are as different as day and night.”

Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Herbert Ley

[David Nieporent]

Well, that 52-year old quote is certainly pertinent.

[dangfitz]

I recently got a check from the Commonwealth of Virginia, a tax refund.

Artivle 1, Section 10 of the US Constitution says, in part:

"No State shall ... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts..."

Has this been somehow amended (and, if so, does that mean that Article 5 is also a Dead Letter)? Is a check now considered a gold or silver coin? Last I heard, the Gold Window waas closed, and precious metals no longer back any financial instruments?

I had one attorney tell me - erroneously, I hope - tht he would be disbarred if he brought this case.

[Michael P]

The check itself isn't tender. The US dollars it represents are the tender.

[rsteinmetz]

The dollars are also not State currency, they are Federal Currency. That article doesn't apply to the Federal Government.

[Brett Bellmore]

Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, does, however. It's the one that gives Congress the power to "coin" money.

Notably, you don't "coin" script.

[bernard11]

So we shouldn't have paper money at all, just coins?

Or does "coin" include "print?"

[Brett Bellmore]

No, "coin" doesn't include "print". And, yes, constitutionally, we shouldn't have paper money at all.

[Sarcastr0]

Well, that's a great argument for the impracticality of the hidebound style of originalism that even the Founders never intended.

[Brett Bellmore]

What's impractical about it?

Nothing, that's what.

And if you'd really wanted paper money, an amendment would have been possible.

Basically, you're rejecting originalism because actually having a constitution is inconvenient.... You'd rather just pretend to have a constitution, but ignore it any time it inconveniences you.

[Sarcastr0]

First, originalism included a common law reliance on precedent, not your attempt to divine truth out of contradictory historical sources.

Second, if something is clearly required for society to work, but you gotta do some official paperwork to make it so, you're being officious beyond value.

Third, not agreeing with your particular take on the Constitution and how to interpret it is not the same as ignoring the Constitution. You really do have this problem of everyone who doesn't agree with you is bad.

[Krayt]

It's not even script as pseudo-cash.

A check is mererly the authorization to transfer money from an account to another person or account. It is instructions to a bank regarding your account. Or the government's account, wherever that is, in this case.

[David Nieporent]

Once more, Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Does anyone know how Trent Colbert's fried chicken-Federalist Society trap house event went? Was a rousing good time had by all who attended? Was sliced watermelon an unadvertised treat?

I certainly hope no church-disapproved fornication, same-sex cuddling, attempted entrance by undocumented persons (illegal aliens), or similar offenses against right-wing sensibilities spoiled the night of clinger fun.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I also hope Judge Pryor's all-Black-people-hating clerk made the trip to Connecticut for that one.

[Sebastian Cremmington]

Marriage should be between one man with a pee pee and one woman with a wee wee! It’s sounds better in Latin. 😉

[Krayt]

Bible-approved marriages only!

One man. One or more women, and some concubines!

[Michael P]

When replying to comments on the mobile version of the site, the "Log out?" link is very close to the "Cancel reply" link -- and the former does not prompt for confirmation. It would be nice if it asked whether the person really meant to log out before logging them out.

[Michael P]

Another feature request: A way to undo a mistaken "Flag Comment" click. Again when using a mobile browser (Chrome on Android), it's very easy to click that -- I would guess at least two thirds of the times I click it, I am only trying to scroll the page, but I touch some place that responds too readily.

[NonLawyerDan]

Ditto. Have done that at least twice, and feel like an idiot. (Perhaps a justified feeling, of course.)

[Seamus]

Yep. Same thing happens to me all the time.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Rittenhouse judge just kicked MSNBC out of the courtroom because someone claiming to be affiliated with them was following the jury bus.

A first amendment violation? MSNBC has the right to report and gather information in public. It's the court's job to protect the jury, not MSNBC's.

[Michael P]

Was the person following the jury bus actually affiliated with MSNBC? What fact of public concern would such pursuit reveal?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Idk. Not sure it matters, for the 1A issue.

[Brett Bellmore]

For what it's worth, he's listed on Linkedin as working for MSNBC. It's possible the guy they arrested lied about his name, and had an alias prepared in advance, but that seems at least a bit far fetched.

[Bob from Ohio]

NBC admitted he was a "freelancer" working for them.

[Armchair Lawyer]

And he "had been instructed by his supervisor, Irene Byon, to follow the bus"

Lovely...

[Armchair Lawyer]

Not sure. The courtroom can be closed to the public in some situations. And disruptive observers can be removed.

If MSNBC is potentially tampering with the jury (or helping to tamper with the jury), a Judge may be well within their power to exclude them from the courtroom. Attempting to identify and photograph the jurors may lead to tampering.

If the other media organizations stay in the courtroom, any first amendment violation is minimal I would say.

[John F. Carr]

The courtroom can not be closed when the jury is hearing evidence.

In a high publicity trial I'm sure all the seats will be filled, and the public doesn't have a right to have MSNBC or Fox News on the scene, as opposed to some other news source.

[Krayt]

It would be jury tampering if the purpose was to discover them, and out them, and terrorize them or their family, before or after the fact of a decision as a lesson to future juries.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

MSNBC has the right to report and gather information in public. It's the court's job to protect the jury, not MSNBC's.

Wouldn't banning an entity that has apparently attempted to tamper with the jury in some way (admittedly, I don't know if instructing a freelancer working for them to follow their bus from the courthouse qualifies absent information on why they instructed him to do that) from the courtroom constitute a measure intended to protect the jury?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

'Cranky Old White Guy Takes Break From Listening To Trump Campaign Tune And Chases Younger Person From Spot Near His Backwater Wisconsin Lawn'

[TwelveInchPianist]

Lol. There's nothing funnier than a self-hating cranky old white guy.

[VT Samizdat]

...and today in dispatches from Portland; school administrators demonstrate that once they are given a new tool to use, they will use it with gay abandon.
https://www.reynolds.k12.or.us/rms/short-term-distance-learning
"Citing social struggles, not COVID, Reynolds Middle School to move to distance learning" https://www.opb.org/article/2021/11/17/reynolds-middle-school-to-move-to-distance-learning/

[Krayt]

Nothing helps socialization as much as abandonment of it, and running face first into a locomotive when you gradumitate into the real world.

[NonLawyerDan]

Could anyone point me to a presentation of the fundamental reason why, from the perspective of a libertarian like Nozick -- that is, not a consequentialist libertarian -- the government should enforce contracts. Put differently, if I give Joe 50 apples, with us agreeing that he will give me 2 apple pies tomorrow and keep the leftover for himself, why should the government get involved, given that no coercion was involved? As far as I can find, Nozick doesn't address this, even though he says the minimal state should enforce contracts.

And if you are pointing me in the direction of an argument that turns on the concept of "title", please make sure the argument includes a non-consequentialist justification for the law to, in this apple example, make a distinction between "legitimate possession" and "title." (At least those are the terms this non-lawyer would use.) Assuming I had legitimate possession -- as understood by Locke and Nozick -- of the apples, why should my handing them to Joe not transfer all rights to Joe, with me simply taking the risk that he may or may not give me the pies.

FYI, this really is just a query; it is not meant to be an opening salvo in an argument. A response like "p. 234 in the book Blah Blah" is the type of answer I am hoping for. Or if someone can make the argument in a post that is fine, although including a citation would be appreciated. I am not arguing that there is no legitimate non-consequentialist libertarian argument that covers my apple example; I just want to find out what that argument is.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Assuming I had legitimate possession -- as understood by Locke and Nozick -- of the apples, why should my handing them to Joe not transfer all rights to Joe, with me simply taking the risk that he may or may not give me the pies."

Because when Joe entered into the contract, he (contingently) gave up the right not to give you those two apple pies. So it's not in any sense a rights violation to compel him to hand them over, is preexisting right against that action vanished when you completed your end of the deal.

That proves that it's permissible for the government to enforce the contract.

Then we ask, has the government itself committed to enforcing contracts, and thus itself forfeited the right to refrain from doing so? (Where it would not be a rights violation?)

That's contingent, but probably, yes, because enforcing contracts is a remarkably common government service.

Clear?

Now, the above does not come direct from my rather yellowed copy of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, (Which I don't have at hand right now anyway.) but only from decades old memories of reading it, and general familiarity with his writings.. But I'm pretty sure that's how it goes.

[NonLawyerDan]

First, thank you for the answer.

What I don't follow is the foundation of any meaning of "rights" that goes beyond "legitimate possession", and how, if I give the apples to Joe, Nozick could argue that Joe does not have legitimate possession. And I can't find Nozick addressing it. ("Contract" isn't even in the index.) I think I understand your response, and I am quite a fan of a government that does enforce contracts. (Then again, I'm fine with consequentialist arguments.) But I don't see how the argument for contract enforcement has the same type of deontological libertarian grounding as an argument against theft, rape, etc.

Perhaps this will help explain what I see as missing: Why should the government get involved if someone kills me, or even just tries? Because that person did something with my body without my consent (or did something with my body against my will, or whatever way one wants to say it). Why should the government get involved if someone beats me up? Because that person did something with my body without my consent. Why should the government get involved if someone steals my bike? Because that person did something with my property without my consent. Why should the government get involved if someone destroys my bike? Because that person did something with my property without my consent. But Joe did not take the apples from me without my consent. And to say "it's not in any sense a rights violation to compel him to hand them over, [as his] preexisting right against that action vanished when you completed your end of the deal" seems to me to presuppose an idea of rights grounded in something beyond the standard line of "My person and property are mine to do with as I want."

Last, maybe Wikipedia can help explain my confusion. From the entry for "Non-aggression principle": "The non-aggression principle…is a concept in which aggression, defined as initiating or threatening any forceful interference with either an individual or their property, is inherently wrong. It is considered by some to be a defining principle of libertarianism in the United States." The non-aggression principle alone, I would think, provides reason for governments to enforce laws against murder, assault, theft, and destruction of property. But enforcing the apples agreement would seem to need something else, and if the foundation of that something else is not in non-aggression, or not grounded in consent, how is it grounded?

To repeat, I am quite happy to live in a world with an understanding of rights that adheres to what you wrote. I just don't see why Nozick should have been.

Thanks for your time.

[Brett Bellmore]

Think of it this way: You agree that you CAN give Joe the apples, right? At which point they're HIS applies, with everything that implies.

Why can't he give you two pies, contingently?

[NonLawyerDan]

Thanks. Nicely distilled.

[David Nieporent]

Could anyone point me to a presentation of the fundamental reason why, from the perspective of a libertarian like Nozick -- that is, not a consequentialist libertarian -- the government should enforce contracts.

Isn't the obvious answer that it's an implied term of a contract (and often an express term!) that the parties agree to have a neutral party enforce it?

[Bob from Ohio]

Do you think 9 months in office is too early to go the "wreckers and hoarders" route?

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/17/politics/biden-high-gas-prices-ftc-letter/index.html

[dwb68]

the judge in the Rittenhouse case should fine MSNBC tens of millions for their reprehensible behavior regarding the jurors. Let them fight it, defend their behavior in court, and have an appeals court cut the liability after years of litigation.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Better Americans should just continue to stomp right-wingers' bigoted, stale preferences into political irrelevance in the settled-but-not-over-just-yet culture war.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Now you're harping on right-wingers' preference for impartial jurors? I would have thought you would be on the right-wingers' side on that one, but I guess not.

[dwb68]

When did "due process" become a right wing thing? No matter what you think of the case, the jurors should be able to deliberate and live their lives in peace.

[Jimmy the Dane]

The left basically wants a lynch mob to finish what the actually mob probably would have done to Rittenhouse had he not been armed.

You can't tell me after watching that video over and over again, that the intention of that mob was NOT to maim, seriously injury, or ultimately kill him.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Yeah. Let's violate their 8th Amendment rights because they had the audacity to exercise their 1st Amendment rights!

You're deranged.

[Sarcastr0]

What do you think MSNBC did?

[Jimmy the Dane]

Their intent was clear and unamerican. They wanted to intimidate the jury and get info to dox them if the jurors dare not come back with the "correct" verdict. Despite everything else, this is dastardly and would be condemned by the left if this were any case with a politically correct fact pattern.

If you just want to lynch Rittenhouse at least be honest about it. Don't use and abuse the justice system to do your dirty work. We all know that what you truly desire is for another mob to finish what the first one didn't do.

[Sarcastr0]

No, that's not at all clear.

In fact, it seems more like fiction you made up.

[Michael P]

The fact that the network ordered a stringer to follow the jury van, he thought that was important enough to break traffic laws (and get pulled over, which is how the scheme was uncovered), and the network issued a weasel-worded non-apology denial, all indicate that they had that kind of improper motive.

[Sarcastr0]

So either
MSBC wanted some footage, and the stringer was overambitious/bad at driving

Or,
MSNBC told a stringer (known for their loyalty) to do a traffic violation to intimidate the jury, in a way that would probably make headlines. And no one leaked this conspiracy.
Maybe MSNBC has a jury tampering division, they seem so adept at it!

Dude, you're off your rocker.

[Michael P]

Yes, the first. MSNBC wanted some footage that would compromise the jurors' privacy, and the stringer was overambitious/bad at driving.

The judge saw the problem with this. The only question is why you act like you don't.

[Sarcastr0]

Again, you're just choosing an unsupported narrative you like and deciding all other explanations are to be ignored.

Have you watched cable TV? Do you not think they didn't plan to play anodyne footage of the van or whatever pulling into traffic or signaling a left turn or whatever every time they hit that story?

[Michael P]

I don't believe you really think that MSNBC was desperate for essentially stock footage of a passenger van in traffic. Or that the stringer was following the bus with some kind of camera in his hand while he drove to capture that kind of footage.

[Sarcastr0]

Desperation is not required for this scenario. All they did was hire a stringer.

And yes, I've seen cable news and that kind of boring footage is their bread and butter.

[David Nieporent]

Have you watched cable TV? Do you not think they didn't plan to play anodyne footage of the van or whatever pulling into traffic or signaling a left turn or whatever every time they hit that story?

I saw a TV news story (pointed to it by social media) the other day of a parent who attacked a referee at a youth soccer game. They had video of the attack. But to introduce said video, they had one of their reporters go stand outside, in the dark, at the soccer field where the game was played. You couldn't see anything, (a) because it was dark; and (b) because the event had happened a day earlier so even if it were daylight it would've just been an empty park.

The point is, the media likes to air stupid footage.

[dwb68]

There is literally no reason to be following a jury whose names have been sealed by the court. Zero. Except to dox them. Its contempt of court and the fine should be large enough to put other media outlets on notice.

[Sarcastr0]

You cannot think of anything that they could do that would be newsworthy but not involve their location?

You've blinded yourself.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

You cannot think of anything that they could do that would be newsworthy but not involve their location?

You've blinded yourself.

LOL! Sarcastr0 thinks that a "journalist" was trying to catch a group of jurors doing something newsworthy by following them while they were being transported in a bus with the windows covered.

[Jimmy the Dane]

It is actually scary the extent the left will go now to not only justify their violence and tampering with the justice system, but also about how brash they are getting when doing so. Sarc almost has an "obviously of course" attitude to this whole episode and I've noticed that same among the left when it has come to the oppression of anything that can be tangentially linked to the tourists on Jan 6.

[Brett Bellmore]

I wonder how they'll dismiss it when the footage described here leaks, if it is accurately described?

Terror in the Capitol Tunnel

"McBride viewed three hours of surveillance video captured by Capitol security camera—the extensive system captured at least 14,000 hours of footage that the Justice Department and Capitol police are desperate to keep away from public view—and described for the first time what happened inside the tunnel where a combination of D.C. and Capitol police, ostensibly, were stationed to prevent protesters from entering the building:

“[Just] after 4:00 pm, Ryan is sprayed multiple times by an officer standing on a ledge in the tunnel,” McBride wrote in a November 1 filing. “He is also separated from a woman who stood next to Ryan at different times at the Western Terrace. She was middle aged and nice. Ryan promised to keep an eye on her. The woman was wearing a red shirt and a MAGA hat. Shortly thereafter, officers begin terrorizing people in and around the tunnel. People are screaming and getting crushed. There is a pile of human beings stacked on top of each other at the tunnel entrance. People are trapped and there is nowhere to go.”

McBride focused on the conduct of one officer in particular, with badge number L359 and wearing a white shirt. The unidentified officer begins “to beat a man for no apparent reason . . . [and] beats the man so badly that the man crawls over to the woman with the MAGA hat.”

At this point, according to the security video, the officer turns his sights on the woman. “Then for reasons that no fair minded or decent human being will ever understand—[the officer wearing the] White-shirt turns his attention to the woman and begins to pulverize her,” McBride explained. “The weapon this officer appears to be using is a collapsible stick, designed to break windows in emergency situations. This stick is neither designed nor to be used against another human being.”

For the next several minutes, between 4 p.m. and around 4:15 p.m., the officer in the white shirt relentlessly beats the woman; McBride furnished a literal blow-by-blow account in the court document. (The time stamp is based on a three-hour video clip, not time of day.)"

The autopsy said she died of a drug overdose.

[Sarcastr0]

Do you think the left is going really agonize over whether stand with a cop?
I think they are dumbasses with their ACAB nonsense, but that also means they'll be fine jettisoning a cop who is caught on camera using excessive force.

Though as with any single source of a random blog, I'll wait for confirmation.

[David Nieporent]

Though as with any single source of a random blog, I'll wait for confirmation.

The story was written by child-molesting-defender Julie Kelly. The horoscope page of your local newspaper is more likely to give you accurate reporting.

[Sarcastr0]

You've made up some stuff based on nothing but your own partisan speculation, and now when I say it's made up you talk about how scary it is I'm cool with the stuff you made up.

It's a pretty easy cycle of demonization to see. And conveniently fact-free for you.

[Ben_]

What did you expect? The liberals from the 80s and 90s who genuinely wanted to help some people faded away and became (or were replaced with) totalitarians lacking in principle or humanity.

They were always followers, but now their leaders are fascists and killers and they’re still following, still supporting.

[Sarcastr0]

Joe Biden: Big fascist and killer energy.

Dude, I hate McConnell, but I don't go around talking about how he's a killer/fascist.

Don't be so crazy to demonize the other side, or it's your own principles and humanity you will lose.

[Michael P]

The latest crazy, science-hating right wing demagogue to cancel a mask mandate and put their constituents at risk is... Washington, DC's Mayor Muriel Bowser.

If you had her on your Bat Flu Bingo card, congratulations!

[bernard11]

So Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) says to a Russian-born nominee to be comptroller of the currency, "I don't know whether to call you 'Professor' or 'Comrade.'

Toomey, another asshole, says,

"'Where would a person even come up with these ideas?'" he said. "Well, maybe a contributing factor could be in if a person grew up in the former Soviet Union, and went to Moscow State University, and attended there on a Vladimir Lenin Academic Scholarship."

How does anyone defend this kind of shit? Really. Red-baiting? WTF is wrong with those guys?

[Michael P]

It's not red-baiting when the person in question was an open admirer of the Communist regime in Russia, and arguably even now is a closeted admirer of it.

[bernard11]

You have evidence? I guess you also know the names 200 Communists in the State Department.

[Michael P]

She was a member of the Young Communists (and aged out, never resigned). Or https://twitter.com/stomarova/status/1112387645882200064?s=11 . She impressed the Russian Communists enough to earn the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship to college, where she wrote a senior thesis about Marxism -- a thesis that stayed on her CV until at least 2017.

[Sarcastr0]

Undergraduate thesis? Being smart in the USSR? Thinking the gender pay gap can't be solved with deregulation?

Zounds.

[bernard11]

You know what, Michael, that's so fucking stupid as to be beyond belief.

It's not even worth refuting. She lived in the Soviet Union, for Pete's sake. So her college scholarship was named for Lenin. BFD. So she wrote a paper to please her professors.

Are you insane? Well, since you're obviously a RWNJ the answer is clear.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, you're the insane one. Insane enough that you don't mind a high probability of making an actual communist comptroller of the currency.

The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy

"On the liability side, [Financial liability of the Fed, in an accounting sense. Not a "downside"] the Article envisions the ultimate “endstate” whereby central bank accounts fully replace—rather than compete with—private bank deposits."

"As part of this exploratory exercise, the Article proposes a mechanism for modulating the aggregate supply of money via direct crediting—and, in rare circumstances, debiting—of universally held FedAccounts. It shows how this unconventional
mechanism, colloquially known as “helicopter money,” would empower the Fed to conduct monetary policy in a far more targeted, dynamic, and effective manner than can be done via interest rate management alone."

So, the Comptroller of the Currency wants to nationalize all the banks. And manipulate the economy by making money appear, and as necessary, disappear, from your formerly private savings.

No, Bernard. She's still a communist. Still, fundamentally, rejects the concept of private property that the government can't just take at will. She envisions a system of central economic control that would make any dictator envious.

Under her scheme, private savings would all be nationalized, and subject to government manipulation. She doesn't say it, but piss off the government, and the next day you're penniless. Do something with your business other than what you're told? Your financial assets vanish.

"This shift would allow for a significant streamlining of the U.S.
bank regulatory apparatus. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) would have no practical role to play. All of the continuing prudential oversight and chartering responsibilities can then be consolidated and transferred to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency"

She envisioned this nightmare as recently as last October, and has just been appointed head of the agency she proposed take over all financial assets in the country.

Don't be stupid, Bernard. She's a commie, alright.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett, you haven't sniffed out a secret communist, you redbaiting ass.

You don't appear to know what communism is. Nor what an exploratory exercise.

You're the one being stupid.

[Michael P]

Not an actual Communist, according to Gaslighto: A former member of the Young Communists who was trained by actual Communists in an actual Communist university under an actual Communist scholarship, and still expresses ideas along Communist lines. (The People's Ledger! Democratize money! Have the government finance the economy! Code-switching: It's not just for dog whistlers any more.)

[Sarcastr0]

Growing up in the USSR with all of it's party trappings doesn't make you communist years later, you miserable excuse for an American.

And 'expresses ideas along communist lines' is a clue maybe you're getting into some weak tea.

The government does finance the economy. Democratize is not a communist word.
You're a redbaiting ideologue, and that's all there is to it.

[Michael P]

If not for double standards, you would have no standards. Your only evidence against the Young Communist, guerilla property-redistributing, Communist sympathizer having Communist leanings is empty assertion. You get more and more tedious by the thread.

[Sarcastr0]

Adding a bunch of stuff you've convinced yourself of with really scanty evidence does not make your case any better, it just makes it clear how much you're leaning on ideology and not reality.

[Sarcastr0]

In service of character assassinating some rando you and I have never heard of before today.

This is you being a bad person. This is what blind tribalism makes you do.

[Michael P]

And mouthing vague platitudes doesn't make an actual, relevant point. It's like you know you're wrong but just won't admit it. Or that you're leaning on partisanship rather than reality.

[Michael P]

You may have been ignorant of Joe Biden's crypto-communist nominee before today. I wasn't. Stop imagining that I am as blinkered and partisan as you.

[Sarcastr0]

Really? Where did you hear about her before?

And do you happen to know where she was born?

[Michael P]

I heard of her by the end of September, no more than a week after she was officially nominated. I don't remember if I heard of her before her nomination (she was suggested as comptroller of currency starting in August or so).

She was born in the USSR, in what is currently Kazahkstan, which is why I suggested it earlier as a place where she might belong in a position of power.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Growing up in the USSR with all of it's party trappings doesn't make you communist years later, you miserable excuse for an American."

No, but advocating the things she's advocated does. Cato goes into terrifying detail about what this woman has proposed.

[Sarcastr0]

The Cato blog may need some fact checking before you take it as gospel.

And maybe realize what being a Kazakh in the USSR means, and how you shouldn't neglect that fact in your mania to kick it like it's 1950 again.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"In service of character assassinating some rando you and I have never heard of before today.

This is you being a bad person. This is what blind tribalism makes you do."

At least he didn't call her a rapist.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

High probability?

I guess by the standards of a bigoted, autistic, backwater, birther-class, right-wing loser.

[Kagami]

"I guess by the standards of a bigoted, autistic, backwater, birther-class, right-wing loser."

You might find people more receptive to your viewpoints if you could stop your broad-brush statements. The mention of autism was a particularly classy comment.

A tough lift for you I suppose, but you'll be a better person for it, you bigoted troll.

Okay, back to putting you on "Mute Bigot".

[David Nieporent]

She doesn't say it, but

Brett will nevertheless make it up and pretend she did!

Kind of like how he pretends that Yale is going to give conservative law students bad grades, despite the fact that Yale doesn't give grades.

At some point, Brett, you need to seek help. You are clinically paranoid.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Questioning hard left wingers on their past = jerk move. Got it.

[bernard11]

Glad you understand.

Note that Kennedy at least didn't "question" anything. He just went straight for the smear.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Oh no! A "smear"! That never, ever happens in politics!!!! How dare he (if that is how that person self identifies, that is)!

[Sarcastr0]

Handwaiving tu quoque is pretty lame, Jimmy.

[Jimmy the Dane]

It isn't hand waving. It is pointing out that if you want to plead the "my panties are in a bunch" defense probably shouldn't have blown that load over the last four years of relentless accusations of calling everyone you didn't agree with a racist nazi. Now just referencing someone who is probably actually a communist as such is just plain yawn.....

[Sarcastr0]

What isn't relevant to whether this was bad is whether some other stuff is also bad.

Your frantic pointing elsewhere shows you have a problem with holding your side accountable.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Sure it is relevant to point out double standards because in the mind of a leftoid the same thing they do is just fine, but not OK when a political opponent does it. You can think for lots of reasons that is legit (such as BLM riots are OK but January 6 was basically Hitler), but that doesn't mean you are right.

[Sarcastr0]

Your thesis was not hypocrisy, your thesis was that Kennedy was right.
You just used a fallacy to do it.

And now you're clumsily trying to shift your thesis. Because you're bad at this.

[Jimmy the Dane]

My thesis was who cares if he is calling anyone a name, whether it is accurate or not. The civility card got voided a long time ago in case you missed it.

And, gees, it is you who are getting really bad at this. Next time try to reframe what I said and then cast it in a suspicious light. That one seems to work better for you.

[Bored Lawyer]

The woman has written admiringly of the Soviet economic system, and is now nominated for a position in the Treasury Dept. Those are legitimate observations. She should not be allowed within 10 miles of any position of authority.

[Michael P]

I would be happy for her to have a position of authority in Russia or Khazakstan. Not in any liberal democracy.

[bernard11]

To which I say,

1. Link, please.

2. It is certainly appropriate to question a nominee on her policy views. That's not what Kennedy or Toomey were doing.

[Brett Bellmore]

1. Link. Very, very terrifying link.

2. That's exactly what they were doing. The problem is that her policy views can be summed up by saying that she's a communist.

[Sarcastr0]

That's not about the soviet system.

You continue to not know how to use the word communist.

[M L]

Your party is filled with communists and communism, Marxism etc. The fact that many of you are too dumb to know it, don't like to acknowledge it, or actively try to hide it and mislead about it doesn't change a thing.

[Sarcastr0]

Sure, dude. When I want to know what communism is, I ask someone who thinks we took a wrong turn at the Civil War.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The Democratic Party is filled with communists, communism, Marxism, etc.

The Republican Party is nothing but poorly educated racists, superstitious gay-haters, disaffected clingers, misogynistic incels, can't-keep-up immigrant-bashers, and authoritarian jerks.

Where is the hope for America?

[Toranth]

You stated this a lot - but can YOU define "communist", then?

I want to see what you are claiming as your standard that you are applying.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Considering everything going on in the world, this thread was much less of a shit show then I expected.

Let's go Brandon!

[Sarcastr0]

This is because sounding like Free Republic is super cool to you because you are on the fringe right and like your echo chambers.

It is, in fact, a shitshow.

[Jimmy the Dane]

I'm a pretty right-center kind of guy. The left wing has gone so far to the left though just being an American who endorses American values makes you an "extreme right winger" for commie crazies like yourself.

[Sarcastr0]

You can't stop posting about when the time comes to purge the libs.

You're not center right.

[Jimmy the Dane]

I've consistently said liberals are going to have to answer for their crimes against humanity. This is not a controversial statement and the left likes to make such maturations when it comes to things like "racial reckoning". Just the left likes the reframe any time they might be held accountable as being something unconscionable. Hence why I always say they are going to be really surprised when that happens.

[Sarcastr0]

No, Jimmy. You talked about what will happen to RAK one day, you talk about 'the time will come for citizens to do what they have to do.'

You're very clear, and playing coy afterwards only makes you look like a coward in addition to being a psycho.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Yeah, I do wonder if people like RAK are going to understand what will happen when that day of reckoning comes. I think they are so delusional and unplugged from reality that they will be confused as to why they did anything wrong. If you live in an echo chamber for as long as the extreme left has here that is bound to happen (and not a good thing).

The left loves to talk about reckonings and then serves up a lot of violence justified by said reckoning (hence all the BLM "mostly peaceful" riots in 2020). Seems to me that they just don't like the idea of turnabout being fair play, not that they have any objection to a reckoning.

[Sarcastr0]

This day of reckoning sure seems to involve a lot of Real Americans choosing to take action and bad news for leftists.

I don't care what other people you see are doing. Lusting for a liberal purge isn't turnabout, it's you being a sad Internet tough guy.

[Jimmy the Dane]

All that I am saying is that one day justice will be served. And when that day comes it will be glorious.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

It is, in fact, a shitshow.

Perhaps if there were people here who are as utterly full of shit as you are....

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

"...were fewer people here..."

[Jimmy the Dane]

Remember when Trump hosted three foreign leaders and dubbed his conference the "Three Amigos" and the press went wild accusing his administration of racism and bringing out the usual parade of horribles?

Well you probably don't remember it, because it didn't happen. Instead Joe "Negro" Biden just did the same and the press didn't even bat an eye. I mean "press" as in the Ministry of Propaganda.

[Sarcastr0]

No, I don't remember that about Trump. And I followed the news pretty well. Some deep cuts there.

And talking about the Negro League era may involves using the word negro.

Your attempts a cancel culture turn out to be really bad. But you don't care, because if you don't understand it, it muse be media bias!

[Jimmy the Dane]

You missed the mark, as usual, there Sarc. Need to dust off those reading glasses.

I said that factual didn't actually happen but if it did we would see nothing but RAZZZISMM being screamed in every headline. Much like Brandon's casual use of the word "negro". Had that come out of Trump's mouth it would have sent leftoids batshit crazy.

Just another example about how our propaganda ministry treats the two parties.

[NOVA Lawyer]

Jimmy,

Are you so bereft of actual examples that you need to imagine counterfactuals and how the media in your alt-universe would handle them? Are you under the illusion that anyone but you finds that methodology informative or persuasive?

[Jimmy the Dane]

This is pretty good proof. If I wasn't hitting the mark, and spot on, you wouldn't be so mad about it.

[NOVA Lawyer]

lol, you're an idiot.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Projection is a hell of a drug.

[Sarcastr0]

'you calling my idiotic argument idiotic is proof it's secretly right' is just such an amazing concession of defeat.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Not really. It is a standard reaction of leftists. Call someone names to distract and project. Problem here is I think a little too close for comfort to this random internet poster. Hence the knee jerk reaction. You continuing to defend it further reinforces my point.

[Sarcastr0]

Successful trolling does not indicate any truth value. But you know that - you're just trolling.

The thing is you often retreat to that stance when you've been wrecked.

[Jimmy the Dane]

I'm speaking truth to power and you know it!

[David Nieporent]

This is pretty good proof. If I wasn't hitting the mark, and spot on, you wouldn't be so mad about it.

So if I call your mother a whore and you get upset about it, your anger proves that she actually is a prostitute?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"And talking about the Negro League era may involves using the word negro."

Yeah, but it should probably have the word "league" right after.

[Sarcastr0]

Why?
Everyone knows what he was referencing. Even bad faith tools like yourself.

If you defend professors being able to use slurs in the classroom (and I agree with you) picking up this line of attack really shows your ass.

[bernard11]

You're a fucking ignoramus as well as a moron.

"Negro Leagues" is what those leagues were called, and how they are normally referred to today, by everyone.

Fuck you.

[Jimmy the Dane]

It is racist to use that term despite any historical justifications. Isn't that why we have to rip down a bunch of statues and other stuff?

[Sarcastr0]

Statues aren't history. Neither are semantics.

But no one is actually arguing we should stop using the term negro leagues except for bad faith tools so it's not really a big deal.

[Michael P]

The objection wasn't to some use of the term "Negro Leagues" by Joe Biden. He used "negro" as a free-standing noun. That's why the original comment called him "Joe 'Negro' Biden", not "Joe 'Negro League' Biden".

[Sarcastr0]

You have no idea what he said, do you? You just read some article on American Thinker or something about it.

[Michael P]

Damn, but you are lazy. You don't even make a sketch of an argument. You just make personal attacks in lieu of having a point.

For all your spittle-flecked invective about partisan blindness and being a bad person, you really should look in a mirror.

[Sarcastr0]

Your argument requires a blindness to context that makes me pretty sure you didn't bother with the primary source.

[Jimmy the Dane]

We are talking about a guy here (Sarcastro) who was fine with a girl getting raped in a bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt because of liberal reasoning.....don't know what you expect here.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, that's what I said. Absolutely.

Asshole.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Oh you don't like it when someone on the internet reframes what you said in a manner that "might" not be representative of your actual statement? Funny, since that is your SOP.

[Sarcastr0]

No, I don't like it when you lie about what I said.

If you think I did that, feel free to link it, and not just be an asshole.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

that makes me pretty sure

That's one of your biggest problems (among some other really big ones, like being a compulsive liar). You're always "pretty sure" about things that there is no reason at all for you to be sure about, simply because that unwarranted certainty allows you to ignore just what a dishonest asshole you really are.

[Ben_]

"You're a fucking ignoramus as well as a moron."

This is typical of leftists. Name-calling with zero substance. Yet they still think they're The Good Guys as they act exactly like old men shaking fists at the world.

[Sarcastr0]

You were very very wrong, which sometimes doesn't require a full engagement.

It's not like you fully engage every time either.

Drawing a conclusion that you must be extra right about Biden using a slur is...a pretty good recipe to make a fool of yourself.

[Ben_]

I said nothing about Biden. Biden might as well be a mannequin.