Thursday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[darkknight9]

Does anyone know if a photographic study or perhaps just a smattering of high quality (non shaky) pics are of the woodworking and/or furniture in the Supreme Court and its library? I'm looking for future furniture ideas.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Someone at the National Archives could probably direct you to the right resource—which might or might not be in the national archives.

[darkknight9]

Thank you!

[Dr. Ed 2]

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=supreme+court+furnature&iax=images&ia=images

NB: Not all are SCOOTUS.

[Dr. Ed 2]

See also: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=supreme+court+library&iax=images&ia=images

[darkknight9]

Thank you!

[The Turtle Dove]

Finest spittoons in the land.

Mr. D.

[PaulS]

There is a full time woodworking/millwork shop - government employees - that makes furniture just for the Supreme Court - you might try contacting them

[Kazinski]

Journalistic standards on the left:

“A former MSNBC host claims she was told she needed to have the network president vet her commentary if it included any criticism of Hillary Clinton before she ran for president in 2016.

Krystal Ball, a former Democratic Party congressional candidate from Virginia, was a co-host of “The Cycle” from 2012 until 2015 for the left-leaning cable news channel owned by Comcast.

Ball, 41, recalled her MSNBC monolgue in 2014 when she urged then-Sen. Clinton (D-NY) to not seek the Democratic Party nomination for president.

“I did this whole thing that was like, ‘She sold out to Wall Street. People are gonna hate this lady. She’s like the terrible candidate for the moment. Please don’t run,’” Ball said during an appearance last week on Joe Rogan’s Spotify podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

“Afterwards, I get pulled into an office and you know [I was told], ‘Great monologue, everything’s fine. But next time you do any commentary on Hillary Clinton, it has to get approved by the president of the network,’” Ball said.”

https://nypost.com/2023/02/13/krystal-ball-had-to-get-msnbc-bosss-permission-to-criticize-hillary-clinton/

And just to point out, Megyn Kelly was very critical of Trump.on Fox news during the 2016 campaign, and even though she left Fox on bad terms I don’t remember her saying anyone told her she couldn’t criticize Trump without permission, because she laid into him, and to his face, and did it over and over again.

And let me also point out that the link has the video of Krystal Ball saying that in her own words, a former democratic candidate and a journalist, so don’t say its unreliable because its in the NYpost.

[Krychek_2]

Given all the atrocious coverage Hillary Clinton got in 2016 from both left and right -- October was about nothing but her emails -- I'm a bit skeptical.

[Kazinski]

Her claim was it was in 2014 at the beginning of the cycle.

And nothing atrocious about the coverage of Hillary's email.scandal other that the soft pedaling of it.

[Krychek_2]

If you think the media soft pedaled her emails, you either have a very bad memory or you weren't paying attention. That's all they talked about the entire month before the election.

[Frank Drackman]

yeah, all they talked about the entire month before the erection, except for "45"'s "Grab em by the Pussy" remarks (totally wrong and revealing his Ivy League education, it's "Pick them up like a 6-Pack") scandal

[shawn_dude]

If they went soft on Hillary's emails, what's the word you'd use for how members of the Trump administration did the same thing? It wasn't "non-existent" since there was some minor coverage of it, including Trumps insistence on using an unsecure iPhone for official calls. But if the constant drubbing that Hillary got was "soft"... I think you've redefined the term to the point where anything lesser is undefined.

[Jmaie]

Quiz time. Who can tell us the difference between members of the Trump administration and the news media?

[Brett Bellmore]

She was, in reality, such an atrocious person that downplaying the atrociousness was the best they could do, without the public laughing and figuring out they were just PR flacks.

The difference is that, by 2020, they didn't care if the public knew they were PR flacks.

[Martinned]

She was, in reality, such an atrocious person

Off the top of my head, she was probably the least atrocious person to be a main party nominee for President since McCain. So I really wonder what it is about your partisan goggles that made you say that.

[Frank Drackman]

303 Presidential Erectors disagreed

[Brett Bellmore]

Basically, she combined grand master level political skills with an utter lack of scruples, and charisma so low it may have been negative. Only total political hacks purport to buy her story that she she's the innocent victim of a political smear campaign that started when she was a nobody back in Arkansas.

She made a great team with Bill, supplying the skills to match his affable charisma. By herself she sucked, never won an election that wasn't handed to her on a silver plate.

The political skills let her root the DNC and basically treat the national party like a sock puppet, but they couldn't help her when she actually had to interact with voters, or get people who weren't political hacks ignore her well known history of corruption.

Seriously, if she'd been running against a Republican other than Trump, somebody the RNC wasn't hostile to, it might have been a Mondale scale blowout.

[Sarcastr0]

Cool story, bro.

You should call her a felon more though, even as you insist Trump is innocent until proven guilty.

Really burnish those 'my feelings are objective truth' right wing credentials.

[not guilty]

"Grand master level political skills"???

Bill Clinton had finely honed political skills; Hillary did not.

[Nige]

To believe she was the target of a political smear campaign you’d have to pay attention to the dogged hysteria with which the Republicans went after her.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The DEMS fired here from the Watergate commission.
Enough said?

[David Nieporent]

Enough said would be if you wrote, "P.S. I am a lying liar who lies."

Setting aside that there was no "Watergate commission" — it was a congressional committee — Hillary was not fired. Not by "The DEMS" or anyone else.

[Dr. Ed 2]

She got fired from SOMETHING...
https://canadafreepress.com/article/watergate-era-judiciary-chief-of-staff-hillary-clinton-fired-for-lies-uneth

[David Nieporent]

Notice how you went from "the DEMS" did something to a link to a story in which one guy claims he fired her? Problem is, he didn't. Pay records show she wasn't fired, and the guy who claims he fired her wasn't her supervisor and didn't have the power to fire her — something he admitted at other times.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/03/30/fact-check-false-claim-hillary-clinton-fired-watergate/6844908001/

More details here: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/oct/22/blog-posting/no-hillary-clinton-wasnt-fired-during-watergate-in/

[Noscitur a sociis]

Off the top of my head, she was probably the least atrocious person to be a main party nominee for President since McCain.

That’s only four people and I’ll spot you Trump, but in what sense are Obama, Romney, or Biden more atrocious?

[Martinned]

Biden is only a lovely old granddad now, after a lifetime of voting for all sorts of unpleasant things.

Even if you don't hold Romney's career at Bain against him (where opinions might legitimately differ), the way he kissed Trump's ass alone is more than enough to make the case. And then there's always this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney_2012_presidential_campaign#47%_comment

Obama is a closer call, but once you look past the pretty speeches he did an awful lot of "pragmatic" deals with an awful lot of unpleasant people, from Mitch McConnell to Assad. He got in the mud and he got dirty.

[Bob from Ohio]

"lovely old granddad now"

Not very "lovely", he does not acknowledge one of his grand kids.

His pets and 6 grandkids get White House Christmas stockings, 7th gets ignored.

"Good ol Joe" never existed, he's always been a complete prick.

[Don Nico]

Martin,
Do you actually claim that Obama was less atrocious than Hillary?

[Martinned]

He seemed quite willing to compromise his principles in a way that might have been glossed over in the history books.

[David Nieporent]

Q: What do you call a politician who isn't willing to compromise his principles?

A: Nothing, because no such person exists. And if by some miracle he did, he wouldn't have ever gotten elected to anything and you'd never have heard of him,

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nieporent, you call him John Quincy Adams. Who admittedly got elected President at about the last moment in history when it was still possible to do it without giving up on principles. Even he did fudge it a bit, but so little that he kept his political allies in despair. They actually wanted to hate him, but couldn't do it because he was so principled. For them, it was like having a millstone around your neck, that you had to admire because it was such a good millstone.

[Nige]

I'm not sure the people who voted for Trump should be trusted when it comes to judging personal atrociousness.

[Ed Grinberg]

"...personal atrociousness..."
Well, her politics are pretty atrocious as well.

[Nige]

Same applies.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett bringing that objectivity he is so well known for.

[Randal]

Ha ha ha how do you have so little shame as to type this up and hit submit?

The Cycle is a talk show. It doesn't have any more "journalistic standards" than The View does.

[Kazinski]

She was offering her opinion on a opinionated forum.

And the opinion she expressed has met the test of time:
"She sold out to Wall Street. People are gonna hate this lady. She’s like the terrible candidate for the moment. Please don’t run,"

[Randal]

Still not seeing the connection to "journalistic standards."

[Kazinski]

Well, I see your point now, the President of MSNBC, and NBC as a whole don't have many, but it wasn't confined to just "The Cycle".

[Randal]

And your evidence for that would be...?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski, speaking as someone who completely agrees with what Ball allegedly said about Clinton, I still can’t follow your point about journalistic standards.

If I am a publisher (a broadcaster is often a publisher) and a journalist who works for me takes up a high-profile topic, and just wings it, I might have any number of things to say about that. I might say the content was not sufficiently supported, and left me in doubt on key points. If so, that would be me guarding journalistic standards.

On the other hand, I might say the content could have been presented better, mobilizing copious support already in hand, and thus delivered far more impact, to leave no one in doubt. That would also be me guarding journalistic standards.

I could also think the journalistic format chosen to express the content either under-played or over-played the content, given what evidence I thought was available to justify a story of that sort. The task to pick an appropriate format in which to present a high profile story is also about journalistic standards. It is possible—and not at all offensive to journalistic standards—to recognize that a story can be backed by evidence sufficient to justify publication, but insufficient to justify a page one banner headline.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Volokh Conspiracy fans, like most disaffected right-wingers, resent, envy, misunderstand, and disdain professionals and professionalism.

Along with education, reason, inclusiveness, modernity, science, government, progress, mainstream America, and modern America.

[Frank Drackman]

Watsa matter Jerry???? all out of "Klingers/Betters" for the week????,
maybe you could "Replace" "Klingers/Betters" with a more "woke" term,
that is if your "Bettors" will permit you,

Frank

[David Nieporent]

"Even though Megyn Kelly was fired for hurting Trump's feelings, that doesn't prove that she couldn't criticize him" is certainly a take.

In any case, Krystal Ball — most recently seen nodding in agreement when Joe Rogan explained that saying that Jews like money is no different than saying Italians like pizza — would be more credible if she had revealed this sometime in the nine years between when it supposedly happened and when she wanted attention.

[Kazinski]

Megyn Kelly left Fox when her contract was up, and went to NBC even though she was offered a new contract at Fox.

She said Trump’s criticism of her was part of the reason, but she also complained about sexual harassment from Roger Ailes, and Bill O’Reilly’s criticism of her for disclosing the sexual harassment. She also cited being able to do a less politically oriented show in the daytime and not working at night to be home for her kids as an important factor.

She has never said that Fox gave her any criticism or forced her out because of her beef with Trump.

So quit making things up or I will report you to GDI.

[Ben_]

"And let me also point out that the link has the video of Krystal Ball saying that in her own words, a former democratic candidate and a journalist, so don’t say its unreliable because its in the NYpost."

Did that ever stop them before? The only reason to even say this is that you know you're going to get dishonest responses from dishonest people.

[Kazinski]

Of course that's why I put it in.

And now they are saying her story is unreliable because it happened 9 years ago, but no one at MSNBC is denying it.

Just like the documents on Hunter's Laptop are unreliable even though neither Hunter or his lawyers have questioned the authenticity of any published document.

[Krychek_2]

I'm currently corresponding with three inmates. One of them fell into a religious cult that convinced him God wanted him to kill his son, so he's now doing life for first degree murder. (There's a little bit more to the story than that, but not much.) The second is someone I used to work with who sexually molested and made child porn with about a dozen boys, and is now doing 60 years at Club Fed. The third is a former classmate who was sexually molested as a child and, as an adult, tracked down his abuser and killed him, and is now doing 15 years for manslaughter, and that's that story in its entirety. Despite what they did, I don't believe in abandoning people, hence our correspondence.

Talking to them has totally made me rethink our approach to criminal justice and sentencing. The baby killer has now been in for twenty years, is thoroughly repentant, understands fully what happened and why, was emotionally pressured into what he did by the religious nuts he'd fallen in with, and at this point probably poses no danger to anyone. He has considerable gifts and talents that are mostly going to waste, and he's not a bad person. So why continue to keep him locked up?

There is no doubt that given the opportunity, the pedophile would go back to abusing children given the first opportunity, and I'm quite certain he belongs where he is. He's said as much in our correspondence. I asked him once what he thinks would have been an appropriate sentence, and he said he should have been permitted to quietly leave town. He is completely unremorseful and views what he did as harmless fun. So, leave him where he is; if he serves out his entire sentence he'll be 93 and hopefully too old and feeble to hurt anyone when he gets out.

The avenging victim is a tough one for me. He has a huge amount of rage still inside him and has been pretty thoroughly messed up for life. (Maybe I should introduce him to the pedophile so he can see what happens to abused children.) I have no trouble understanding why he did what he did, though of course that's not a legal justification. Given the extenuating circumstances, fifteen years sounds about right, but I very much doubt he'll be in any fit condition to re-enter society when it's over. I fear he'll do something else and end up back in prison again.

I see incarceration as mostly about protecting society; you lock people up as long as necessary for them to not be a threat, but no longer. I'm deeply suspicious of people who want to punish just for the sake of punishment. I'm not really sure how to gauge "as long as it takes" by any objective yardstick though.

[not guilty]

Was the first inmate tried in a state with a Religious Freedom Restoration Act? Did the defense lawyer raise that as an issue prior to trial?

[Kazinski]

LOL.

Nice trolling.

[not guilty]

If in 1775 patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel, as Samuel Johnson may have said, today it seems to be "God told me to do so." In that a claim of a substantial burden on religious exercise is easy to claim and hard to rebut, that rationale unfortunately is gaining traction.

[Martinned]

That only works for popular religious beliefs, not for people taking ayahuasca or caught up in death cults.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Well there is a woman in Massachusetts who murdered her 3 children and is now claiming postpartum depression. It will get interesting because the voodoo scientists had her on a fistful of different drugs, some that probably ought not be mixed.

Yet she did kill those three children.

[Nelson]

The standard is usually about the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, but I don’t know what it is in Mass. Depression (especially postpartum depression, as I understand) can cause a dissociative episode, as can psychoactive drugs, so it isn’t an unlikely scenario. But I have no idea what the facts of that specific case are.

Juries are human and when children are involved, especially with the mother as the killer, it has to be really tough to remain objective and only consider the evidence.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

That only works for popular religious beliefs,

And perhaps not for all that much longer. I doubt the "heads we win, tails everyone else loses" approach to special privilege for bigoted, old-timey superstition is destined to survive in modern, improving America.

[Martinned]

It's still flourishing in Israel, where the Haredim were seemingly much closer to wearing out their welcome for much longer.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Israel is an increasingly lousy country for which "flourishing" might not be a long-term (or even medium-term) possibility. The unhinged right-wing belligerence, the pandering to superstitious parasites and religious bigots, and the immoral conduct in the occupied territories might precipitate a change in America's provision of the skirts Israel has been operating behind.

[Randal]

I get what you're saying but it doesn't work. We can't lock people up just because they're a threat to society. Even if we limit it to convicts, it means potentially lifetime sentences for any random crime... and could encourage pretextual prosecutions of minor, easily-proven "crimes" in order to get undesirables behind bars essentially forever.

We need solutions for people who are threats to society other than prosecution and incarceration.

[OtisAH]

Such as…?

[Martinned]

Rehabilitation

[OtisAH]

How do you get to rehabilitation of “threats to society” without prosecution and incarceration? What do you do with baby-killer, pedo, and revenge guy while waiting for rehabilitation to take hold?

[Martinned]

You don't, but you don't need lifelong incarceration either, which seemed to be the previous suggestion.

[Mr. Bumble]

How long is long enough and who decides that the individual has be "rehabilitated"?

[Krychek_2]

How long was long enough when the judge imposed the original sentence? Judgments are going to be made by humans, and humans don't always get it right. But that's what we should aspire to.

There will always be people close to the rehabilitation line, on both sides, where it's difficult to tell. But, there are plenty of people incarcerated for far too long, who pose no real risk to society, and who should be spending what remains of their lives as productive citizens.

[Armchair Lawyer]

So, how do you differentiate your cases above, from those of say, Elizabeth Holmes (Founder of Theranos), who was hit with an 11 year prison sentence?

Would you argue she's still a benefit to society? (Likely yes) Would you argue that she regrets what she did, and won't do it again? (Again, likely yes). She's pretty clearly not a physical danger to society. So, should she be serving an 11 year sentence? Or any at all?

[Dr. Ed 2]

She IS a threat to society.

[Sarcastr0]

How is a scam artist a benefit to society?

Seems like you are defending white collar criminals.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Let's clarify a bit for the peanuts.

I believe Ms. Holmes deserves her prison sentence, and should be in prison. That being said, according to the proposed concept Krychek mentions, the reason people should be in prison is to "Lock people up as long as necessary for them to not be a threat, but no longer"

Ms. Holmes crime was over multiple years, where she duped investors in a multi-billion dollar company. It is extraordinarily unlikely she would have the capability to repeat any such type of crime. (You really think investors are going to trust her if she starts another company?) So, according to the definition, she's not a threat for such types of crimes anymore. So, why is she in prison?

[Martinned]

@Armchair: You'd be surprised how many famous fraudsters had previous convictions for fraud. Even Bernie Madoff:

Madoff's name first came up in a fraud investigation in 1992, when two people complained to the SEC about investments they made with Avellino & Bienes, the successor to his father-in-law's accounting practice.

Wikipedia

[Krychek_2]

I disagree with the premise that she's no longer a threat. She's a professional con artist. She may, or may not, find the means and opportunity to engage in a second fraud of that magnitude, but there's little doubt in my mind that she would find a way to steal from people for a living.

[Nelson]

I disagree that she doesn't regret it. She regrets getting caught, but she has displayed a complete lack of accountability. She's the perfect example of an entitled ececutive who never recognized that she had done wrong.

Hopefully she serves the whole stretch, because she will come out and do it again. At least after a little over a decade, she will be a "remember her?" instead of getting out in 5 when people think she's still relevant to modern business.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Interesting Krychek,

OK, let's take your premise. She's a "professional con artist" who will "find a way to steal from people for a living". In such a situation, is 11 years really long enough? She'd be 50 when she got out, plenty of con artists work at 50. So, why let her out?

Expand this situation to a person who commits larceny or burglary, is convicted, let out, and does it again? Should such a person ever be released from prison? Since they will "find a way" to steal.

[Kazinski]

Depends on the crime and the person:

"An 83-year-old serial killer was charged with second-degree murder after a woman’s severed head was found in the transgender suspect’s apartment, prosecutors said Thursday.
Marcelin served two stints in prison for killing two girlfriends in Manhattan and now identifies as a transgender woman, authorities said."

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-dismembered-torso-parolee-suspect-two-time-killer-20220310-yd2ksnkocffhjeakoxbl5tezaa-story.html

Maybe she will be safe in another 10 years when she is 93.

[Brett Bellmore]

That would be nice, if they had the slightest clue how to do it reliably. Or maybe not so nice, because the ability to reliably rehabilitate people would imply psychological manipulation capabilities that would be usable for other purposes, too.

The problem is that this is generally NOT a matter of "re" habilitiating people. That would imply that they'd been habilitated in the first place, and you were just repairing some damage.

You're generally taking people who were never successfully habilitated in the first place, and trying to implant the social mores that should have been taken up during their formative years. But people are not remotely as pliable once they get out of their teens as they are as children. Neural plasticity drops dramatically between the teens and early twenties.

Rehabilitation is mostly a mirage, as noble an aspiration as it might be.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Neural plasticity drops dramatically . . .

That explains so much!

[Brett Bellmore]

It actually does. Plasticity has upsides and downsides: At high plasticity levels, you learn easily and rapidly, but forget things that aren't regularly used. At low plasticity levels, you have trouble learning new things, but retail what you've learned very reliably.

So, very high plasticity levels help young children rapidly learn all sorts of things, but explain why you really don't retain much in the way of early childhood memories. You also lose skills you don't regularly use.

It explains why children learn languages much easier than adults, why you're basically not going to be a musician unless you start early, and, yes, why you need to be socialized while you're still a child, or you're mostly a lost cause.

[Kazinski]

When my daughter was ten her very close 12 year old friend was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a serial sex offender who was out on parole for a series of offenses in another state for which he only got about 10 years.

Not long after he killed my daughters friend he also kidnapped a 19 year old girl who saved herself by jumping out of the car at freeway speed to get away from him, and while she saved herself and helped identify him, she had to spend more than a month in the hospital.

I prefer prosecution and incarceration to young girls being murdered.

[Dr. Ed 2]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZToNflF1z8

[bevis the lumberjack]

Leaving not_guilty’s hateful post and back to Krychek’d post, I agree that frequently sentences are too long - and I was on a criminal jury 15 years or so ago and was appalled at how harsh the others were. The defendant fired what was intended to be a warning shot to get pursuers to back off, missing them as intended, but hitting a bystander in the shoulder. A bad, bad thing to do, deserving of a strong sentence, but he was 20 years old and black and had a crazy look about his eyes and the majority of the jury wanted to give him life. And it wasn’t racial, there were two blacks in the jury that were firmly in the “life” camp. I was the holdout, arguing for an easy sentence of around 40 years. It was very much like 12 Angry Men as the antagonism got strong as I held out for a loooooong time because most killers in Texas don’t get life and with the exception of a couple of passive women who didn’t participate everyone else in the room wanted to bury the guy under the prison. And unfortunately I wasn’t as persuasive as Henry Fonda and finally broke down and agreed to 80 years. I still get upset when I think about it.

In the other hand, though, you’ve got to keep LWOP and the like around as sentencing possibilities because there are people around us who are just so cruel that they can’t be allowed to walk free. My classic example down here of someone who fits that description is a guy named Kenneth McDuff. You can look him up.

So instead, I’d like to see us improve the way we treat prisoners. It’s devolved to the point that if you treated your dog the way we treat prisoners you’d be committing a felony.

[David Nieporent]

I agree that frequently sentences are too long – and I was on a criminal jury 15 years or so ago and was appalled at how harsh the others were.

It's usually the opposite. While voters are incredibly harsh, jurors are usually not, which is why prosecutors don't want jurors to be allowed to know what the potential sentences are: they're afraid jurors will nullify if they find out how severe the penalties are.

Where were you where jurors, rather than judges, were determining non-capital sentences?

[bernard11]

prosecutors don’t want jurors to be allowed to know what the potential sentences are: they’re afraid jurors will nullify if they find out how severe the penalties are.

Thia has always struck me as a little strange, especially when there is no issue of innocence and the jury is being asked, effectively, to decide on what side of a line a particular incident falls - first degree murder, second degree, manslaughter, etc.

I suppose the argument is that there are definitions and the jury's job is to decide which definition fits without reference to the attached sentence, but that's an awfully abstract way of looking at it. From a practical point of view what matters, especially to the defendant, is the sentence. And if I'm a juror I'm more interested in what punishment I'm authorizing than precisely defining the offense.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I agree bernard. In my case guilt was very easy - the guy was caught within a block of the shooting with the gun.

Sentencing was what we had to focus on and it was very difficult because there was a wide range of opinions. Mine and everyone else’s, lol.

[Brett Bellmore]

Particularly aggravating the matter is allowing judges to take into account conduct the jury didn't convict on when sentencing, which means you can do hard time for something you were acquitted of, if they convicted you of anything.

[shawn_dude]

Living where I do, I've been on a jury nearly every time I'm called, and I'm called roughly every other year. My first trial, the defendant was caught on video leading her two besties in a beat-down of a rival for her boyfriend and then going to her rival's car and breaking every single window with an emergency window breaker. The defendant has a small child to care for, a prior record, and this conviction was going to put her in jail. The child's father, her ex-boyfriend, was distancing himself from them both (hence the new girlfriend) so the child would be largely parentless. That fact was brought up multiple times in the jury discussions and it had a major impact on the decision we came to. The jury was concerned that the overall effect of the penalty was out of scale with the crime.

Having seen this play out and listening to the arguments put forth on all sides, I don't find it strange or difficult to understand. The jury very much wanted to see justice done but I don't think this jury saw "justice" in the same way the legal system did.

[bevis the lumberjack]

As I described, I was on one of those juries. Or perhaps I misunderstand your question.

At that time in Texas for an aggravated offense (includes using a weapon) we jurors could pick any sentence we wanted between 5 years and life, with the offender eligible for parole after serving half of their sentence or 30 years, whichever is shorter. So as I tried to explain to my fellow jurors with no effect anything above 60 years was superfluous.

I’ve seen no data, but I can believe that judges would tend tougher that juries because judges want to be re-elected. In Texas anyway.

Krychek’s point overall is that sentences are too tough, which I agree with.

[David Nieporent]

As I described, I was on one of those juries. Or perhaps I misunderstand your question.

I think you did: it was a sincere question. I was wondering what jurisdiction was doing that, not questioning whether you really saw that.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I’m sorry for the misunderstanding and the delayed response. Harris County, Texas. But I think that practice is universal throughout the state.

[John F. Carr]

I got the impression when I used to follow the Sentencing Law and Policy blog that jurors were considered harsh at sentencing.

Quoting the abstracts of a couple papers linked from that blog:

"It turns out that jury sentencing in practice looks very little like jury sentencing in theory. Sentencing by jury is promoted for its democratic appearance, but its vitality may turn instead upon its ability to streamline case disposition and protect elected officials from political accountability for sentencing policy. Jury sentencing is viewed by these criminal justice insiders as a critical component of the justice system in each state, a tool they have adapted to deter trials, to accommodate elected judges, and to appease constituents who support ever higher sentences for crime." (King, Nancy J. and Noble, Rosevelt L. 2004. Felony Jury Sentencing in Practice: A Three-State Study.)

"The well-documented randomness and arbitrariness that plagues capital sentencing stems from the wide discretion granted to sentencing actors, namely jurors. However, this wide discretion exists in the non-capital sentencing context as well. Accordingly, arbitrary sentences are not confined to the capital sentencing context. Instead these arbitrary sentences result from structural choices designed to insulate jurors from the impact of their decisions. This article explores how the statutory jury sentencing schemes used in the six states that retain jury sentencing contribute significantly to the arbitrary nature of sentences imposed." (Grover, MaryAnn, Jury Sentencing in the United States: The Antithesis of the Rule of Law (2019). 40 Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice 23, 2019)

[KenveeB]

"Where were you where jurors, rather than judges, were determining non-capital sentences?"

Since he talked about what sentence "most killers in Texas" get, I assumed Texas. In Texas, a defendant has the absolute right to have a jury assess punishment in any criminal case. Actually, having a jury do it is the default, and the defendant has to opt for the judge to do it instead.

[YepThatGuy]

Thanks. I learned something today.

[David Nieporent]

Me too.

[John F. Carr]

Years ago I read an article about prosecutors in Texas getting some help from new lawyers, or maybe even law students, to give them a taste of the criminal justice system. One young participant successfully asked a jury for the maximum punishment allowed by law, a $100 fine. The program was in traffic court. The article noted that the new junior prosecutor had forgotten to establish that the offense was in the court's territorial jurisdiction. Testimony had established the approximate location without mentioning the county name. The judge bailed him out by taking judicial notice of the fact that Houston was in Harris County.

[Voize]

Apparently Virginia does it too.

[ducksalad]

My personal theory is that sentences for first offenses are often too harsh, but sentences for repeat offenders are often not harsh enough.

For a first offense, even some felonies, the penalty could be nothing more than an official “That’s One” and restitution if someone suffered a tangible loss. I know several felons who changed direction and are now successful engineers and fathers; it’s pretty clear their turnaround had already occurred well before they pled guilty, perhaps even during the ride to the police station. They just needed to be pressured into doing some serious self-examination.

But for each successive offense, the main thing I see is that whatever we tried last time did not stop the behavior and we need to try additional measures.

At some point, a person has proven that no amount of severity will cause them to stop. Even if it’s something not particularly heinous, but can’t be accepted either, for example a person that immediately goes out and blocks the interstate the day after they’re released from increasingly long jail terms. At some point, you keep them incarcerated indefinitely – not to punish them, not for retribution, but just because there’s no other way to keep the interstate open.

Sometimes you read a story about someone given a life sentence “just” for stealing a loaf of bread while carrying a firearm under a three-strikes law. No. They’re being given a life sentence because they’ve proven that lesser actions will be ineffective.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

And unfortunately I wasn’t as persuasive as Henry Fonda and finally broke down and agreed to 80 years.

You're not the only person who is weak.

[Bob from Ohio]

" He has considerable gifts and talents that are mostly going to waste, and he’s not a bad person."

What about the talents and gifts of his son? Apparently you don't care much about that waste.

Dude is lucky, he should have been executed.

[Krychek_2]

There's nothing to be done about the son; he's dead and can't be brought back. There is some salvage in the father.

[Bob from Ohio]

Let him rot. He's just conning you anyway.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Let him rot.

Should we use that approach with the depleted human residue that remains in America's desolate backwaters after generations on the wrong end of bright flight?

[Armchair Lawyer]

The question isn't about the son. The question is about the potential to kill again, and end another life prematurely.

The story of Kenneth McDuff comes to mind. And to use your words "board members thought McDuff could still "contribute to society" and decided to grant him a parole. He was released in 1989."

6 Murders later, 6 lives lost later....he was caught again.

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

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

The baby killer has now been in for twenty years, is thoroughly repentant, understands fully what happened and why, was emotionally pressured into what he did by the religious nuts he’d fallen in with, and at this point probably poses no danger to anyone.

Anyone who's mental wiring is so screwed up that someone was able to convince him to murder his own child will always be a danger to someone.

[shawn_dude]

I agree. However, if our justice system can be so generic in its excuses as to imprison people for as long as they want, it ceases to be justice. Further, we're paying for that incarceration with our taxes. Might be better to grant them an extended parole and open up that space for the next mass shooter.

[Krychek_2]

Maybe. In his case, he believed it was the voice of God, and of course, when God tells you to do something, you do it. After this experience, I would expect him to be far more skeptical when someone tells him it's a leading from God.

And what he believed at the time was that God would demonstrate his power by bringing the child back from the dead. I highly doubt he would fall for that a second time.

[Bob from Ohio]

Words are cheap, prisoners will say anything to get sympathy or con the system. If he truly repented he'd kill himself.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

You talk about it like he’s an average Joe who succumbed to ordinary naivete and fell for a Three-Card Monte scam, with a “Fool me once…” outcome. That’s ridiculous. He wasn’t a normal, sane human being who was fooled into doing something that sane people do given ordinary motivation. What he did requires a fundamental disconnect from reality and an inability to think rationally.

Do you think the "Son of Sam" killer learned to stop taking orders from his dog?

[Krychek_2]

People only join cults in the first place if they have fundamental disconnects from reality, yet most of them don't go on to murder their children. So that's not it. It's a process. You join a cult because you have emotional needs that aren't being met and you think the cult will meet them. You then get groomed for bigger and worse things, but it's a process over time. On the day that they met Charles Manson for the very first time, I doubt his followers would have killed for him. A few short months later they did. He spent that time getting into their heads and making himself the most important thing in their lives.

I would not go so far as to say that it could happen to anyone, but I think you're underestimating the emotional control that these groups have. And sure, the cult members are still responsible for their own actions, which is a separate question from whether there may be some salvage there after the smoke clears.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

I'm not underestimating anything. There's a limit to the persuasive power of any process when applied to someone of typical mental health/cognitive abilities. You have to be mentally screwed up enough to begin with in order to be susceptible to a process geared toward convincing you to murder your own child.

[David Nieporent]

Do you think the “Son of Sam” killer learned to stop taking orders from his dog?

Well, I mean, he hasn't killed anyone lately, has he?

(Also, at some point he admitted that was a fabrication. He was a sociopath, but not schizophrenic.)

[Nelson]

"What he did requires a fundamental disconnect from reality and an inability to think rationally."

That would be the definition of a religious zealot. Extreme religions can take people to extreme places that make no sense to rational people.

[Nelson]

"Anyone who’s mental wiring is so screwed up that someone was able to convince him to murder his own child will always be a danger to someone."

It’s religion. Most people don’t get to (and most religions don’t try to get their followers to) the point where they lose all perspective. But religion establishes itself as the arbiter of morality, which means if a person is zealous enough and the religion is manipulatove enough, anything is possible.

From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate to the Branch Davidians, there is no line that a manipulative enough religion can’t convince a true believer to cross.

[not guilty]

Mike Pence is resisting a grand jury subpoena for testimony and documents by invoking the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution. Whether this clause applies to the vice-president in his capacity as presiding officer of the Senate is a question of first impression, but there is a plausible argument that it does.

Certification of the electoral count is a legislative function of Congress. The statute providing the procedural framework therefor, 3 U.S.C. § 15, defines the duties of the President of the Senate, among others. The presiding officer theoretically may be someone other than the Vice-President.

That having been said, the Speech or Debate Clause does not excuse a Senator or Representative from testifying before a grand jury (although it may somewhat limit the scope of the questions). Lindsey Graham recently litigated this issue and lost. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23169436-appeals-court-ruling-on-lindsey-graham-testimony

Pence's conduct is not at issue in this grand jury proceeding; he is not a target or subject of the investigation. SCOTUS has opined that the Speech and Debate Clause:

provides no protection for criminal conduct threatening the security of the person or property of others, whether performed at the direction of the Senator in preparation for or in execution of a legislative act or done without his knowledge or direction. Neither does it immunize Senator or aide from testifying at trials or grand jury proceedings involving third-party crimes where the questions do not require testimony about or impugn a legislative act.

Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606, 622 (1972) [emphasis added].

The Speech or Debate Clause does not excuse Pence from appearing before the grand jury and testifying. "Article I, § 6, cl. 1, as we have emphasized, does not purport to confer a general exemption upon Members of Congress from liability or process in criminal cases. Quite the contrary is true." Gravel, at 626. The Court there elaborated on what categories of questions before the grand jury may be impermissible:

(1) concerning the Senator's

Page 408 U. S. 629

conduct, or the conduct of his aides at the June 29, 1971, meeting of the subcommittee; [Footnote 18] (2) concerning the motives and purposes behind the Senator' conduct, or that of his aides, at that meeting; (3) concerning communications between the Senator and his aides during the term of their employment and related to said meeting or any other legislative act of the Senator; (4) except as it proves relevant to investigating possible third-party crime, concerning any act, in itself, not criminal, performed by the Senator, or by his aides in the course of their employment, in preparation for the subcommittee hearing.

The exception recognized in item (4) for matters relevant to investigating possible third-party crime would appear to govern here, where the grand jury is investigating criminal conduct by Donald Trump and his cohorts. The Court elaborated at footnote 18:

We do not intend to imply, however, that in no grand jury investigations or criminal trials of third parties may third-party witnesses be interrogated about legislative acts of Members of Congress. As for inquiry of [the Senator's aide] about third-party crimes, we are quite sure that the District Court has ample power to keep the grand jury proceedings within proper bounds and to foreclose improvident harassment and fishing expeditions into the affairs of a Member of Congress that are no proper concern of the grand jury or the Executive Branch.

This authority indicates that Pence will need to appear and testify, interposing any objections on a question by question basis. Specific objections can then be litigated before the presiding judge of the D.C. District Court, with the burden of persuasion on Pence.

[Kazinski]

Isn't this a rerun from earlier in the week?

[not guilty]

I posted a similar, but less detailed, comment on an earlier thread.

[MoreCurious]

I don't see how Pence can prevail with his argument. On its face, Article I, Section 6 applies to senators and representatives, but Pence was neither on January 6. And, to my knowledge, he did not engage in any "Speech or Debate in either House" on that day.

[Martinned]

I'm not saying Pence should prevail, but what do you think this is? https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-167/issue-4/senate-section/article/S13-9

[MoreCurious]

It would be a special kind of torture to require anyone to listen to or read 33 pages of the Congressional Record. I'll wait for the Cliff Notes version, thanks.

[Martinned]

Fortunately you don't have to read very far to get to the Vice President speaking.

[OtisAH]

He’ll prevail because the special counsel knows this argument will surely drag out in the courts for the next couple years. It is not likely the special counsel will delay the investigation in order to get Pence’s testimony.

[Martinned]

Justice delayed is justice denied...

[not guilty]

Well, Lindsey Graham's lawsuit seeking to avoid testifying before the grand jury in Georgia moved through the federal courts fairly quickly. The subpoena was issued on July 26, 2022. Graham sought relief in federal district court on July 29. Proceedings in the district court concluded on September 1. After expedited briefing, the Court of Appeals ruled on October 20. The Supreme Court declined review, and Graham testified on November 22.

[Moderation4ever]

Would it not be better to do this now? How would Mike Pence look if he were testifying in summer 2024? There is, to my knowledge, nothing in the law that would prevent a criminal trial of the former President as he is running for office. The optics would be bad, but bad for both sides.

[Mr. Bumble]

Mike Pence has zero chance to be the Republican nominee for President in 2024.

[Brett Bellmore]

And I consider that to be the worst fallout from this whole mess.

[David Nieporent]

If Trump is incapacitated and can't run, Pence has at least a 5% chance.

[Frank Drackman]

Michael Jackson has a better chance of getting the Repubiclown nomination

[Nelson]

"Mike Pence has zero chance to be the Republican nominee for President in 2024."

Substitute Donald Trump for Mike Pence and 2016 for 2024 and, in 2014, everyone would have agreed with you.

At this point history should make everyone hesitant to predict anything about 2024.

[MoreCurious]

Agreed. Most people, including those of us who are generally not too impressed with him, seem to believe that Pence did the right thing on January 6. Why ruin it now? Why not take the high road? Why open himself up to the inevitable question: What's he hiding?

[Dr. Ed 2]

What IS he hiding?????

One possibility is what the USSS may have told him in attempts to get him into the car (and out of the building) and it *would* be interesting if they had said that the CHPD had deliberately stood down and *that* was why Pence needed to leave.

[OtisAH]

“Better” for whom? The special counsel? Yes, it would be better for him to get Pence’s testimony now. Pence, otoh, does not benefit by testifying even a tiny bit ever. None of it will matter for his sad ambitions, mind you, but not testifying will not harm his ambitions. Except, perhaps, around the edges in a general election, of which he will never be a part.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm pretty sure he did open his yap in the Senate chamber at least a few times, but almost everything they'd be questioning him about wouldn't fall under the speech and debate clause even if he was a Senator. (Not that the Senate would be quick to admit that.)

In any event, I find the textual argument persuasive, and I expect this will get him nowhere.

[Martinned]

I find it difficult to imagine that the President could physically prevent the Vice-President from presiding over the Senate or voting to break a tie by having him arrested. (Think back to before the 12th amendment.) So at least some of the protections for Senators most extend to the Vice-President's work as presiding officer.

[Brett Bellmore]

The Constitution actually does have various gaps and omissions, as it does not "partake of the prolixity of a legal code". All sorts of hypothetical situations are simply and genuinely unaccounted for.

In fact, I think this is pretty much unavoidable, a sort of legal Godel's theorem of incompleteness.

In the case you suggest, the President would be subject to impeachment, which I suspect would proceed with remarkable speed if the arrest were not clearly justified. (Remember that even the immunity explicitly granted to members of Congress has rather stringent limits, we can't rule out a VP being legitimately arrested.) And the Senate would hand things off to the president pro tempore and proceed without much interruption.

[Martinned]

The scenario would, almost of necessity, imply a closely divided senate. Otherwise there would be no tied vote to break. And it would have to be a high-salience issue otherwise the President wouldn't do anything this drastic. So why would you assume that there'd be 67 votes to convict the President?

[Brett Bellmore]

The fact that there's a tie to break on a legislative matter doesn't imply that you're going to get a party line vote if the President orders the president of the Senate arrested just to prevent a tie from being broken. The Senators are liable to view that as a personal threat.

If the parties are split down the middle and things have deteriorated to the point where you couldn't convict even in such a circumstance, I don't understand how you think any constitutional provision is going to help.

[Martinned]

If politicians are arguing passionately, they generally still respect the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus and other judicial rulings.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying: They'd respect it enough to impeach his ass, especially given the, "If he'll do this to his own VP, what would he do to us?" factor.

[apedad]

The President cannot just say arrest someone.

Since the President would rely on (FBI? US Marshals? Secret Service?), to conduct the arrest, the agents would still need an arrest warrant signed by a federal judge.

[Martinned]

Good point, albeit one that applies equally to Senators and Congressmen.

[Brett Bellmore]

The President can just say lots of things, and they'll even happen if the people he says them to don't care about legalities. We're positing a President who'd have his VP arrested just to keep a tie vote from being broken, are we assuming he's been staffing the Executive branch with relentlessly law abiding minions?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Lincoln ordered people arrested.

And do you need a warrant if you witness something?

[John F. Carr]

He had an official role and he even said some words. He has to have immunity for his official acts that day, otherwise Trump can sue him for not throwing out electoral votes or Trump part 2's Justice Department can prosecute him for counting fraudulent votes from the seven states that really voted for Trump. (He knew they were fraudulent. Trump said so, and if you can't trust the President who can you trust?)

But the joint session was all out in the open and there is no reason the prosecutor would need Pence to testify to a grand jury about what happened there.

If I were the special counsel I would want to know about private conversations unrelated to the joint session, where Pence could claim at most executive privilege and maybe none at all. Who knew what and when? Did anybody accidentally confess? Did anybody offer Pence anything of value to count the votes the right way?

[not guilty]

There was a telephone conversation between Trump and Pence on the morning of January 6 that no one else was privy to. A prosecutor would want to know what was said there.

Executive privilege is a non-starter. "[W]hen the ground for asserting privilege as to subpoenaed materials sought for use in a criminal trial is based only on the generalized interest in confidentiality, it cannot prevail over the fundamental demands of due process of law in the fair administration of criminal justice. The generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial." United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 713 (1974).

Pence's chief of staff Marc Short and his legal counsel Greg Jacob have each testified twice before the grand jury. I suspect that each asserted executive privilege at his initial appearance, and Chief Judge Beryl Howell then granted a DOJ motion to compel.

[Moderation4ever]

The most interesting question here is why take this approach? If he doesn't want to be seen speaking against the former President or not loyal, he has already lost that battle. What is there to be gained by doing trying to avoid this testimony?

[bevis the lumberjack]

He’s still got political aspirations, realistic or not, and if forced to testify he’ll piss a significant group of people off either way. Better to just not have to have his name associated with this mess again.

[shawn_dude]

Those people he's afraid of upsetting were already chanting "hang Mike Pence" a couple years ago. He has no reasonable chance of election to the presidency; the guy has a negative charisma.

[bevis the lumberjack]

“Realistic or not”.

[Brett Bellmore]

He's just checking boxes so that he's not seen as gladly cooperating with the opposition party's efforts to get a popular President of his own party. He wants it utterly clear that he's being compelled to testify.

[Bob from Ohio]

"He wants it utterly clear that he’s being compelled to testify."

Finally some wisdom.

[OtisAH]

The subpoena does that, Brett. That’s what the subpoena does. It compels Pence to testify. The “Pence is just covering his ass” theory became invalid the moment Pence said he’d challenge the subpoena.

[Bob from Ohio]

You can challenge subpoenas. Everybody knows it, meek compliance when you have a colorable defense will be perceived as voluntary.

[MoreCurious]

On January 6 Pence was neither a senator nor a representative. In fact, according to Article I, Section 6, Pence, as the holder of an "Office under the United States," was not eligible to "be a Member of either House during his Continuation in Office." Please describe what you think is a "colorable defense" in this situation.

[Bob from Ohio]

He was an officer of the Senate. VP has a foot in each branch.

I didn't say "winning" or "slam dunk" but lots of people have commented elsewhere that it is a good argument.

[MoreCurious]

With our illustrious SCOTUS, anything goes. But it seems to be a bit of a reach to suggest that one becomes a senator by virtue of being the president of the Senate.

[not guilty]

Whether the Speech or Debate Clause applies to the vice-president in his capacity as presiding officer of the Senate is a question of first impression, in that it has never been litigated. A court could avoid that question if it assumes without deciding that the clause theoretically applies to the vice-president, but on the merits does not preclude the instant subpoena to Pence, because DOJ does not propose to question him about legislative activity.

"The Speech or Debate Clause was designed to assure a co-equal branch of the government wide freedom of speech, debate, and deliberation without intimidation or threats from the Executive Branch." Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606, 616 (1972). Here, Mike Pence is anomalously seeking to use this constitutional provision, not as a shield to protect the legislative process against intimidation or threats, but as a sword to foreclose inquiry into exactly such intimidation or threats from the Executive Branch.

[Nelson]

"the opposition party’s efforts to get a popular President of his own party."

It seems like you are referring to Trump, but if so you have a weird definition of "popular".

https://news.gallup.com/poll/116677/Presidential-Approval-Ratings-Gallup-Historical-Statistics-Trends.aspx

Donald Trump was the only President to never break 50% approval. Here are the measures he beat everyone else at:

Lowest overall average approval (41.1%)
Second: Harry Truman (45.4%)

Lowest first-term average approval (41.1%)
Second: Jimmy Carter (45.5%)

Lowest high approval point (49%)
Second: Richard Nixon (67%)

He managed not to have the lowest low point (34%). Harry Truman (22%, February 1952), Richard Nixon (24%, July and August 1974), George W Bush (25%, October 2008), Jimmy Carter (28%, June 1979), and George H.W. Bush (29%, July 1992) all had lower low points.

So no, Trump wasn't a popular President. In fact he was the least popular President in the history of approval polling. By a lot. His highest popularity was *eighteen points* lower than the next-lowest, and that guy was the only President in history to resign in disgrace.

Pence is playing this game for himself and his long-shot Presidential bid. Considering Trump created this mess, he isn't doing it because Trump is being targeted. If it wouldn't dirty him up at the same time, I'm sure he would gladly stick it to Trump. He's made it clear (in a hilariously WASPy, passive-agressive way) that he wouldn't piss on Trump if he were on fire.

[ragebot]

Most of us have seen at least one meme with the theme "I lost my guns in a tragic boating accident" but I just became aware of possible sources of the story.

Seems like in 2014 there was a drought in California and a local fisherman from LA found a backpack in a dry lake bed. It contained a pistol and the ID of an ATF agent. He reported it to the local LEOs who contacted the ATF. The ATF agent's story was that he and a friend were in a soft top Jeep so he took his gun and ID on a boat on the lake that got swamped and the back pack fell overboard. As a result local 2A supporters took the position that if "I lost my guns in a tragic boating accident" was good enough for the ATF it was good enough for them. But some claim the story goes back longer than that.

https://www.pewpewtactical.com/i-lost-all-my-guns-in-a-boating-accident/?fbclid=IwAR3o83Tu8uAOkqlJSFfucJc8ehaAWgEsWwbpLoQKLVzPsZVIDqbkHVzd7nY

[Brett Bellmore]

That's interesting. I've long wondered where that joke came from. That makes sense of it.

[Kazinski]

Why don't you read about Jack Henry Abbott and Norman Mailer before you decide that just because someone has talents wasted in prison they should be let out and because they seem safe now.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Henry_Abbott

Anyone that could kill their own baby is way too unstable and open to suggestion to be safe on the outside. The other 2 you seem more realistic about, but I'm glad you aren't on the parole board or advising the governor on computations and pardons.

[Kazinski]

This was supposed to reply to Krychek above, it couldn't have been me who erred, so I'm going to pin it on the commenting system.

[Commenter_XY]

Kazinski, I don't have a problem with releasing the Avenging Victim after their sentence is completed. The other two stay in the clink.

[Krayt]

The avenging victim isn't too likely to need to avenge against another victimizer. I'm confused why he seemed an obviously ongoing danger in the presented analysis.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Shouldn’t everybody be released after their sentence is completed?

[Nelson]

You would think so, wouldn't you? But the Volokh Conspiracy just had a post from IJ about a guy in Louisiana who was still in prison two years after his sentence ended.

The scariest part is it is a LOT more common than anyone should be comfortable with.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

If you saw someone with a I ❤️ Pfizer tattoo on their arm, would you think they were a Democrat or a Republican?

[Commenter_XY]

Neither. I would think that a person who chooses to tattoo their body with 'I love Pfizer' has bigger problems, BCD. 🙂

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The guy in this image. Would you guess Democrat or Republican?

[Nige]

Democrat, I would guess, if real. Uh, don’t do a search for ‘Trump tattoos.’ It’s not worth it even as a counterpoint. 'Vaccine tattoos' on the whole at least seem better executed, but there's no fucking excuse for getting one of Bill Gates.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Q: When did Democrats become such Big Pharma bootlickers?

A: When their mindmasters in the State told them too.

[Nige]

I think they just think the vaccines saved many lives and facilitated the ending of lockdowns, but go off with your secret all-powerful mindmasters.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Placebo effect.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Two days ago you clods were trying to convince me lockdowns didn't happen. lmao

[Nige]

If you have memory problems like that guy in Memento, maybe you should get stuffed tattoo'd on yourself as reminders.

[Krayt]

All should be big pharma bootlickers. They save uncounted lives witb drugs.

When a politician criticises them and usez "Big Pharma", they are a hack looking at trivial problems at this scale.

And probably supporting behind the scenes class action efforts by parasite class lawyers.

[OtisAH]

Like any normal person I would think “That’s a stupid thing to have tattooed.” Or possibly I would think it was some marketing gimmick where he gets free acetaminophen for life if he got the tattoo.

[Brett Bellmore]

I sometimes wonder if these folks have never taken a look at somebody who got tatooed, 50 years later. Of course, a lot of the tatooes I'm seeing lately look like the person fell asleep in the same room as a bored toddler with a sharpie, they're not even particularly artistic.

I did once consider getting a "Not a Step" tattoo on my shoulder, but decided the joke wasn't really worth it.

[Longtobefree]

Like the sailor whose destroyer became a battleship?
Or the chick whose Snoopy on her butt became a Shar Pei?

[Krayt]

Which, as it warped as you got older, you could say, "See? I told you."

[bernard11]

I sometimes wonder if these folks have never taken a look at somebody who got tatooed, 50 years later.

Me too. The whole tattoo business seems weird to me, but I'm just an old codger.

[Life of Brian]

free acetaminophen for life

All you can eat, for as long as you live.

[Ben_]

"...would you think they were a Democrat or a Republican?"

Partisan tendencies of such people don't matter. I'd say that a ballot was probably filled out for them and, if it were needed to tip the scales, taken out of a box and counted for Democrats.

[not guilty]

Mark Meadows has reportedly been subpoenaed by the Special Counsel investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/15/politics/mark-meadows-subpoena/index.html

Justice Department policy prohibits subpoenaing a target of the investigation before a grand jury. I wonder if Meadows is cooperating in the investigation.

[Commenter_XY]

Ok, Commenter_XY has a question for the 'Space Law' lawyers. I know they are out there, in a legal galaxy far, far away (ok, just kidding with that last...best I could do at 0500). 🙂

What exactly is the law when it comes down to shooting down objects over your airspace? Can you just fire away, anytime, toward an object at any altitude above a sovereign country's airspace for any or no reason?

We seem to have an epidemic of shootdowns of objects lately. Do we have to give back the surveillance equipment we recovered to the owner (China) if they ask for it?

Sidenote: A war is coming.

[Martinned]

I think balloons are, almost by definition, not in space. They need air to float. So the normal rule applies: the airspace above sovereign territory is under the exclusive control of the state on the ground.

The problem with Belarus forcing that airplane down in 2021 wasn't that it was exceeding its sovereign jurisdiction, but that it was violating the Chicago Convention on civil aviation.

But if you want to know more about space, here is the 1966 Outer Space Treaty: https://www.unoosa.org/pdf/gares/ARES_21_2222E.pdf

[shawn_dude]

“Sidenote: A war is coming.”

Given the example you used was China, I’m not sure I agree here… or at least I don’t agree that a hot war with China is necessarily coming. They’re very pragmatic, enough so that they abandoned their core communist economic ideas and welcomed their own form of capitalism. So, if they’re pragmatic, a hot war with the US is a no-win scenario for them.

They may take Taiwan and they may continue to be jerks in the South China sea, but I don’t see all-out war with them.

[Krayt]

How far has China strayed? Marx lamented the bourgeoisie, the middle class, would not voluntarily be pressed into service to the proletariat’s effort to overthrow the ruling class, because the ruling class gave them some of the trappings of wealth, like loans and checking accounts.

And yet China is using its social media “don’t piss off those in power” rating to ding people who speak up, so they will fall below the minimum rating for loans, apartment rentals, getting on a bus (what an innovation to check that!)

In short, China is using the same levers against revolution that emperors of olde did.

Of course, they didn't really stay. Dictatorship has always been about kleptocracy and corruption.

[ragebot]

To the best of my knowledge most SiFi has taken the position that being in space kinda follows the model of ships on the sea. I would point that the current LOS (Law of the Seas) treaty has become more of a farce with what I would call the 'follow the UN model'. The big boys (US, China, Russia) have not signed it and while the US mostly follows it's rules (with the exception of sharing the wealth of the seas that all the shit eating land locked poor third world countries voted for) China blatantly ignores rules of safe passage and fishing rules. Even Japan is not really safe passage friendly. On the other hand the pirates in Somalia were never really brought under control till the Russians sent what were basically Spetsnaz GRU manned ships with orders to simply kill the pirates.

Point is that any 'space law' is only as good as the space ships enforcing it. Does anyone really think the Borg would wait a New York Minute before shooting down anything they wanted to shoot down.

[Commenter_XY]

Ok, Law of the Sea. I'll have to learn more about that.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

This video answers your question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P43wVDiZs8k

[not guilty]

One of Donald Trump's lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran, testified before a grand jury investigating the documents found at Mar-a-Lago during January. Federal prosecutors have now reportedly filed in the District Court a sealed motion to compel testimony based on the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/us/politics/trump-lawyer-classified-documents-investigation.html

I think DOJ is likely to succeed here in piercing the privilege. I suspect that Mr. Corcoran will then assert his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, at which time DOJ should decide whether to grant him use immunity.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Weird how they aren't going after Biden in the same way. After all, they found stolen classified documents dating back nearly 50 years.

[Nige]

Biden didn't try to retain them after they were found. Nor did Pence, for further comparison. But you know this.

[Illocust]

We found this person with classified documents he had no legal means to obtain, but he gave them back after we searched him, so no big deal. <--- What you are unwittingly saying right now.

[David Nieporent]

No legal means to obtain? You think he broke into the CIA in the middle of the night, hanging down from the ceiling on a harness so as not to activate the floor sensors?

[shawn_dude]

Are you saying a vice president and a president have "no legal means" to obtain classified documents? Especially when a number of those documents were just classified meeting briefing notes *given* to the VPs for them to read?

Seriously?!

[Nige]

'What you are unwittingly saying right now.'

Except for the crucial bit about having legal means to obtain them.

[not guilty]

BravoCharlieDelta, what statute(s), if any, do you claim that Joe Biden violated regarding the documents in question? Please specify the title and section number(s) of the U. S. Code.

[not guilty]

Still waiting, BCD.

[Frank Drackman]

18 U.S. Code § 1924 - Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material

(a)Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both.
(b)For purposes of this section, the provision of documents and materials to the Congress shall not constitute an offense under subsection (a).
(c)In this section, the term “classified information of the United States” means information originated, owned, or possessed by the United States Government concerning the national defense or foreign relations of the United States that has been determined pursuant to law or Executive order to require protection against unauthorized disclosure in the interests of national security.

[not guilty]

Returning documents promptly upon their discovery is the very antithesis of having the intent to retain such documents. And nothing that has been made public to this point evinces that Biden knowingly removed documents, as opposed to someone inadvertently including a handful of classified documents among a broader collection of items to be moved.

That having been said, classified documents were in a location where they did not belong, so further investigation is warranted as to who was responsible for that. As an aside, though, Biden's service as Vice-President ended in January 2017, and his last service in the Senate was January 2009. Prosecution would accordingly be untimely under 18 U.S.C. § 3283(a).

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Wait, am I wrong? Is it not illegal to have classified documents in your garage for fifty years?

What about in a locked closet in your golf resort?

[Moderation4ever]

Because the issue here is not the finding of the documents it is rather were criminal actions committed to hide the fact that the documents were not returned. The lawyer client privilege ends when discussing committing crimes. If Mr. Corcoran is compelled to testify, he will be offered immunity and then he will have to spill the beans, if they exist.

Yet again a Trump lawyer finds themselves between an rock and a hard place.

[David Nieporent]

They did not, of course, find "stolen" classified documents. And the "nearly 50 years" appears to be completely made up. And Biden did not, of course, refuse to turn them over when a demand was made, and did not lie about having done so.

But you knew all this and were just trolling.

[Brett Bellmore]

They found documents he wasn't supposed to have. Legally wasn't supposed to have. I suppose there is a legal difference between theft and illegal retention of something you'd once had a legal right to have in your possession; Do we normally say that somebody stole a car when they decide not to return a rental at the end of the rental term?

And the circumstances, such as the documents being moved multiple times, really militate against any claim it was an accident.

[Sarcastr0]

I suppose there is a legal difference between theft and illegal retention

Yes, there sure as hell is! Like a baseline criminal law 101 difference.

This is getting sad.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-09/biden-downplays-classified-material-as-stray-papers-from-1970s

“Biden Downplays Seized Material as ‘Stray Papers’ From 1970s”.

What’s 2023 – 1970 in human years, not dog years?

Of course you didn't know about this, Rachel Maddow or some midwit at some State Department funded NGO didn't tell you to know about it.

[Bored Lawyer]

A few years ago, I litigated the crime-fraud exception, and was shocked at how easy it is to get a court to do it. Most courts require only probable cause that (a) a crime or fraud has been committed and (b) the attorney's services were used in furtherance of that. And whether the attorney was in on it is irrelevant, since the privilege belongs to the client, not the attorney, and it is the client who can abuse it. So even if the attorney was a dupe, the exception can apply.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

So even if the attorney was a dupe, the exception can apply.

. . . as it should.

[Bored Lawyer]

I don't disagree, but many attorneys miss this point.

[not guilty]

The standard of proof in federal court is the preponderance of evidence, not merely probable cause. The burden of proof as to establishing existence of the attorney-client relationship and the privileged nature of the communication is on the proponent of the privilege.

[Bored Lawyer]

Nope.

"a party seeking to invoke the crime-fraud exception must at least demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime or fraud has been attempted or committed and that the communications were in furtherance thereof."
In re Richard Roe, Inc., 68 F.3d 38, 40 (2d Cir. 1995)

Some courts use the term "prima facie showing," which means the same thing.

[not guilty]

Per the Ninth Circuit in In re Napster, Inc. Copyright Litig., 479 F.3d 1078, 1082 (9th Cir. 2007), abrogated on other grounds by Mohawk Indus., Inc. v. Carpenter, 558 U.S. 100 (2009):

In this appeal, we must decide whether the district court properly ordered the disclosure of privileged attorney-client communications under the crime-fraud exception. We hold that in a civil case the district court must allow both the party seeking discovery of the communications and the party asserting the privilege to present evidence relevant to the privilege and the exception, and must weigh that evidence before ordering outright disclosure. We further hold that in a civil case, when the district court is asked to order outright disclosure, the burden of proof on the party seeking to vitiate the privilege is preponderance of the evidence.

See also, Eastman v. Thompson, https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.841840/gov.uscourts.cacd.841840.260.0.pdf pp. 30-31.

[Bored Lawyer]

Yes, the 9th Cir. takes that position in civil cases (although not in grand jury proceedings.) Most courts use some variation of probable cause.

[not guilty]

Okay. I stand corrected.

The Supreme Court has declined to decide the quantum of proof necessary ultimately to establish the applicability of the crime-fraud exception. United States v. Zolin, 491 U.S. 554, 563 (1989). My (less than exhaustive) research suggests that the D.C. Circuit requires a prima facie showing:

To overcome a claim of privilege, the government must "make a prima facie showing of a violation sufficiently serious to defeat the privilege"; such a "violation is shown if it is established that the client was engaged in or planning a criminal or fraudulent scheme when it sought the advice of counsel to further the scheme"; and the government's burden of proof is satisfied "if it offers evidence that if believed by the trier of fact would establish the elements of an ongoing or imminent crime or fraud."

In Re: Grand Jury, 475 F.3d 1299, 1305 (D.C. Cir. 2007), quoting In re Sealed Case, 754 F.2d 395, 399 (D.C. Cir. 1985).

[Ben_]

The walls are closing in. This time for sure.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Are Trump and his delusional, bigoted, worthless, QAnon-class fans tired of winning yet?

[Frank Drackman]

Trump was POTUS 1461 more days than Romeney, McCain, Bob Dull, combined.

[grb]

Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland : "Are Trump and his delusional, bigoted, worthless, QAnon-class fans tired of winning yet?"

Homage to Churchill:

Trump's supporters were were given a choice between defeat and dishonor. They chose dishonor and then got their defeat.

[not guilty]

Here is some interesting discussion between Brian Tyler Cohen and Glenn Kirschner regarding the DOJ subpoena to Evan Corcoran. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYiPk8JMYT4

[apedad]

Dad shot ‘number of times’ with rifle in ‘broad daylight’ after confronting man who called his baby ‘stupid’ online: Prosecutor

Prosecutors in Kentucky allege that a petty argument online, which even included the insult of a baby as “stupid,” escalated to attempted murder in the real world.

The Covington-based case in the Bluegrass State’s Kenton County allegedly began after Nicolas E. Turner and a father got into a heated dispute on the internet. That argument allegedly involved Turner calling the man’s baby “stupid” and resulted in an in-person meeting between the two men. Rather than resolving their differences peacefully, Turner allegedly brought a rifle with him and repeatedly opened fire, hitting the victim nearly 10 times, FOX 19 reported last Thursday.

https://lawandcrime.com/crime/dad-shot-number-of-times-with-rifle-in-broad-daylight-after-confronting-man-who-called-his-baby-stupid-online-prosecutor/

(Note to self: Don’t ever call Dr Ed2’s or Mr. Bumble’s baby “stupid.”)

[Stephen Lathrop]

There ought to be some kind of emoji—maybe a little cartoon of a gun advocate whose rifle barrel curves around and points back at him—to use when stories like that one come up.

[Jerry B.]

"...repeatedly opened fire, hitting the victim nearly 10 times..."

What? 9.5 times?

And must have been a .22.

[shawn_dude]

Grazed, maybe?

[ragebot]

The Parkland shooter hit a couple of his vics (who survived) two or three times as I remember using a weapon firing 5.56 rounds.

On the other hand the round responsible for the most firearm deaths in the US is a .22.

How lethal any firearm is depends more on the guy pulling the trigger than the round in the chamber.

[Frank Drackman]

RFK killed with a 22 revolver.

[Nige]

Killed who?

[ragebot]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=160NsA8-j3M

[Martinned]

Since we were talking about the FTC earlier this week, I'd be interested in views from people who believe in the non-delegation doctrine about whether this:

The [FTC] is hereby empowered and directed to prevent persons, partnerships, or corporations, (…) from using unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.

in combination with

The Commission shall have no authority under this section or section 57a of this title to declare unlawful an act or practice on the grounds that such act or practice is unfair unless the act or practice causes or is likely to cause substantial injury to consumers which is not reasonably avoidable by consumers themselves and not outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or to competition. In determining whether an act or practice is unfair, the Commission may consider established public policies as evidence to be considered with all other evidence. Such public policy considerations may not serve as a primary basis for such determination.

violates that doctrine.

[Brett Bellmore]

"in or affecting commerce ... or affecting commerce"

Not even a pro forma "interstate"?

Anyway, it does seem an enormously vague mission.

[Martinned]

It is, but it might not be if you take into account the common law and the Congressional debates, the way the Supreme Court did with the (equally vague) Sherman Act in Standard Oil. But people who believe in the non-delegation doctrine also don't tend to be big fans of looking at the Congressional record.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, sure: The law is what they enacted, after all, not what they said about it, which is only useful to resolve ambiguities in the language. If the language isn't there to BE ambiguous, what is there to resolve?

The agency's mission is vague, but it's clearly vague, not ambiguous. If you know what I mean.

[Martinned]

I'm not sure if that's a distinction that's been recognised by the courts. In any case, a legislature is generally assumed to legislate against the background of the law as it exists at the time, and so new laws should be interpreted to fit with existing legal doctrines unless the opposite intention is apparent.

On the topic of non-compete clauses, that means that there should be a high bar before concluding that non-compete clauses are not unfair in the sense of the FTC Act, because the common law has disfavoured non-compete clauses since long before the Act was adopted.

[David Nieporent]

“in or affecting commerce … or affecting commerce”

Not even a pro forma “interstate”?

Commerce is defined in the statute to be interstate or foreign commerce:

“Commerce” means commerce among the several States or with foreign nations, or in any Territory of the United States or in the District of Columbia, or between any such Territory and another, or between any such Territory and any State or foreign nation, or between the District of Columbia and any State or Territory or foreign nation.

[Brett Bellmore]

Ah, so it DID have the pro forma "interstate", just in the definitions. Thanks!

[Krayt]

The purpose of government is to get in the way, until someone gets paid, and it gets back out of the way.

The Interstate Commerce clause was to allow the feds to force the states to get out of the way of each other.

It didn’t take long, once courts ruled getting in the way of commerce for corruption purposes was ok, for it to skyrocket.

Hooray! Back to business as usual through all human history, and around the world!

Founding Fathers, you had a nice, century+ run, but kleptocracy worked around ya!

[apedad]

U.S. Marshals Capture Over 800 Fugitives in Operation North Star

The U.S. Marshals Service has concluded Operation North Star II (ONS II), a high-impact fugitive apprehension initiative aimed at combating violent crime in 10 cities with a significant number of homicides and shootings.

This 30-day initiative resulted in the arrest of 833 fugitives, violent criminals, sex offenders, and self-identified gang members in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Buffalo, New York; Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Jackson, Mississippi; Kansas City, Missouri; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Oakland, California; and Puerto Rico.

ONS II focused on fugitives wanted for the most serious, violent, and harmful offenses including homicide, forcible sexual assault, robbery, or aggravated assault. ONS II investigators prioritized their efforts to include individuals using firearms in their crimes, or who exhibited risk factors associated with violence.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-marshals-capture-over-800-fugitives-operation-north-star

Just a reminder that while we discuss whether Biden can cancel student loans or a defendant can proceed anonymously in court, there are people in the real world who live outside of our society's norms and have absolutely no hesitation to kill or harm others.

[Martinned]

Permanent low-level civil war...

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Many of those are now working for the Federal government.

[apedad]

Does BravoCharlieDelta (BCD) equal Bad Conduct Discharge?

Because that would explain A LOT.

[OtisAH]

He’s unquestionably 4F.

[Frank Drackman]

Better than being a Homo (I know, "Much better now" HT. C. Chase)

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

You think "apedad" doesn't speak volumes?

[Frank Drackman]

We who actually served call it the "Big Chicken Dinner"

[Brett Bellmore]

It seems strange that they'd have to conduct a special operation to do what you'd, naively, think would be their every day mission.

[apedad]

Efficiencies of scale.

It sometimes makes sense to create task forces with focused goals and resources than for each agency to be working independently.

But you knew that and are just doing your usual whining.

[Brett Bellmore]

We don't typically reach for efficiencies of scale in law enforcement by blowing off enforcement for a while, and then swooping in and going after a lot of criminals. The reason they needed this task force is that they hadn't been doing their job all along.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"The reason they needed this task force is that they hadn’t been doing their job all along."

You have receipts for that, or is this another instance of your alleged ability to discern facts from thin air?

[Ben_]

"Albuquerque, New Mexico; Buffalo, New York; Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Jackson, Mississippi; Kansas City, Missouri; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Oakland, California; and Puerto Rico"

Crime thrives in Democrat jurisdictions.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Everything Democrats claim to care about and claim to be able to solve exist in extreme ways in their enclaves.

Poverty, inequality, racism, pollution, and failed schools are all hallmarks of Democrat governance. Wasn't there that recent news report that in one Democrat government school district, not a single student was at grade level for math? Literally, not a single student in an entire government school district.

[Ben_]

Yeah.

Baltimore: not one student at these 23 schools can do math at grade level

But no way can we ever allow any kid to get a voucher to escape to a private school. That money has to stay in The System, regardless of the consequences to Baltimore children. The System has needs.

[Nige]

https://scholaroo.com/report/state-education-rankings/

[Ben_]

You're happy to let poor kids' lives be destroyed in government schools.

[Nige]

Whereas you want them destroyed by private schools that can make a profit out of it? Which is why Republicans love to underfund and undermine public schools?

[Ben_]

That's an interesting justification for your choice to trap kids and destroy their lives for union dues. Tell us more about why you'll happily destroy kids' lives as long as there's money in it for you or your team.

[Nige]

Oh, you mean, you want to destroy teacher's lives as well as non-rich students lives, I see.

[grb]

Ben : “Crime thrives in Democrat jurisdictions”

Is there a crime statistic not dominated by Red States? The murder rates in 2020 were 40% higher in Trump-voting states as compared to Biden-voting States. Eight out of ten of the worst states were securely Republican. Sixteen of twenty states with the highest gun death rates are solidly Red.

US World and News Report tried their hand at a Public Safety Ranking. Eighty percent of the best were Blue; eighty percent of the worst were Red.

Of course I anticipate your objection: Red states underperform their Democratic counterparts in most categories, be it education, healthcare, wealth, degrees, advanced degrees, infant mortality, etc. It’s hardly fair to single out Trump states for their failure at crime alone…..

[BravoCharlieDelta]

If your state had a vote to secede, and it was binding, would you vote for it?

I would. After seeing what the Federals are doing to those poor white people in Ohio, we will never be safe around a Federal or a Democrat.

[Randal]

You should just move to Colombia or Uzbekistan or something.

[Frank Drackman]

You should just go back to Africa, not so funny now, is it?

[Randal]

I don't know of any African-Americans trying to secede, Penis Unattractiveman. They're infinitely more America-loving than BravoCharlieTraitor over here.

[grb]

Frank Drackman : ”….. Africa ….. (etc)”

People who think racism no longer a big deal should perform this simple experiment: Find a news story involving a black person and go visit the comment section of Fox News. Unsurprisingly, you frequently see those comments veer off into sordid bilious territory.

The actual news content is irrelevant. Take the Fox story about Justice Jackson’s first day of oral arguments: It was a perfectly dry accounting of the type of questions she asked, but the Fox readership responded with seething rage and every kind of insult, highlighted by multiple references to gorillas (a perennial favorite of this genre). About a week ago, there was a story about Lebron James sitting at the end of the Laker bench, injured & in street clothes. Next seat over was a twelve year old girl, who was visible awestruck at finding James her neighbor. Given the girl was white, I expected the worse and the people of Fox lived down to their reputation. You can imagine the toxic mess I found.

Speaking of which, you often see the same thing here….

https://nba.nbcsports.com/2023/02/12/12-year-old-lakers-fan-sitting-next-to-lebron-reminder-of-joy-of-sports/

[apedad]

YES! YES! YES!

Please try this.

Really, please.

[Moderation4ever]

What state would vote to secede? The economic incentives of slavery drove the first and only attempt to break the union. Where is that economic incentive now? The states most often taking about not liking the Federal Government are most often taking the largest share of assistance from that government. The Confederacy was a group of states that were geographically contiguous, that would not happen today, and one or two states alone could not even get started. Everything not available inside that states borders would have to pass through check points. The black market would thrive in the state and with the black market corruption. No state wants this.

This talk of secession is just that, talk. A bunch of guys sitting in the local bar talking.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The Federalists wanted to secede -- Hartford Convention.

They didn't have military leadership.

[Ed Grinberg]

Good point. These people (the "woke") are as ignorant as they're self-righteous.

[David Nieporent]

No, the Federalists did not want to secede — Hartford Convention. That was anti-Federalist propaganda by the Democratic-Republicans. Obviously nobody can say that two random delegates didn't discuss it over some beers, but it was not on the agenda at the convention and there's no evidence it was considered in any way.

[Reallynotbob]

To be fair, that's what Brexit was too. Until it wasn't.

40/60 odds Texas would vote for it.

[not guilty]

A state does not have the right to unilaterally secede from the United States. Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1868).

That having been said, if Texas did leave the Union, I wouldn't be too sorry to see it go.

[Nige]

You think a lack of federal regulation will *reduce* the likelihood of this sort of thing happening? Or do you think independant state regulations will be tougher?

[Brett Bellmore]

Not at this point. If it was binding and successful, my state would not be a complete economic unit, and seceding would remove from it almost all legal protections against federal action. Protections which are, at least for now, still mostly operative.

In order to be feasible, it would have to be done in conjunction with a fair number of other states, enough to form a viable federation, with formal provisions for those states retaining military assets on their territory, including a large enough share of the strategic nuclear arsenal to prevent the rump Union from attacking.

I don't see anything so neat and peaceful happening, though, as the federal government is run by control freaks whose motto is "rule or ruin", (Though "rule AND ruin" might be more honest.)

[Moderation4ever]

You confirm my earlier point that the economics of today really preclude any real succession.

Also, a sad commentary that to secede you would have to have nukes. Essentially comparing the newly seceded state to countries like North Korea.

[Brett Bellmore]

I was actually comparing the US left behind to the Russian Federation, and learning from Ukraine's mistake.

[Ed Grinberg]

the federal government is run by control freaks whose motto is “rule or ruin”

In 1818 the central government of Argentina sent a 5,000-man army to Santa Fe, under the command of Juan Ramon Balcarce, trying to put the province back under the control of the central government. Balcarce briefly occupied the provincial capital, but was forced to retreat to Rosario. Later, when he was forced to evacuate Rosario, Balcarce -- who had plundered half the province -- set the city on fire.

[bernard11]

It's not clear what you mean by "a complete economic unit," but few countries are capable of being completely self-sufficient, nor is it a great idea to try.

As to the rest, well, I, and I suspect most other liberals, would not be at all upset to see SC go. Just make sure you don't leave Lindsay Graham behind.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, gee, what's the point in seceding if we have to take him with us? No thanks.

[David Nieporent]

Does anyone know what BCD is talking about? (I know BCD doesn't.)

[Ed Grinberg]

After seeing what the Federals are doing to those poor white people in Ohio

I must've missed this news story. What are you talking about?

[bevis the lumberjack]

The vinyl chloride train?

[Ed Grinberg]

Ah, OK. I have heard about that. I guess I didn't think of it as "the federal government doing something to [the victims]." More like not doing anything.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Exactly. They ain't doing shit while white people suffer.

If that was downtown Detroit the entire world would be laser focused on it.

[Aunt Teefah]

"If that was downtown Detroit the entire world would be laser focused on it."

Just like how people are laser-focused on the fact that Flint, Michigan (majority black) still doesn't have safe drinking water. If only they were 75 miles away. So close!

[bevis the lumberjack]

The train is owned and operated by a private company. It’s not the federal government doing anything unless you consider failing to take failure to perform some undefined action as “doing something”.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

There's an ecological disaster that could potentially harm millions of Americans.

What should the people in the Federal Government be doing? Sending out the spokes-homo to rail against white people in blue collar jobs like Mayor Pete did?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Sending out the spokes-homo to rail against white people

Does a single Volokh Conspirator have the courage or character to discuss why and how this blog attracts such a remarkable concentration of racists, gay-bashers, xenophobes, antisemites, misogynists, Islamophobes, and other right-wing bigots?

Are you too busy whining about how the modern American liberal-libertarian mainstream is insufficiently hospitable to your stale, ugly conservative thinking?

Or are you just too cowardly, afraid of venturing beyond the safe space of a Federalist Society cocktail party?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Cowardice takes the early lead, preliminarily vindicating the smart money.

Not even one of the Conspirators is willing or able to show some courage or character?

[Randal]

How: Josh Blackman
Why: He's a whore?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I disagree with any assertion that Prof. Blackman is primarily responsible for attracting the bigoted, delusional, disaffected right-wing audience to the Volokh Conspiracy. He eagerly does his part, but he is just part of the band arranging and performing this tune.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The Federal Govt has authority over HazMats. Look up "EPA."

[bevis the lumberjack]

Wait. There’s a thing called EPA? No shit?

Missing the point Ed. The question is what should the feds be doing right now? I know you’ve got to bust on Biden right now, but everyone here knows that if Trump were president you’d be fine with Ohio handling it.

[Commenter_XY]

Professor Volokh, congratulations on your win in Volokh v. James.

Thanks for actually doing the hard work of defending free speech.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Artie Ray Lee Wayne Jim-Bob Kirkland could not be reached for comment concerning Commenter_XY's comment, because Prof. Volokh censored Artie Ray with prejudice for poking fun at conservatives a bit too deftly for the "libertarianish" professor to bear.

[Mr. Bumble]

Almost two weeks since the freight train derailment in Ohio and as usual Mayor Pete and the rest of the Biden administration are AWOL.

[Moderation4ever]

Last I heard, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said that there was no need for a disaster declaration or Federal assistance. Yet you want the Federal Officials at the site. For what purpose?

[Mr. Bumble]

“Last I heard, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said that there was no need for a disaster declaration or Federal assistance. ” Mind sharing where you “heard” that? With the sparsity of reporting on the incident I must have missed that.

“Yet you want the Federal Officials at the site. For what purpose?” To do their jobs? If DOT, EPA and NTSB don’t have a role in an event such as this what is their purpose?

[Moderation4ever]

I may have over characterized Gov DeWine's response. He did not refuse assistance but said it was not needed.

https://newrepublic.com/feeds/168326/ticker

"the Ohio governor said while he has spoken with President Biden, who offered assistance, he felt that no further assistance was needed"

[Brett Bellmore]

Their help might not be needed, but their jobs would, in this case, mostly revolve around why the train was carrying such toxic contents in a dangerous manner, and yet the cargo was listed as "non-toxic".

‘This is absurd’: Train cars that derailed in Ohio were labeled non-hazardous

[Dr. Ed 2]

That’s a federal offense — a violation of 49 CFR § 172.504 See: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/172.504

Translated into English, the United Nations established a 4-digit number for every hazardous material (or category) that exists — it’s one of the few things they’ve done right. And every truck or railcar carrying one has to display the 4 digit number — 1075 is propane, 1993 is home heating oil or Diesel fuel, Gasoline is 1203, etc.

Truck drivers get into a lot of trouble if the cops catch them hauling a hazmat without the proper numbers displayed — not sure who enforces this for railroads traveling interstate but the Federal regs require it.

The railroad is also supposed to have hot box detectors to prevent axles from snapping...

[Estragon]

The rules on this were changed in 2017.

https://www.railwayage.com/regulatory/usdot-repeals-ecp-brake-rule/

[Life of Brian]

What does repealing a future requirement for "a single train with 70 or more tank cars loaded with Class 3 flammable liquids" to have supplemental braking systems have to do with anything Ed said about proper labeling of cars, or really anything at all to do with this particular accident?

[Estragon]

That was in response to the hot box detectors comment. This train would have fallen under the ECP requirements before the rule was rescinded in 2017.

[Life of Brian]

Hot box detectors are deployed on the tracks -- and apparently the one just prior to East Palestine sounded an alert which caused the engineer to start braking the train, apparently too late.

ECP is a mildly smoother braking system for individual cars, and has nothing to do with hot box detectors. Nor would it have applied to trains with less than 70 tankers until at least May 2023 anyway.

I understand that not having implemented ECP is the Big Talking Point being deployed here, but aside from the fact that it's irrelevant, reflexive confetti it seems like you reached just a bit too far for a hook to work it in here.

[Estragon]

1) You assert it’s irrelevant.

“If the axle breaks, it’s almost certain that the train is going to derail,” said John Risch, a former BNSF engineer and national legislative director for the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Union. “ECP brakes would help to bring the train to a stop. What they do is activate the brakes on each car at the same time immediately. That’s significant: When you apply the brakes on a conventional train, they brake from the front to the rear. The cars bunch up.”

And

“Trains are like giant Slinkies. When you have that back of the train running into the front of the train, they can actually push cars out, cause a derailment and cause a hell of a mess.”

ECP braking, the analyst said, takes “the energy out of the train quicker, so when a train does derail there is less energy that has to be absorbed by crushing tank cars.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/railroads-regulators-clash-over-braking-system-for-trains-carrying-flammable-liquids/2016/12/19/68071650-9ad4-11e6-b3c9-f662adaa0048_story.html

2) I’m just curious: how long do you think it takes to install one of these systems on a train? Might it be possible that Norfolk Southern could have gotten a little bit of a head start on meeting this requirement such that this train could have had this installed already? May 1, 2023 isn’t exactly eons away.
I’m also not seeing the “70 cars” limitation you are referring to, can you point me to that?

3) you know who else thought ECP was a great idea, once upon a time? Norfolk Southern— when they thought implementing it could get them out of safety inspection requirements!

https://downloads.regulations.gov/FRA-2006-26435-0003/content.pdf

[Life of Brian]

Wow, more confetti. Did you need to pound the "might have helped" table for half a dozen paragraphs to try to distract from the fact that 1) ECP indeed has absolutely nothing to do with hot box detectors, and 2) the proposed ECP rule wouldn't have applied to this train?

Vinyl chloride is a Class 2 flammable gas. The proposed ECP regs, per the link I provided above, were limited to Class 3 flammable gases. Even setting aside the fact that there weren't enough flammable cars on the train to fall under the ECP regs, they weren't even carrying a qualifying substance.

If you want to argue ECP would have been a great idea and would have made some sort of statistical improvement in the outcome, knock yourself out. But saying the ECP proposed rule would have applied to this train is just plain wrong.

[Estragon]

So let me get this straight:

Similar accident happens ln New Jersey in 2012. NTSB starts to look at new rules maybe reclassifying trains carrying this stuff as “high hazard” and requiring said trains to have ECP. Rules get adopted but despite the stated position of NTSB, trains carrying this chemical are not included in the “high hazard” definition- just as the American Association of Railroads wanted!!

Fast forward to 2017 and the new administration goes ahead and gets rid of all of the ECP implementation requirements— even the trains that were so self-evidently dangerous and explosive the lobbyists couldn’t get them exempted the first time!

And your point is… because of lobbying by NS themselves back in 2015 this train was exempted and even if it weren’t it would still be exempt for 3 more months so….. what can you do, amirite???

[Life of Brian]

Good grief. Your original statement was: "The rules on this were changed in 2017. "

My responses have consistently pointed out that the pre-2017 rule would not have applied here.

You obviously see that, else you'd clearly and concisely show me why I'm wrong, using the actual text of the rules as I did. Instead you're just retreating into talking points about how railroads are bad in general, and have even pivoted to criticizing the 2015 rules (the ones you originally wanted to have still been in place). Confetti in the air.

Bottom line, this (really really bad) accident has precisely nothing to do with anything that happened during the prior administration. The most charitable interpretation is that you got hoodwinked by Buttigieg's hand-flapping excuses and hopeful media articles to the contrary.

[Estragon]

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that this train not being included under even under the weak ass 2015 rules IS actually kind of the point. It is also accurate to state that the rules on brakes on dangerously explosive trains were modified in 2017. All of this points towards the (un) desirability of the way policy was developed here- and the irony of course is that this accident was made worse by direct actions of the company at issue.

Pedantically pointing out that this train or that actually wouldn’t have been retrofitted for another three months actually seems to serve more to obscure the actual issues here than not. One might even call that confetti. Why do you feel so compelled to carry water for NS? Are you a shareholder? It’s telling you only focus on “the prior administration”… why make it partisan? I didn’t.

[Estragon]

And it’s not that I “hate railroads…”

But NS is absolutely the villain here, and as time goes on we’re going to find out they were playing fast and loose in how they were stacking the load on these trains, cutting corners on safety inspections, mischaracterizing cargo to avoid speed restrictions, dangerously cutting staff, etc.
Look up “Precision Scheduled Railroading”… NS went to that in 2019.

All while doing six billion in stock buybacks.

If you want to hit buttigeg and biden for something, not supporting the rail workers strike is the appropriate place. They were warning about these issues.

[Life of Brian]

Why do you feel so compelled to carry water for NS?

Point me to a single word I've said in support of NS. More confetti.

Ironically enough, this entire thread is about YOU carrying water for Buttigieg, who after pretending nothing had happened (or maybe not even knowing that anything had!) for a week, then tried to minimize the level of catastrophe by saying "derailments happen all the time, derp," then when he finally figured out(!) THAT wasn't going over well, blame-shifting that his hands were tied because of the same withdrawal of proposed rules that you're caterwauling about -- which as is now painfully evident would not have changed a damn thing here.

It's a horrible situation. But today's problem is cleaning up/remediating to the fullest extent possible, not playing whiny 20/20 hindsight. And particularly not rewriting history in doing so.

[Estragon]

How is pointing out that lobbying by the company in question dating back to 2014 had a direct hand in making this worse carrying water for buttegig?

Asserting things like “ECP is irrelevant” (ignoring the fact that it was NS’ own lobbying that kept this train from being designated in a way that would have required it) or pedantically pointing out that it’s not actually May 1, 2023 yet, merely serve to obfuscate where the blame obviously lies: at the feet of this company that completely fucked up even playing by the rules that they themselves wrote.

Ditto with this meta criticism of Pete’s PR. Even if I grant you his response was ham-handed, how is that your focus of what went wrong here?

NS could not have gotten better PR flak work from you if they had paid for it. Talk about anything except where the real blame lies: with this piece of shit company and its board of directors. A board, by the way, that was so committed to safety that they fought tooth and nail against a shareholder proposal in 2017. The subject? A review of company practices surrounding hazardous trains.

[Estragon]

[Life of Brian]

Asserting things like “[the proposed 2015] ECP [rules] are irrelevant” . . . or pedantically pointing out that it’s not actually May 1, 2023 yet

These are both known as "uncontested facts." It's evident by now, if unfortunate, that you consider those subservient to heartfelt harranguing.

In this phase of things, the sort of non-falsifiable finger pointing exercises you're supporting are negatively helpful: they consume sorely needed cycles of people that should be singularly focused on cleaning up the mess. But unfortunately we seem to be headed for another "never let a good crisis go to waste" exercise looking to leverage this into another layer of one-size-fits-none bureaucratic cruft.

[Estragon]

“they consume sorely needed cycles of people that should be singularly focused on cleaning up the mess.”

Says the guy slagging Pete’s PR response

[Estragon]

I mean come on, there is tech— in existence— that would have made this a lot less worse. At one time it was contemplated that a train carrying this substance would be required to have it. But in your mind it’s not at all worth looking into how it came about that not just this train, but even MORE EXPLOSIVE trains, are now running around with braking tech invented in the 19th century? Instead we should be “singularly focused” on cleanup and Pete’s PR and thoughts&prayers?

[Life of Brian]

Says the guy slagging Pete’s PR response

Well, yeah. Because it's like, you know.... his job and all to deal with stuff like this. He should be focusing on cleanup rather than excuses. You disagree?

[Life of Brian]

I mean come on, there is tech— in existence— that would have made this a lot less worse.

Wonderful. But of course, beneficial technology that might have helped being in existence does not just automatically mean we should implement it, right? We need to do a cost/benefit analysis on that tech, across the entire railroad system and the millions of cargo miles every year safely completed without the beneficial technology, right?

Oh, wait -- that's what happened in 2017. And it wasn't even close.

[Estragon]

“Oh, wait — that’s what happened in 2017. And it wasn’t even close.“

You know they had to revise those numbers, right?

[Life of Brian]

The 2017 numbers were the revised ones, resulting in the withdrawal of the proposed rules. Does "had to" roughly translate to "the pitchfork mob demanded another pass later"?

[Estragon]

I’m sorry, but you are mistaken:

https://downloads.regulations.gov/PHMSA-2017-0102-0049/attachment_1.pdf

Does this shake your faith in the bullshit cost effectiveness analysis they threw at this to kill it? I’m guessing no! Do you bundle for John Thune??

[David Nieporent]

No, Brett got it slightly wrong, and Dr. Ed managed to take something he thinks he knows and misapply it based on that.

The train cars were not mislabeled. Nobody has suggested anything like that. It's that the train was (apparently correctly, under current regulations) not categorized as a High Hazard Flammable Train.

[OtisAH]

There was a headline a couple days ago claiming the cars were labeled “non-toxic,” which I don’t think they even do. Didn’t bother reading the article but haven’t seen anything else about it except from numpties on the internet.

[Ben_]

It's just Americans hurt in Ohio, so I don't know why you'd expect anyone in DC to be interested.

[Sarcastr0]

Feds can't come in pursuant to a disaster unless the state invites them. Do you want that to change?

[Dr. Ed 2]

They have authority if HazMats were being shipped without proper placards being displayed.

Depending on the contract they have with the state's EPA agency, the Federal EPA is required to roll on a spill this big (unless the state is credible, per EPA standards, to do it for them).

Likewise with OSHA -- someone was killed, right -- that's a workplace fatality that OSHA has to investigate unless they have a contract with the state entity.

[Sarcastr0]

Depending on the contract they have with the state’s EPA agency, the Federal EPA is required to roll on a spill this big

Ed, you're doing your know-it-all-but-I'm-making-it-up thing again.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I actually have a friend who is high up in another state’s EPA and was told this is how it works — essentially, if the Feds are convinced that the state can handle it, they let them do so and then the state calls the Feds if they have technical questions or are overwhelmed. I *think* it also has to do with the state being stricter than the EPA is (i.e. lower permissible rates) and the EPA not wanting to interfere with that.

I believe — not sure but believe — that there is Federal funding to the state’s EPA for this, that they essentially negotiate out a contract. And it makes sense — the EPA really doesn’t want to deal with every overflowing septic tank…

And as to OSHA, Ohio does not have an “OSHA-approved state plan” so OSHA has to go. See: https://www.osha.gov/contactus/bystate

(Or is Ed now fabricating websites on the osha.gov domain?)

And if you read the fine print, you will see that Massachusetts is bifurcated — the State deals with state & municipal employees, OSHA deals with the private sector. That became an issue at Planet UMass — I’m not bothering with the details because I’d again be accused of being a lying janitor, like janitors deal with the routing of 600 degree steam lines…

[Nige]

The Feds will say the state can handle right up to the point where the state declares a state of emergency and then the Feds go in. You want the Feds? Declare a state of emergency.

[BrotherMovesOn]

"I actually have a friend..."

Get Outta Here!!!

[Ben_]

There’s apparently no way to to spin the story into a race narrative to divide people. If there was, you’d seem MSM news coverage and pro-forma emoting by the usual race grifters.

[Dr. Ed 2]

This is an example of what I mean by there are more poor White people than there ARE Black people -- and if this had happened in a Black neighborhood*, you kinda know what would be happening.

*Black neighborhoods tend to be urban and I'm not sure I'd be burning the stuff off in an urban area. (I'm not so sure it is wise to be burning it off here, either, but population density is less.)

And what's not being said here is if there should be a limit on the number of HazMat cars on a train. There is a limit of 5 on poor-quality track, but none on regular track and some of these trains are more than a mile long, with radio-controlled locomotives in the middle of them. If you are hauling new cars or UPS packages, fine -- but as to HazMats???

[Nige]

'and if this had happened in a Black neighborhood*, you kinda know what would be happening.'

Yeah, that's why you know all about the ol' cancer corridors and sacrifice zones that affect so many black people.

[Frank Drackman]

Senescent J didn't seem to know there were any poor white peoples.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idpevmeoK1A

even the Gray Haired Lady busted his balls

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. raised eyebrows on Thursday during a speech in Iowa when he said that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids,” an apparent gaffe for a Democratic presidential candidate whose record on race has come under intense scrutiny during the primary.

Frank

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The Volokh Conspiracy has cornered the market on whining, grievance-saturated white losers, disaffected right-wing white Christian nationalists, and delusional white supremacists.

Mission accomplished, Volokh Conspirators!

[OtisAH]

Every news source is covering the Ohio train derailment, dummy.

[Reallynotbob]

Let me guess, the criticism is, "DC didn't clean up industry's mess fast enough."

Try this one. "DC should take steps to ensure future disasters don't occur."

Nahhh... that's evil regulation. Remember when Rep. Byrne (R-AL) introduced a bill to kill the Dept. of Transportation altogether?

[Dr. Ed 2]

How about big business be held to the same level of rule enforcement that the little guy is?

We don't yet know what caused this accident -- the broken axle may have been the immediate cause, but we don't know why it broke. But let's presume the railroad was negligent, as is being alleged.

If an Owner-Operator were to be driving an placarded load of the same HazMat and crashed due to his truck being defective, he'd be out of the business. Even if his license wasn't yanked, his insurance would go up so much that he couldn't afford it. (And a truck is just half of one railcar.)

As to HazMats, I'd like to see the same level of governmental scrutiny on railroads. Annual state (any state) inspection of tank cars, penalties for not properly placarding loads, etc.

[Reallynotbob]

You're dangerously close to "corporations should have to pay taxes too." Careful. Around here, they'll brand you a socialist.

[Nige]

'How about big business be held to the same level of rule enforcement that the little guy is?'

Oh my friend, if you're really interested you have such a disheartening education about big business and environmental destruction ahead of you.

[Jonathan Affleck]

Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh come up for oral arguments next week.

The BRIEF OF INTERNET LAW SCHOLARS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENT, which was filed in Gonzalez v. Google, addresses (p. 7) an Access Software Provider (ASP), which is a special type of ICS (Interactive Computer Service). In 2023, the ICS as defined in Section 230 is no longer used. To me, the amicus brief seems to be somewhere in the Twilight Zone.

Google was giving material support to a terrorist organization to improve the targeting of a video to potential recruits in the YouTube audience. If Google software could pick out a receptive viewer (potential recruit), Google software could easily have flagged the potential danger of making such a recommendation to a receptive viewer. (I have no sympathy for Google's argument, which seems to presuppose incompetent engineering like that which created Gallopin' Gertie. Take a look at the video. The problem, which caused the bridge collapse, was already well understood long before the bridge was built.)

The user interface of a 1996 ICS like 1996 AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy was inappropriate for a library or for a school. From around 1992 until about 2012, a few small companies each provided a specialized ICS for a library or for a school. Such a company was an ASP.

My firm (Telford Tools Inc) provided software engineering consulting to a hardware communications company, which created hardware for a system integrator that worked with an Internet On-Ramp for schools or libraries. In Section 230, the Access Software Provider is the company, which provides the service to the the school or library and does the billing. The business relationships, licensing agreements, and service contracts could be complex.

As far as I know, no such ASP continued to exist after 2012. A library or school today usually gets Internet service from an ISP (Internet Service Provider) via DSL or Cable connection. A very large library like the main branch of the Boston Public Library may have a higher speed leased line connection directly into the downtown Boston MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) just as the MIT Autonomous System Network (ASN) or the BU ASN has, but I have not kept up with the technology of these interconnects. I don’t believe either the Boston Public Library System or the Boston Public School System is managing its own ASN. Probably AT&T or Sprint is managing a virtual ASN for the library system or for the school system.

Nowadays, a school, library, or corporate network is usually configured to be an Intranet with local IP addresses and a firewall/proxy system that translates local Intranet addresses in order to communicate with Internet services. I have my own Intranet. If I am doing work for Walgreens, I typically set up a VPN (Virtual Private Network) tunnel so that I can get on the Walgreens network. My end of the VPN has an Intranet address on my Intranet. The Walgreens side of the VPN has an Intranet address on the Walgreens Intranet. I don’t block any social medium platforms on my firewall, but Walgreens probably blocks access to social medium platform like Facebook or like Twitter for its employees by means of its firewall. The filtering etc., which the ASP performed in 1996, is performed by the firewall, which the ISP provides on the cable modem that I rent from the ISP (in my case Comcast/Xfinity). Modern technology differs completely from the technology to which Section 230 applies.

I suppose one might argue Scrivener’s Error to attempt to extend Section 230 from the 1996 technology to which it applied to the technology of today, but it would be a big stretch. Section 230 is no longer needed. The 1869 Massachusetts General Law common carriage statutes are perfectly adequate for regulating message common carriage by a 2023 Social Medium Platform in a Packet-Switched Public Data Network (PSPDN) like the Internet. The 1869 Massachusetts statutes encompassed 19th century telegraph networks. There is not enough difference between the Internet in 2023 and a 19th century telegraph network to require a different legal regime.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I see your case is scheduled for conference tomorrow. That means that the denial of certiorari should come down Tuesday.

[Jonathan Affleck]

Whatever happens, my case goes back to federal district court.

You can read my draft complaint in
Joachim Martillo
Plaintiff pro se
v.
Twitter Inc,
Facebook Inc,
Linkedin Corp,
A Medium Corp,
The Stanford Daily Publishing Corp,
Harvard Crimson Inc,
Maura Healey in her official capacity only as Governor of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, and
United States of America
Defendants
Complaint for Violations
1. of 42 U.S. Code § 2000a,
2. of 42 U.S. Code §§ 1981 and 1982,
3. of M.G.L. Chapter 159 § 1,
4. of the First Amendment Right Not to Suffer Abridgment of Speech in a US
Government-Designated Public Forum,
5. of the Fifth Amendment Right to Due Process of Law,
6. of the Ninth Amendment Right to Non-Discriminatory Common Carriage, and
7. of the Fourteenth Amendment Right to Equal Protection.

I really only care that SCOTUS does not affirm Zeran-based caselaw in ruling on any of the other six Section 230-related cases.

[Jonathan Affleck]

Another cases, which addresses abridgment of freedom of speech, also goes to conference on Feb. 17: Arkansas Times LP, Petitioner v. Mark Waldrip, as Trustee of the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees, et al.

There no greater threat the Constitution, the US legal system, and the US political system than the US Zionist movement.

[David Nieporent]

Whatever happens, my case goes back to federal district court.

No, cases that are dismissed with prejudice do not go back to district court when the appeals fail.

[David Nieporent]

Wait, I missed the fact that you're proposing to file a new lawsuit that is even batshit crazier than the previous one, not to mention being barred by res judicata.

[Jonathan Affleck]

Res judicata requires at minimum argument before a Court between opposing parties. The original complaint was dismissed before service of the defendants.

See Res judicata.

[David Nieporent]

No, res judicata does not require any such thing. It requires only that your claim was decided on the merits; it was.

The complaint was dismissed before service because the IFP statute under which you sought to (and did) proceed requires that the court pre-screen complaints.

[Jonathan Affleck]

You continue to lie by pretending to have read the casedocs. If you had, you would know that my complaint was dismissed without prejudice. Anyone, who needs a lawyer, should really think twice before hiring a lawyer that so casually lies.

[David Nieporent]

I have read them. Your complaint was dismissed for failure to state a claim. That is a dismissal on the merits, and is deemed to be with prejudice unless otherwise stated. Otherwise was not stated; hence, your claim has been dismissed, with prejudice.

[Jonathan Affleck]

Judge Stearns dismissed because he incorrectly asserted that I had failed to state a monetary claim — something very different. It was a discretionary dismissal and not a dismissal on the merits. Please, learn to read English.

Fines for denial of common carriage of digital literary property go back to 1848 because New York and Offing Electric Telegraph Association was denying some newspapers digital carriage of unpublished news reports.

[Jonathan Affleck]

In 1869 if someone had asserted that a common carrier were carrying something other than a person, merchandise, or other property, the person would have been assumed to be a lunatic. The voice telephone, which was an analog technology, was not invented until 1876.

[David Nieporent]

Judge Stearns dismissed because he incorrectly asserted that I had failed to state a monetary claim — something very different. It was a discretionary dismissal and not a dismissal on the merits. Please, learn to read English.

This is gibberish in every respect. Here's what the court said:

"this action is DISMISSED for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted."

I understand that you think he was wrong. But (a) he wasn't; and (b) it doesn’t matter. There's no "the judge was wrong" exception to res judicata; you can't collaterally attack a ruling in another case. Your opportunity to argue that the judge was wrong was your appeal to the First Circuit, which also ruled against you:

"The sua sponte dismissal of this action under 28 U.S.C. 1915(e)(2) is summarily affirmed, essentially for the reasons discussed by the district court in its Order of October 15, 2021."

Your last shot is the Supreme Court, which will turn down your cert petition in about 1½ minutes; 4 if they pause to use the bathroom first.

[Jonathan Affleck]

Here is relevant text from p. 3 (PDF p. 9) the Appellee's Brief of A Medium Corp.

On October 15, 2021, the court dismissed without prejudice Martillo’s complaint. App’x 28. Construing his complaint liberally, the court held that Martillo failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted and that, even if he had stated a claim, Medium would be immune under the CDA. First, Martillo failed to state a claim under the Civil Rights Act. That law applies to discrimination in only “a place of public accommodation,” which does not include Medium’s online services. App’x 29-31. Second, Martillo failed to state a claim for violation of the Massachusetts common carrier law because online service providers such as Medium are not “common carrier[s] of merchandise or other property” under the 1869 statute. App’x 32. Third and finally, even if Martillo had stated a claim under federal or Massachusetts law, Medium would be immune from liability for such claims under the CDA, which protects the editorial decisions of online service providers like Medium. App’x 32-33.

I have consulted for Boston Big Law for 40 years on Title 35 and Title 47 cases. Nutter's Sarah Kelly, who is an extremely competent attorney, led the team, which represented Medium. Sarah probably did not write the passage, but she definitely approved the passage.

Should we be surprised that Medium's Brief agrees with me and not with David Nieporent?

[Dr. Ed 2]

A different take on Galloping Gurdy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXTSnZgrfxM

[Jonathan Affleck]

Thanks for finding this video. I have an interest in the history of science, technology, and engineering. If you read my petition to SCOTUS, you will find that this interest dovetails with my study of the development of law in interaction with technology.

[My draft complaint to be filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts may clarify some issues not fully addressed by the petition.]

When I work on a Title 35 or a Title 47 case for a law firm, I am either a technology expert or a patent prosecutor. Technology is always front and center in filings that I compose.

The first modern suspension bridge was built in 1801. If I remember correctly a paper that I wrote when I was an undergraduate, the Gallopin ‘ Gertie type of collapse was first described 40 years before the Tacoma Narrows disaster and was fairly extensively discussed in French and German engineering literature. American civil engineers should have been aware of the potential problems with their bridge design. This collapse may have resulted from American deficiency in the study of foreign languages.

[Mr. Bumble]

[Currentsitguy]

Just wanted to express my dissatisfaction and disgust with the lack of response and particularly the lack of information in the literal fallout after the East Palestine train derailment. We are 14.5 miles downwind and we have heard nothing whatsoever about if and what simple precautions we should take.

My wife is a Penn State Master Gardener. She tried to utilize that resource to see if we need to take any special precautions with the soil in our raised bed gardens this year before planting. They have absolutely zero information.

I can only imagine people closer in are in a far worse situation.

[Longtobefree]

Masks and vaccination.
Works every time for every thing.

[Sarcastr0]

I think that's a legit fail you can blame on the Feds. They may not be able to help, but they should be engaging, informing, and recommending, if not directing.

Not knowing is awful and not necessary.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Same thing happened at Three Mile Island -- Jimmy Carter wasn't that great a President but he was a USN-trained nuke engineer and he went there, found out what was going on, and then had one of *his* people stay there and keep track of what was going on.

We aren't seeing that from Brandon. And a Governor can't call national experts the way a President can.

Reality is that the company is probably doing the right thing and that people are more or less safe -- but there is a need for a credible DISINTERESTED expert on scene to be saying that. And if ButtPlug was competent, he'd have already found one and gotten Brandon to ask him to go -- and you can't really say "no" to the President....

[Reallynotbob]

9/11 was on GWB's watch, and EPA didn't do well there either. The competing pressures for allowing people to resume their lives vs. genuine scientific uncertainty about safety. We all know the spill created unsafe conditions, but HOW unsafe is murky.

[Nige]

'And a Governor can’t call national experts the way a President can.'

He literally HAS to declare a state of emergency.

[Nige]

I heard someone who knows about ths sort of thing say that natural disasters tend to bring communities together, industrial disasters to drive them apart - largely beause there's usually a powerful private entity involved/responsible, delivering conflicting and/or inaccurate information, getting in the way of federal responses and unevenly distributing monies with legal attachments effectively silencing witnesses/victims to sabotage civil cases.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The interesting thing about this -- depending on the state law -- is that pregnant women can't waive future liability for injuries to not-yet-born children -- I believe the child can also sue at age 18.

You wanna try to prove that the various chemicals being released into the air, including combustion products, didn't cause Junior's learning disability that wasn't discovered until 2035? I saw mention of Phosgene -- low levels of that have long-term respiratory consequences and no one knows what it will do to a fetus....

[Nige]

Yes, these are not new problems, but they are problems the people responsible for them are well used to fighting.

[bernard11]

pregnant women can’t waive future liability for injuries to not-yet-born children

Seems perfectly reasonable.

[apedad]

Massachusetts eliminates cheating as an excuse to reduce murder charge

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) held on Feb. 13 that suddenly being told that an intimate partner has cheated will no longer reduce a murderer’s crime to manslaughter. The court ruled in Commonwealth v. Peter Ronchi that a man who killed his pregnant girlfriend after she told him she was carrying another man’s child was not entitled to a reduced charge — and that from now on, neither would other defendants who killed after learning about a partner’s cheating.

Suddenly learning that a spouse or intimate partner has been unfaithful has often been considered a kind of gold standard for the kind of provocation that would be adequate to create the kind of sudden heat of passion necessary for voluntary manslaughter. Indeed, the 1976 California case People v. Berry is taught widely in law schools as an example of verbal revelations of infidelity mitigating murder to manslaughter.

The SJC has now changed those rules, at least in Massachusetts.

https://lawandcrime.com/crime/massachusetts-eliminates-cheating-as-an-excuse-to-reduce-murder-charge

Tough call but probably correct.

Whatever happens, people still have to control their actions.

[Martinned]

Why do you think that's a tough call?

[Currentsitguy]

Found myself in that exact situation 15 years ago. Literally “in flagrante delicato”. It took every ounce of willpower to not pick up the rifle I had standing in the corner. Glad I didn’t to this day.

[Martinned]

Sounds like a good reason not to have rifles lying around everywhere...

[Currentsitguy]

Hardly. What kind of fool outsources their self defense? It's a pretty strong argument I passed the test. She wasn't worth it.

[Frank Drackman]

That'd make a good Country (and Western) song

Frank "Wife ran off with my best friend and I miss him"(not really, it's a joke, son)

[Illocust]

The right call. Having the exception opened the fire for allowing other types of provocation that aren't as reasonable.

[John F. Carr]

The court said that being told about infidelity would no longer legally excuse anger. It left open the question of whether seeing them in the act was still an excuse.

Although the rule was called "misogynistic" it applies equally to women. In the only recent case I know of where it was successfully used the woman got her murder charge reduced to "heat of passion" manslaughter. She saw her boyfriend talking to another woman and ran down the other woman with her car.

The SJC will sometimes use a case to make a pronouncement on an issue that was not really in dispute, just to flex their judicial muscles. For example, in a rape case where consent was clearly not an issue the court took the case just to emphasize that mistaken belief as to consent is not a defense.

In this week's case the defendant argued that it could not be murder, as a matter of law, if he had been told he was not the father. Unlike the SJC I think the jury should be allowed to consider the statement, but jurors could (and did) decide it is not a mitigating factor.

In another case where the defense didn't work a man emptied his magazine into his unfaithful wife, then went back inside to reload and did it again.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And a case where it *did* work was where a woman drove over her husband/boyfriend in a parking lot, and then dropped the SUV into reverse and did it a few more times, much to the horror of observers.

This was in Palmer, MA if you have access to Lexis (I don't anymore). The directions I was given to this apartment complex was that it was behind a notoriously dangerous bar, which explains the venue if you don't know Palmer (an all-White ghetto in Massachusetts' Appalachia).

[Dr. Ed 2]

This was wrongly decided.

As I understand it, First degree murder is premeditated — you planned to kill the person. Second degree murder is that you intend to kill the person while doing so, but HADN’T premeditated. And third is that you didn’t intend to but did, i.e. punched someone who broke his scull on a fireplace while falling.

I have no problem with second degree murder — but this isn’t the same as walking in there with a knife planing to kill her. Or what Charles Stewart did — see https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-husband-did-it-the-controversial-stuart-case

This isn’t in the same dimension.

And it’s what happens when you put the politics of sexism before justice. I personally think that an insanity defense ought to have at least reduced the Murder 1 charge.

[apedad]

The Mass. law for murder states:

Section 1. Murder committed with deliberately premeditated malice aforethought, or with extreme atrocity or cruelty, or in the commission or attempted commission of a crime punishable with death or imprisonment for life, is murder in the first degree.

So Murder 1 doesn't have to be "deliberately premeditated."

[John F. Carr]

There are three forms of first degree murder listed there and the jury will be instructed separately on each form ("prong") that potentially applies.

The first is your standard premeditated murder. Even a short period of thought is enough. The jury gets to decide.

The second says if the jury thinks you deserve a conviction for first degree murder the jury can convict you of first degree murder. A stabbing would support a finding of extreme atrocity and cruelty because the victim felt pain and there were multiple blows.

The third, felony murder, has recently been neutered by the Supreme Judicial Court. It applies to very few situations.

[John F. Carr]

In the recent SJC case the jury was allowed to consider whether the boyfriend was spurred to violence by his girlfriend's claim that her baby wasn't his. He was convicted anyway. If the SJC fairly summarized the evidence I would be likely to convict of murder too.

[BrotherMovesOn]

"This was wrongly decided.
As I understand it..."

As DMN would say, "there's your problem."

[Kazinski]

Loudon County School board votes to continue the cover-up that got to school district officials indicted, and of course helped Glen Youngkin defeat McAuliffe in the Governors race:

"An embattled Virginia school board voted against releasing a potentially damning internal report on two student sexual assault cases, just months after a grand jury indicted school officials over the incidents.

The Loudoun County School Board voted 6-3 to shield the report from the public, with board members Jeff Morse, Atoosa Reaser, Erika Ogedegbe, Ian Serotkin, Brenda Sheridan, and Harris Mahedavi opposing its release. Disgraced former county superintendent Scott Ziegler and former public information officer Wayde Byard were indicted in December over their handling of the sexual assaults perpetrated by a student who identified as "gender-fluid."
https://freebeacon.com/campus/virginias-embattled-loudoun-county-votes-against-release-of-sex-assault-report/

[Dr. Ed 2]

What got to me was that the victim of the first assault was only because the perp performed a form of sex that she didn't want -- that they had routinely met there for the form of sex she did.

Call me a prude, but I don't think that children should be having sex in restrooms, and definitely not when they are supposed to be in class and perhaps learning something.

No one's addressing that issue....

[Frank Drackman]

OK, "You're a Prude" (you asked) and I'm an old Fogey who went to HS in the 1970's,
but where do you want HS kids to fuck? in the classroom? Gym Floor? They aren't dishing out OCP's like Jujubes so the Girls menstrual cramps aren't so bad, and if you spend class time talking about Fucking instead of something useful (people been fucking for Centuries without any instruction) don't be surprised if they spend alot of time Fucking,

Frank "I'm up to hear with all this Sex talk!! not lately though, I'll tell you that"

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Speaking of menstrual cycles and wingnuts . . .

[TwelveInchPianist]

From FIRE, Texas Tech has been predictably using DEI statements and DEI portions of interviews to create ideological litmus tests for candidates for scientific positions.

Here are some of the criteria:

Weakness: a candidate "minimiz[ed] the difficulties of women in the US by comparing to worse situations elsewhere"

“land acknowledgement in talk” was considered a strength for some candidates.

Listed as a weakness: “Poor understanding of the difference between equity and equality, even on re-direct, which suggested rather superficial understanding of DEI more generally.”

Another weakness: “Mentioned that DEI is not an issue because he respects his students and treats them equally.

It seems likely that similar things are happening at other schools who evaluate candidates on DEI criteria.

[Illocust]

Yep, that's the point. Build discrimination into the system at every level, so it can't be rooted out.

[OtisAH]

Hey, that’s just like systemic racism!

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Being done again by the same people who perfected it last time.

Democrats.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Are conservatives genuinely dumb enough to think that the liberal-libertarian mainstream is interested in pointers from right-wingers -- who turn just about every campus they get their hands on into a censorship-shackled, nonsense-teaching, academic freedom-flouting, fourth-tier, bigoted dumbass factory -- on how to operate a school?

[Ed Grinberg]

DEI is a mask for progressive power.

[shawn_dude]

Anti-DEI is a mask for white power.

[Kazinski]

So Asians, who are the primary victims of DEI are White Supremacists?

[Nige]

Do the Asians know this?

[Kazinski]

Yeah I think they do, that's why they are suing Harvard and UNC over anti-Asian quotas.

[Nige]

All of them?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Does anyone know if there's any evidence that respecting all your students and treating them equally, is inferior to other pedagogical approaches to teaching diverse science classes? What are some better approaches?

[not guilty]

What do you mean by "diverse science classes"? Should a biology teacher instruct on young Earth creationism if some students believe such hokum?

[SRG]

FWIW Kennedy v Bremerton created a strong likelihood of creationism/ID heading back into science classes in some school districts.

So the hypothetical is sadly not remote.

[David Nieporent]

No, it didn't. Kennedy v. Bremerton said that a school official praying on his own time non-coercively didn't violate the establishment clause. (To be sure, those weren't the true facts of the case on the ground, but those were the facts that SCOTUS analyzed.) That has nothing to do with putting something into the school curriculum.

[SRG]

Is this possible - someone disagrees with David N and is right? For once, yes! Kennedy was the final nail in the coffin of the Lemon test, and it is Lemon that has stood as a bulwark against the teaching of Creationism or its rebranded Intelligent Design in biology classrooms. See for example Kitzmiller v Dover or Edwards v Aguillard.

[David Nieporent]

Lemon was dead long before Kennedy.

[SRG]

I did say "final nail in the coffin" - it was pretty much killed off in American Legion - but as Kennedy specifically involved a school that was, if you like, a reinforcer. It's notable how often Lemon is referred to in Kennedy, as well.

[not guilty]

"Kennedy was the final nail in the coffin of the Lemon test, and it is Lemon that has stood as a bulwark against the teaching of Creationism or its rebranded Intelligent Design in biology classrooms."

Uh, Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968), predated Lemon by three years.

[SRG]

While I am well aware of Epperson - I have had an interest in US evolution cases well before I even moved to the US - IMO the subsequent history of attempts to circumvent it required something stronger and more systematic than the prohibition from Epperson, and Lemon provided it.

I think that when Lemon went, it took down Epperson with it,

[David Nieporent]

I think that when Lemon went, it took down Epperson with it,

That's not how SCOTUS works. Epperson — which by definition didn't depend on Lemon — is good law until the Supreme Court says otherwise, regardless of whether you think that undermining Lemon vitiates the arguments of Epperson.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"What do you mean by “diverse science classes”?"

I mean diverse in the DEI sense.

"Should a biology teacher instruct on young Earth creationism if some students believe such hokum?"

I don't think so, although I guess many people believe that such questions should be left to the unreviewable judgement of the biology teacher.

So do you know of any evidence that a belief that all students should be respected and treated equally is a weakness when it comes to teaching science, as appears to be the opinion of at least some of the DEI establishment?

[Sarcastr0]

Seems like you're using 'equally' to argue good pedagogy is one size fits all, and does not meet students where they are.

That's not just the teaching of the 'DEI establishment,' (whatever that means), it's kind of a general belief of teachers and most people.

[bevis the lumberjack]

It is absolutely not the belief of most people. Polls consistently show that affirmative action is broadly and deeply unpopular, across all demographic groups.

[Sarcastr0]

No one here is talking about affirmative action, bevis.

[bevis the lumberjack]

DEI is affirmative action with the added benefit of abusive, threatening treatment of groups disfavored by the DEI types. Whatever.

Equal treatment of different groups is popular, as it should be. Unequal treatment of different groups is not. DEI is the latter.

[Sarcastr0]

To reiterate: no one here is talking about affirmative action.

[bevis the lumberjack]

My point is bigger than affirmative action. When DEI gets into different treatment of different groups, it becomes very unpopular. And that’s a daily activity for DEI departments. Otherwise they wouldn’t have jobs.

Do a poll on Privilege Bingo and see how popular it is.

[Sarcastr0]

No one is even talking about groups, though. Just students.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Equal treatment of different groups is popular, as it should be. Unequal treatment of different groups is not.

bevis, that summarizes the ideology long used (and still used) to attack or ignore special needs requirements for kids with disabilities.

Those requirements exist now because they got imposed judicially. It had long proved impossible by political means to get past overwhelming majoritarian demands that no group of students should benefit from unequally favorable treatment.

As a result, kids who suffered disabilities which could be overcome only by heroic efforts got excluded from public education entirely. Others, with lesser but still-severe learning impediments, got educated to levels far below their actual potential. Those policies turned out to be personal tragedies for the students. They also imposed life-long costs on society, to support uneducated adults.

Legal arguments to reverse that turned the majoritarian demand for equality on its head. They started with the notion that if special accommodations for a disabled kid can deliver educational improvement (or proficiency!), then it is equality itself which requires measures to achieve that.

That was fought bitterly, and is still extensively resisted, both covertly and overtly. By now, however, resistance must cope with extensive evidence that most among disabled students can, with properly structured special needs instruction, perform at a level equal to or better than others. That can make an unequal approach to educating the disabled look like both wise policy, and a fiscal bargain.

A pro-equality argument which can somewhat counter still-stubborn resistance is that a means to equalize educational results could simply seek the lowest common denominator among educational methods. It could lavish educational attention on everyone according to the greater needs of the most disabled students. All could learn alike, albeit at a slower pace, with enormous and inefficient extra expense. That could be reckoned the unavoidable cost of an indiscriminate demand for equality.

Alternatively, and more judiciously, society could be taught to promote equality using needs-adjusted means, and thus save a lot of time, money, and other resources. That is the policy choice which was forced judicially. A few decades of experience have taught that it works, both individually for students, and as a wise public investment.

Perhaps that example could help you to adjust your thinking about DEI issues. Why not analogize DEI methods to special needs methods. Ask yourself what extra expense would be required if you decided to rule out DEI, and instead generalize to everyone the methods necessary to make whole in relation to others the groups which presently suffer inequality of outcomes. That would make DEI look like a bargain, and maybe you could relax.

Better still, thinking that way—instead of in terms of resistance—could enable a more thoughtful study of which DEI-related methods are good prospects. People could study which DEI policies would work to achieve beneficial practical results, and which might better be dropped as counter-productive ideology. If DEI policy could be made to work as well for the nation as special education has done, that would be good news indeed.

[David Nieporent]

Those requirements exist now because they got imposed judicially. It had long proved impossible by political means to get past overwhelming majoritarian demands that no group of students should benefit from unequally favorable treatment.

No; they got imposed by Congress.

[Stephen Lathrop]

By Congress ultimately, trying to reconcile otherwise ruinous legal consequences for school districts which arbitrarily deprived disabled children of education. The aim of Congress, and later of an execrable Supreme Court decision, was to systematize at the lowest acceptable level the special attention which disabled kids and their families could legally claim. There was no ground roots majoritarian support for helping disabled kids until local lawsuit victories on behalf of the disabled had reframed the problem as a means to save the majority money, instead of to spend it.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Seems like you’re using ‘equally’ to argue good pedagogy is one size fits all, and does not meet students where they are."

Why? To be clear, I'm using it in the sense that the candidate in the above comment was using it, which doesn't indicate one size fits all. Equality under the law, for example, doesn't mean that we treat the innocent and guilty alike, or even that everybody who commits the same crime gets the same punishment.

[Sarcastr0]

You're the OP, chief.

Does anyone know if there’s any evidence that respecting all your students and treating them equally, is inferior to other pedagogical approaches to teaching diverse science classes?

Quit talking around what your issue is, and state your issue. Do you have soem nutpicking anecdote from TheCollegeFix you're trying to trap people into disagreeing with? Why are you being so vague and indirect?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Quit talking around what your issue is, and state your issue."

I linked to the issue above. The issue is the Texas Tech DEI committee suggesting that it's a weakness that a candidate for a microbiology or immunology position "Mentioned that DEI is not an issue because he respects
his students and treats them equally."

I'm wondering if there's any evidence to support this claim, and so far no one has been able to provide any.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Twelveinch —you will not get to a need for evidence until you first get past your logical contradiction. Students do not arrive in classrooms in a state of equality. To ignore that, in favor of insistence that they be treated equally, benefits only an ideological commitment to meritocracy. Whatever you may think of meritocracy, it can never become a legally-required standard for sorting outcomes among Americans.

[bernard11]

“Should a biology teacher instruct on young Earth creationism if some students believe such hokum?”

I don’t think so, although I guess many people believe that such questions should be left to the unreviewable judgement of the biology teacher.

Wait a minute!

I thought you guys were all about letting the governor/legislature design the curriculum, regardless of what the want taught. So if DeSantis mandates creationism then it will be taught, according to your rules.

The biology teacher's judgment, at the K-12 level, is hardly unreviewable. There are principals, school boards, etc.

And at the university level it largely is unreviewable, except that the department head may get involved, students may decline to enroll in the teacher's class, etc.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"So if DeSantis mandates creationism then it will be taught, according to your rules."

Huh? Those aren't my rules, those are the rules of a democratic society. And if I lived in Florida I'd be much more likely to vote against DeSantis if he mandated teaching creationism.

"The biology teacher’s judgment, at the K-12 level, is hardly unreviewable. There are principals, school boards, etc."

But not governors? Are you saying that if the teacher, principal, and school board favored intervention, you would be opposed to the governor intervening?

[Ben_]

"Creationism" gets brought up 50 times by haters for every time it gets brought up for discussion by religious people.

[bernard11]

I oppose the governor setting statewide standards.

I think it would be OK for him to intervene in a particularly egregious case if the teacher, board, etc. were doing things like teaching known fraudulent ideas.

[bernard11]

Huh? Those aren’t my rules, those are the rules of a democratic society.

No. They are not the rules of a democratic society unless you take a ridiculously reductionist view of democracy.

I realize that, as a right-winger, you refuse to accept the existence or value of any expertise you disagree with, but that's your problem.

[Davedave]

You don't know the difference between 'equally' and 'equitably'. You lose, thanks for playing, bye.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Is there a difference?

[Davedave]

Yes. You really are dumber than cement.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Lol no.

Equality and equity are both words with a broad range of meanings that often overlap. The idea that there's a single difference between them is just ignorant bullshit.

But ignorant bullshit seems about your speed.

[Davedave]

You can rant at clouds as much as you like, but there is a difference, it's well-known, and particularly in this context it's absolutely clear. Another total fail from the mouth-breathing traitor wing.

[Kazinski]

This is what DEI leads to:

A Black Professor Trapped in Anti-Racist Hell

It's long, but a good read. Reminiscent of Lord of the Flies.

[Sarcastr0]

If you need to go nutpicking, your target may not be as broadly bad as you wish it was.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Does anyone know if there’s any evidence that respecting all your students and treating them equally,

Are you referring to conservative schools' respectful treatment of gay students, or students who are not gullible enough to fall for childish superstition?

Carry on, clueless clingers.

[OtisAH]

This is far too long a read for most of the regulars here. And it’s not the sort of government abuse that really interests the Conspirators. But here’s another hair-raising “Tales from The Villages”…

https://theintercept.com/2023/02/05/ron-desantis-florida-villages-oren-miller/

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Not one of the Conspirators, as I observe them, has enough character or conscience to find that tale interesting. At least, not as interesting as this blog's incessant stream of cherry-picked, misleading, polemical attempts to nip at the heels and ankles of the modern American mainstream for being insufficiently hospitable to clingers.

[Bored Lawyer]

I tried out ChatGPT. First I put my name in, responded that it had no idea who I am. Then I put my name in followed by "IP Attorney." It gave a response which was mostly false, gave the wrong firm ( one I have never worked for) and more than half of the information about my activities were things I have never done.
A Google search of my name, without "IP Attorney," yields my firm's website that has a full biography of me, as well as articles I have written and published decisions of cases I have appeared in. Much more accurate.
So ChatGPT still has a way to go.

[SRG]

FWIW I mentioned ChatGPT to a lawyer friend last night. She'd never come across it before but she's a Cowboys supporter, so I asked ChatGPT why people hated the Cowboys and got a very decent response. It's good for shallow analyses, IMO.

[Brett Bellmore]

It does have a known problem of just fabricating responsive stuff if it can't find it.

[Ben_]

ChatGPT doesn't access the internet. So you apparently misunderstood it on a very basic level. (It's OK. No one expects lawyers to be tech wizards.)

Try asking it legal questions.

[Bored Lawyer]

That would be fine if it did not know who I am. But to give a mostly false report is highly flawed.

[Ben_]

Yeah, it's really bad at stuff it's not designed for.

A glass bottle makes a bad hammer. It's not the bottle's fault though.

[shawn_dude]

If you were to ask ChatGPT to write a simple Drupal function, it would write the whole thing out for you in a few seconds and, with a few judicious and simple edits, it would work as intended. It's great at transforming data sets as well; it makes some of the daily tedium disappear.

Not a great search engine, though.

[Aunt Teefah]

"In Bad Country, the people are so poor they have to skip meals just to make ends meet."

From the Wall Street Journal: "To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip Breakfast"
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/cpi-report-today-january-2023-inflation/card/to-save-money-maybe-you-should-skip-breakfast-fSd6mz0miaAPhUFb2jgy

[Ed Grinberg]

Four more years of Biden, you'll have to skip lunch & dinner too.

[Aunt Teefah]

As opposed to putting Trump back in - then there won't be any poverty or economic precarity, just like it was from 2017 to 2021! Phew, what a relief t is to find out that these problems can be fixed by just getting a different president! For a second there, I was concerned that this might be a symptom of systemic problems wrought by late capitalism and a withering empire. Glad to hear it can be fixed by just voting for Republicans!

[bevis the lumberjack]

Honestly, Trump would have pushed the unnecessary stimulus as well - he tried to before the election. But he wouldn’t had driven energy prices up. So probably still some inflation but maybe not as high.

[Aunt Teefah]

If you think the problem here is "unnecessary stimulus", you've seriously lost the plot.

[bevis the lumberjack]

It’s a decent chunk of the problem here, along with not enough oil and gas availability and with the never ending supply chain issue.

But do tell - what does the plot say the problem?

[David Nieporent]

You know that saying the phrase "late capitalism" non-ironically is a big red flag saying, "Please don't take me seriously," right?

[bevis the lumberjack]

Narrator: “He/she does not in fact know that”.

But it’s fabulous pseudo intellectual fluff.

[bevis the lumberjack]

And David, I just saw your response to my “misunderstanding” post from this morning, so I answered up there. Then I saw that someone answered your question a little bit later.

Harris County, Texas.

[Kazinski]

I just eat one meal a day most days.

It saves a lot of time an energy as well as money, and it fits my metabolism.

My wife has a different metabolism so she eats 4-5 times a day.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski, do you reason that dinner calories cost less than breakfast calories and lunch calories? Or do you think something about your metabolism just wastes whatever you might eat for breakfast or lunch?

[ragebot]

Maybe a little OT but the idea of both three meals a day and eight hours of sleep every night are not universally accepted norms historically. In fact as someone who adheres to a Keto diet skipping not just breakfast but lunch as well and only eating one meal a day is well accepted. Same goes for sleeping, in the past it was common for peeps to sleep in two four hour (or other divides) and be awake in between. As a sailor the standard watch on a ship is four hours on and eight hours off often with a watch lasting from 12:00 AM to 4:00 AM. Since I often sail short handed, or even solo, the idea of a good eight hours a night sleep is only a dream.

Point is that eating three meals a day is more cultural than biological .

[shawn_dude]

PG&E keeps telling me the solution to my energy bills is to do my dishes after 9pm and shut off the heat while I'm home from work.

Boy, that's helpful.

And here I was thinking the way to save money on my energy bills was to reverse PG&E's regulatory capture of the California Public Utilities Commission.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Yes, because that would certainly make generating plant feedstock more plentiful.

[Mr. Hook]

I see the usual people are attacking Brett Bellmore for his supposed subjectivity, selective analysis, and ignorance in specialized areas. May I suggest something to these critics? Have you ever considered that Mr. Bellmore might be a remarkably superior intellect to the rest of you? That he doesn't need formal training or experience in practice to be an expert in law (all aspects and jurisdictions), history (all areas and methodologies), immunology, virology, political theory, postmodern architecture, Dylanology, mesmerism, and druidic mysticism (to name only a few)? He just knows more than all of you. That's why he doesn't acknowledge any error—he's right and you're wrong. That's just objective truth.

Going forward, check your ego, and instead of arguing against a superior mind, seek to understand why he's correct, regardless of what your training and experience, no matter how long or deep, informs you. At the very least, be polite and say, "You're absolutely right, Mr. Bellmore." He suffers a great deal being amidst so many dumb and sinister people, so ease his burden a little by recognizing his genius.

[Brett Bellmore]

"immunology, virology"

Dude, human biology WAS one of my college majors. I was going for a career in designing medical instrumentation. (Had to drop out in my senior year to nurse Mom back to health after a bad auto accident.) So I come by that legitimately.

Feel free to diss me on law or politics, though.

[Ed Grinberg]

I was an English major. I suppose, by Mr. Hook's standard, unless I want to express my views on Chaucer, I need to keep my mouth shut.

[Frank Drackman]

English Major? what were you thinking?? Cheech and Chong had some lyrics about a similar Sitch-You-Asian in their Hit "Mexican Americans'
"Mexican Americans love Educations, so they go to Night School, and take Spanish and get a C"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLqqZmNFa_A

Frank "Fluent in American"

[apedad]

(From above)

"We don’t typically reach for efficiencies of scale in law enforcement by blowing off enforcement for a while, and then swooping in and going after a lot of criminals. The reason they needed this task force is that they hadn’t been doing their job all along."

I'm a retired federal agent who worked these type of things.

You're wrong.

Considered yourself diss'd.

(Note: I have agreed with BB on issues sometimes. Not often but sometimes.)

[grb]

Brett Bellmore : “Feel free to diss me on law or politics, though”

Thanks! I’m also giving you short shrift on postmodern architecture, which is something from my neck of the woods. Note: It’s very, very bad – an period of design somewhat analogous to the Disco Era of popular music.

And I probably won’t yield ground on Dylanology either, since there I hold the status of exalted amateur. That’s about as good as it gets; pro-Dylanologists tend towards the overwraught.

However I’m willing to cede primacy on mesmerism and druidic mysticism. Politics? Not a chance. You’re frigg’n clueless there….

[Aunt Teefah]

I have long recognized the expertise of Mr. Bellmore and other VC conservatives on matters of numerology, phrenology, and Economics 101 (the science of knowing that when workers have rights, it makes the line go down). But I admit I had never considered his immense knowledge these other varied fields. Truly a modern renaissance man! I'll try to be more respectful in the future - I am learning and growing.

[bernard11]

The trouble with most Economics 101 "experts" is that they never took Economics 102.

[ReaderY]

As I wrote last week I think the lawsuit challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone as an abortifacient is a loser. There’s no standing, and the principle argument – an APA-based argument that the approval was illegal at the time it occurred – strikes me as somewhere between very weak and out-and-out bogus.

But there are other situations in which a better argument could be made in a case with clear standing. The most obvious example is the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Wisconsin claiming that the FDA’s approval of mifepristone preempts Wisconsin abortion law. If there’s a party whose standing to challenge the validity of the mifepristone approval is absolutely rock-solid, I think Wisconsin in this case would have to be that party.

And if the lawyers have the presence of mind to challenge the legality of mifepristone under current law notwithstanding the prior approval rather than attempting to argue the approval itself violated the APA at the time it was made, they would have a better case. There are several arguments that could be made.

1. Federal statutes, such as the Comstock Act, prohibiting transporting of abortifacients in interstate commerce are now valid, and the FD&C Act’s scope now has to be interpreted in harmony with them. The FDA’s administrative actions cannot contradict an explicit act of Congress.

2. Drugs for assisted suicide provide a very relevant precedent for how the FD&C Act should be applied to abortifacients after Dobbs. Like abortion, the Supreme Court has said there is no constitutional right to it, but some states and many physicians have declared death-inducing drugs therapies for a medical condition. But these acts have not changed the FDA’s stance; it has not regarded these drugs as matters within its jurisdiction. They are considered outside the scope of the FD&C Act. This precedent, together with the fact that abortion was regarded as outside the scope of the FD&C Act prior to Roe, tend to support the idea that absent a judicially-declared constitutional right that sets aside this aspect of the FD&C Act, the consistent historical interpretation of the Act is that drugs tending to induce human death are not approvable by the FDA, regardless of whether physicians consider their effect therapeutic or not.

Roe set aside this interpretation as unconstitutional; this aspect of the FD&C Act was invalid between Roe and Dobbs, so the FDA’s approval was correct at the time under the law of the time. But Dobbs changes the calculus. Dobbs means that Roe’s set-aside of this consistent historical interpretation no longer applies, and it is again in effect.

[Frank Drackman]

Anyone else think this "Sam Brinton" is (Sorry, not woke, I mean "are") a Repubiclown double agent to make the Biden Administration look ridiculous??
Yes, the initial crime of stealing a woman's suitcase was bad enough (At an Airport! no chance of any Camera's catching the crime) But his/her mugshot is so bad even Glen Campbell in Heaven is saying "Goddamn, get your Shee-ot together"
and this guy/gal (Brinton, not Glenn Campbell) was only Deputy Assistant Secretar(ies) of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy from June to December 2022

Frank

[Brett Bellmore]

No, I think that if you consider a nominee being mentally disturbed a plus, you shouldn't be shocked if they do crazy stuff.

[Drbusybody]

Read this eye opening article about the lawyer who got Dan White acquitted. Douglas Schmidt is still alive and apparently still practicing at age 76.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1979/10/04/courting-success/2be750af-8335-4337-92b3-2883abbb8f78/

[Frank Drackman]

pretty sure it was the Jury

[Drbusybody]

Yes, totally. In the article, Schmidt makes the point that he didn’t seek to have the trial moved out of San Francisco because the type of person is plentiful in San Francisco who would buy into the argument that White’s crime was not premeditated but was instead triggered by his depression and having eaten too much junk food. Whereas the type of person who would buy this argument would be harder to find if the trial had been moved anywhere else in california.

[ragebot]

"Whereas the type of person who would buy this argument would be harder to find if the trial had been moved anywhere else in california."

My experience has been there are twinkies all over California.

[Moderation4ever]

So, a partial report from the Georgia Special Grand Jury on the Trump's attempted interference in the election just released. The grand jury thinks some witnesses lied. I am guessing the media discussion the next few days will center on who the liars are.

Also the GJ found no voter fraud, but that is not a big surprise as we have learned that the Trump campaign's own investigators did not find any fraud in the 2020 election.

[Frank Drackman]

You've obviously never been to Fulton County (Airport doesn't count, it's in Clayton County, an even bigger S-Hole if that's possible)

[Moderation4ever]

Been to Atlanta twice. Very nice city.

[Frank Drackman]

Well there are certain sections of Atlanta, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade. (or even just hang out in)

[John F. Carr]

And those two items are the only news out of the public part of the report. Two sentences, in essence.

I figured there was no massive election fraud. I was not expecting perjury to be so obvious that the grand jury itself would recommend charges.

[Bob from Ohio]

Walls are really closing in now.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

We saw the voter fraud happen on video.

Literally Ruby Freeman was caught on video running ballots through the machines repeatedly.

[Moderation4ever]

Really, then how come the Trump campaign investigators could not find it? Guess the campaign should have hired you instead.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

https://www dot bit chute dot com/video/zAlTdCqVMwEs/

It's right there on film. As to why their team didn't find it? My guess is the Federals in the FBI and/or IC threatened to murder their families.

The Federals are evil vile monsters.

[Nige]

Holy shit.

[grb]

I find it reassuring. Judging by most of his comments, BCD is deeply stupid, completely uninformed, given to incoherent fantasies and filled with irrational rage.

However, here we see BCD is only partially stupid and uninformed. Here we see that part of it is an act. How much, you ask? Who knows! Quite a bit, obviously. After all, one must be pretty damn stupid to enjoy playacting the buffoon (as BravoCharlieDelta does).

[SRG]

Ruby Freeman was caught on video running ballots through the machines repeatedly.

If the machine jams, the ballots don't get counted but they do get run through again. No double counting.

Ruby Freeman was also accused of taking out ballots from a suitcase - because people don't understand that removing ballots from a storage case is a regular part of the process. "I don't understand the process so it must be fraud" is the general position here.

[Davedave]

No, other way around. They decided it must be fraud, so everything has to be twisted to fit.

[shawn_dude]

That and "I don't understand unique identifiers and database keys so I assume running a ballot through a tabulation machine means it's being counted more than once."

[Life of Brian]

I don’t understand unique identifiers and database keys

I'll take a cite on Georgia putting unique identifiers on ballots, please. This article discusses legislation GA Republicans proposed a couple of years ago to add them, which appears to have died in committee.

[Sarcastr0]

Not really responsive to this discussion,

Though if you come to defend BCD, that is the best option you have.

[Life of Brian]

Sorry, were you addressing that to me, or to the person who first chose to introduce* the idea of unique identifiers?

* Incorrectly, it appears, and in support of a dig on someone else's supposed lack of understanding -- can't make this stuff up.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes - "I don’t understand unique identifiers and database keys so I assume running a ballot through a tabulation machine means it’s being counted more than once" is about the current state of law.

You posting about past politics, and implying an agenda to it that is not in evidence, is just chaff.

[Life of Brian]

Ackshully I was addressing the current state of law -- appears there is currently no such unique identifier allowed, per the defeat of legislation trying to add same. If you know differently, belly up to the bar and share. But we both know that ain't gonna happen.

[David Nieporent]

Literally BCD is actually mentally ill; he hallucinates things and thinks he saw them. He's also incredibly stupid, since he can't figure out that if one runs ballots through machines repeatedly,¹ then one would end up with more votes cast than ballots, but that didn't happen. And he's also apparently unaware that they audited the count and found it accurate.
​
​
¹That is, counting them more than once — not running it through a second time because it wasn't read the first time.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

What about the third time? And in the video, they are just run through back to back with no waits in between to evaluate results.

It's right there on video.

[Krayt]

It’s bad enough my crap toilet plugs all the time. I can’t afford jet powered monstrosities all those who mandate I live with it can*.

But this is too far. All fast food brown bags are recycled material, and for some reason they are fragile and tear easily. Actually it tears so easily it feels closer to fracturing like glass or as of it was a hair thin sheet of granite.

* Not true, but I rent and don’t want to deal with it.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The problem with recycled paper is that each time you pulp the paper, the wood fibers get shorter. Hence office paper is often made into toilet paper because you're not running toilet paper through office machines (where it could jam & tear).

The Chinese, of all people, pioneered using recycled cardboard -- and had to make it twice as thick to have the same strength. (Go to a Walmart sometime around closing and look at the cartons stuff from China came in.)

But if you're not willing to increase the thickness of what is a much less tear-resistant paper, then....

[bernard11]

The Chinese, of all people, pioneered using recycled cardboard

Indeed. Who could imagine that Chinese people were capable of any sort of innovation or creativity?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Does anyone else think that one of the reason our society and our country is in crumbles is precisely because we’re not longer a White Christian Nation and run by White Christians, but instead are descending into some 3rd world multicultural shithole run by Affirmative Action hires, purple haired lunatics, and homos?

Like this post if you agree!

[Estragon]

“Our country in crumbles”

I have to admit, I have never heard this particular turn of phrase before

[BravoCharlieDelta]

It's kinda like a blueberry crumble, only eviler and Jewy-er.

[Estragon]

Nice

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Don't forget to like and subscribe, it really helps with the algorithm.

[Brett Bellmore]

My chickens are in crumbles; They didn't have the pellets, and the chickens scatter the crumbles all over the place, it's why I don't like buying them. Only thing they had in stock when I ran out, though.

[Nige]

Are they ‘eviler and Jewy-er?’

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

I solved that with a better feeder (the “Little Giant”), which offered the side bonus of holding up to 60 lbs of feed, requiring refilling less often. My chickens produce almost zero waste when feeding from it.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B07BH6CJW1/reasonmagazinea-20/

As an aside, I do…and always have…fed them Purina-produced 16% protein layer crumbles purchased from Tractor Supply, and they still produce eggs at normal rates. I’m calling bullshit on the currently popular conspiracy theory about some shadowy cabal of…whomever…trying to sabotage our home-produced egg supply via TS-sold feed.

[Brett Bellmore]

Nice feeder! Yeah, I doubt that rumor, too.

[apedad]

Nope!

But since you're on the losing side of history, I understand why it may seem this way to you.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

My side winning is intact natural families raising self sufficient moral children who contribute to their communities.

Your side winning is a statist dystopian shithole run by rich elites and corporations where the Poors stay poor, and the homosexuals and transes rape and groom children.

I'd argue it's not really winning, but more like entropy. Where good amd decent things naturally degrade to bad and evil things over time.

I mean what's more evil than your gender experiments your conducting on children now?

[apedad]

". . . your gender experiments YOU'RE conducting. . . ."

Loser.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I hope it's your kids or the kids of someone close who gets transed.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Don't let these liberal naysayers get you down, BravoCharlieDelta.

Prof. Volokh and the rest of the Conspirators (perhaps excepting Prof. Somin) love the way you think!

[SRG]

You're a statist, of course - but you want the state to oppress "those people" so it doesn't really count, from your perspective.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Not really. Like our Founders, I recognize that humans are fallible and tend towards corruption while also recognizing the need for a government.

We need the minimally effective government, just like with medicine. You people want some sort of maximal state because half of you are tyrants and the other have are some sort of genetic serf who craves being told what to do.

[SRG]

Projection, much?

[Nige]

'run by rich elites and corporations'

Are you even paying attention to what your side actually does? It voted for a guy who shits in gold toilets.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

This June marching in all those Pride Parades:

Conservatives and Big Corporations?

Or

Democrats and Big Corporations?

[Nige]

When you turn against sponsorship and advertising, you've turned against capitalism. Good for you.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Who said I'm against those things? Can your brain not conceptualize the notion that one can be opposed to one particular form of advertisement but not be opposed to capitalism writ large?

[Sarcastr0]

Quit hiding your pink ass, you socialist confused MAGA!

[Nige]

If it isn't that, then it's just ugly prejudice.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

So I'm prejudiced because I found evidence that your dumbass 1970s trope about Republicans and Big Business clearly doesn't carry water in 2023?

lmao you fucking people only got one trick.

[Nige]

Where is this evidence that you have found? Did you trace the funding for Trump, DeSantis, McConnell et al and discover that it came exclusively from tiny Mom and Pop stores and family farms?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

-- John Adams

[shawn_dude]

So much for the First Amendment.

[Sarcastr0]

Dude said that surrounded by slavers.

[Ben_]

… so fuck morality. And honesty. And ethics.

Signed,

Democrats

[OtisAH]

Yes, lots of assholes like you think stupid shit like that.

[Ben_]

I’d say the reason is that narcissistic self-styled leaders and many of the people who follow them have a distaste for values that promote and sustain civilization. So those values are considered unfashionable.

That’s why they celebrate abortions and scoff at "breeders". That’s why deviance makes you one of the special people. That’s why criminals get sympathy and victims of criminals are forbidden from defending themselves and their property. That’s why government need no longer even try to serve the public. That’s why environmentalists get free reign to harm the public based on doomsday narratives.

A specific religion or culture isn’t necessary to improve things. Any pro-civilization, pro-building, pro-advancement, pro-regular-people culture would be a dramatic improvement. Unlike the US, a lot of countries have leaders that actually like their people and want their people to do better.

[David Nieporent]

I’d say the reason is that narcissistic self-styled leaders and many of the people who follow them have a distaste for values that promote and sustain civilization.

I'd say you've nailed Trump/MAGA perfectly, yes.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

I’d say you’ve nailed Trump/MAGA perfectly, yes.

Show us on the doll where Trump and a cop touched you.

[Ben_]

They get to justify their evil behavior because ... Trump. It used to be because ... Bush. Next time it will be because ... DeSantis.

Or whomever. The point is that they can be as evil as they want and call themselves heroes as long as they can tell a bogeyman story about someone. There will always be someone.

[Nige]

Wow, they sound evil... like some sort of bogeyman... that you could use to justify all sorts of behaviour...

[ragebot]

Maybe I am too biased in an old school economic approach but as someone who is a fanboy of both Tocqueville and Marx's viewpoint that history is determined by development and changes of socio-economic conditions I view the decline as more of a result of a poor handling of the economy.

I do note that after his trip to Africa Tocqueville took a position somewhat similar to yours as this wiki blurb shows.

"In 1841 and 1846, he traveled to the French colony of Algeria. His first travel inspired his Travail sur l'Algérie, in which he criticized the French model of colonisation which emphasized assimilation to Western culture, advocating that the French government instead adopt a form of indirect rule, which avoided mixing different populations together. He went as far as openly advocating racial segregation as a form of consociationalism between European colonists and Arabs through the implementation of two different legislative systems for each ethnic group (a half century before implementation of the 1881 Indigenous code based on religion)."

In any case his dissing of the American idea of equality should be noted.

"Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom"

[bernard11]

I view the decline as more of a result of a poor handling of the economy.

What decline?

[Frank Drackman]

it's "Judeo" Christian, unless you're saying the Zombie Surpreme Being doesn't count.

[bernard11]

Doesn't seem unhinged to me.

[Sarcastr0]

White nation, eh? What does that make you?

[The Turtle Dove]

Interesting, a Virginia bill that would have prohibited search warrants seeking menstrual app history has apparently been TKO'd by a procedural move at the direction of the Governor. Essentially, the claim is that the legislature has never done search warrant carve-outs, so the legislature doesn't have the power to do it. (Caveat: based on one wire service story.) Virginia has some history of elegant legislative moves -- e.g., the ERA was killed there by an abstention of a Delegate on the basis of being married to a woman. (Said delegate later ran for state office.)

This seems specious. literally every single law passed by a legislature conceivably impacts the scope of a search warrant for something or other. The reasonable expectation of privacy is shaped, to some degree, by the written laws. Essentially, you're saying that the police can't search a certain thing, like the CIA's file cabinets, the British crown jewels, or the uranium rods in a nuclear energy plant. It's no different than passing a law universally prohibiting the unauthorized disclosure of certain information or the unauthorized possession of a certain item, the difference being that the proscription refers not to the whole world, but to the police, an agency of the state. And if it can be universally prohibited, reasoning from the stronger, it can be prohibited in state investigations. Also, a whole array of laws cabin police behavior: speeding laws, CI exculpation laws, discriminatory conduct laws, tort claim standards, immunity enablement, etc.

Perhaps the mistake was explicitly calling it a search-warrant carve-out.

My $0.02. Will let go of the third rail now.

Mr. D.

[John F. Carr]

Quoting the Washington Post: But a Republican-led House subcommittee voted along party lines Monday to “table” the bill — essentially killing it — after Maggie Cleary, Youngkin’s deputy secretary of public safety and homeland security, detailed the administration’s concerns that the measure could restrict subpoena powers.

[Kazinski]

I'm not sure I see a problem one way or another that menstrual app history is only available to Google, Apple, Facebook, TikTok(and the CCP), the NSA, FBI, CIA, but isn't available to Virginia law enforcement.

[The Turtle Dove]

And among the entities capable of buying the marketing data for their own nefarious purposes: the Virginia State Police.

Mr. D.

[Frank Drackman]

Must have missed it,
so when is Senescent J going to the funerals of the White Kids murdered by the Black guy at Michigan State??

Frank

[hoppy025]

Diaper Joe is too busy muttering about balloons and circus animals.

[hoppy025]

Here's my thought. Leftists are evil liars who have no shame or consciences.

[Ben_]

But every day is an opportunity for them to turn a corner and stop trying to destroy things. They can give up on hatred and go back the being liberals. Even today.

[hoppy025]

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3861852-pennsylvania-governor-wont-sign-execution-warrants-calls-for-death-penalty-to-be-abolished/

Today's not the day. This Jew doesn't believe the law applies to him, not if it's an issue of "morality."

[Dr. Ed 2]

Breaking in Florida: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/desantis-teases-removal-ap-high-school-classes

This could get interesting...

[ragebot]

I am so old I can remember students actually flunking out of high school (and college as well). I can also remember when a 4.0 grade average was the best possible, but then some high school courses started giving a 5.0 score for some classes so it was possible to get a higher average than 4.0.

I have no doubt some classes in both high school and college are harder than others (in my case partial differential equations was probably the hardest for me while 20th century cinema was the easiest, yet both counted the same for my grade point average).

In the case of AP classes in Florida high schools there was first an issue with an AP class in African American Studies course material. What seems silly to me is that anyone taking an African American Studies class in high school to clep out of the same course in college is likely to take more African American Studies classes in college (or possibly wanting to avoid having to take a required African American Studies class in college).

As for DeSantis' proposal if you read the article it was basically saying AP classes OKed by the College Boards should be replaced by classes from two other organizations ( such as International Baccalaureate and Cambridge Assessment) which DeSantis seems to view as less politically oriented than the College Board. As an added extra attraction it would eliminate the revenue the College Board gets from administering it's AP classes in Florida. Always follow the money to identify the rent seekers.

[Ben_]

People who are completely unfamiliar with the content of those 3 courses are dutifully upset at that choice.

It’s the worst travesty in history since the last one, just like all those things that Trump did only a million times worse.

[OtisAH]

And cigarettes used to be 10 cents a pack!

[shawn_dude]

LOL! That’s a sure-fired way to make sure a lot more of Florida high-schoolers with 4.0 GPA are forced to attend Florida universities *and* pay more for college in the process.

— AP classes have an optional exam that can provide transferable college credit.
— AP classes are often used to score university applicants and determine things like scholarships.

All this will do is disadvantage his own students. (But he’s on a streak there, so let’s see what he does next.)

[ragebot]

shawn_dude you need to read links you are commenting about. It was clear this was an effort to bash rent seekers like College Board who gets paid to administer AP classes and funnel that money to other organizations that administer AP classes (in what DeSantis thinks is a less political manner).

But I would expect a libturd like you to not be up to speed on what is really happening.

[Sarcastr0]

Well if Ed says it could get interesting, this is going to die on the vine.

[Estragon]

Common sense prevailing for once— there is no reason this shouldn’t be available OTC:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/15/health/narcan-nalaxone-drug-stores.html

[Frank Drackman]

During Anesthesia it was a badge of shame if you had to give a patient Narcan, much like flying, it's much easier to put someone to sleep than wake them up, and as in flying, any anesthetic the patient wakes up from is a good one.

Frank "we have a nice selection of halogenated methyl ethers"

[Dr. Ed 2]

Wow -- my post surgical recovery from an operation is starting to make sense now, suddenly wide awake and personnel concerned for no apparent reason...

[Gasman]

Physicians wear that 'badge of shame' for no good reason.

Opiate titration begins with an unknown, the patient response. While the clumsy physician will blame far too many patients for being drug users, the simple reality is that even opiate naive patients have a range of sensitivities for pain and for the effect of opiates(pharmacodynamics) and a range of volume of distribution and clearance (pharmacokinetics). Some patients then just take twice on a per kilogram basis as other patients; biology can be a bitch.
It is not much different than the analytic chemist checking the concentration of an unknown solution using two calibrated burettes to forward titrate and back titrate to zero in on a precise result.
The big problem of controlled opiate administration within the operative setting is not the less than 1% of patients who have careful back titration with naloxone with the aim of minimally reducing opiate effect by a small bit, rather it is that far too many patients are left to suffer first once awake, then reluctantly given stingy doses of opiate which should have been dosed much earlier.
In fact in many facilities where I have worked, my quality improvement work has been to identify 1) what fraction of all perioperative opiate is given in recovery versus the OR, and 2) how much extra time patients spend in recovery as a result of the initial suffering, and time it takes to achieve reasonable pain care.
The result is that often:
a) more opiate is given by recovery nurses than the OR anesthesiologists, which is crazy because the anesthesiologist is ostensibly better situated and trained to both administer and manage the effects and side effects of opiates, and
b) that patients who have been inadequately dosed by their anesthesiologist spend more time in recovery, and vomit more, than those who are dosed more appropriately in the OR.
The 'badge-of-honor' docs are doing the patient no favor, and costing their system extra money in terms of longer recovery stays.
Frank wryly state that any anesthetic one wakes up from is a good one. That may be a fine aim for the first year resident, but I expect much more consideration for finely rendered care as the resident leaves the dear in the headlights phase of training. The art of medicine is making smooth landings look effortless.

[Brett Bellmore]

"The big problem of controlled opiate administration within the operative setting is not the less than 1% of patients who have careful back titration with naloxone with the aim of minimally reducing opiate effect by a small bit, rather it is that far too many patients are left to suffer first once awake, then reluctantly given stingy doses of opiate which should have been dosed much earlier."

It's funny, because my experience has been the opposite: I've routinely been prescribed opiates after surgery, and not one time did I actually need them. Not that they actually helped, either: OTC pain relievers were actually more effective, all the opiates did was give me insomnia and hallucinations.

Thanks to that I'm now listed as having an allergy to them, so they're no longer prescribed.

[Brett Bellmore]

A co-worker of mine just had minor surgery for a detached tendon. Was given an opioid prescription AND a narcan script. They told him policy is to always prescribe both now.

[Gasman]

Cha-ching.
The art of regulatory capture. Mylan pharmacueticals, once the pariah of the drug industry for charging $500 for decades old off patent epinephrine, now captures $75 every time a patient gets sent home with an opiate script.
Printing money.

[Brett Bellmore]

Oh, he didn't get the narcan, it was too expensive, and it was just finger surgery, the fact that they prescribed an opiate was absurd.

[Frank Drackman]

Anyone heard what's the Scoop on Senator Stuttering John F-F-F-etterman?? haven't heard much from him lately.

[Mr. Bumble]

Funny you should ask. I didn't see your comment before I commented below.

[Nige]

Here we go. Now everyone gets to find out what right wing assholes have to say about people with depression.

[Mr. Bumble]

Feel free to give the left wing asshole thoughts on people with depression.
Maybe Fetterman's Dr. will weigh in assuring us that he is perfectly capable of serving as a Senator.

[Nige]

He's as capable as any other human being, all of whom are subject to physical and mental health issues.

[Mr. Bumble]

Capable of what? Not being a Senator for sure.

[Nige]

Voters disagree.

[Sarcastr0]

You opinion sucks. Depression is controllable. Having it doesn’t foreclose just about any job these days,

This isn’t 1972. You are either way beyond the times or grabbing what you got to do that partisan asshole thing you do.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's not the depression that renders him incapable of being a Senator. It's the reason for the depression.

And you know damned well that's what he meant, too.

[Nige]

The reason for the depression will conveniently be whatever arbitrary reason you've decided means he can't be a Senator.

[Sarcastr0]

Are you blaming the depression on his stroke?!

[Mr. Bumble]

"This was the headline from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

John Fetterman has checked into Walter Reed hospital for clinical depression

Fetterman’s office said he has struggled with that concern for years but that it only became severe in recent weeks."

Apparently this is not something new.

[Brett Bellmore]

Mr. Bumble, I can assure you from personal experience that somebody can have a pre-existing tendency towards depression, and a particular episode of it can still be caused by some particular incident.

[Brett Bellmore]

That's just irrational. The guy isn't deaf, he suffers from aphasia. In a job that's all about words! It's a dirty shame what happened to him, but it DID happen, and he's got about as much business being a Senator as a paraplegic would have being a longshoreman.

In a sane world he would have gone on disability and concentrated on recovering as much as possible. Not hidden his disability to trick the voters into electing him to a job he can't do.

[Nige]

If the job of being a politician was only about words you wouldn't have voted for Trump.

[Sarcastr0]

You have no idea how Congress works so you are making it up to agree with your usual petty partisan narratives.

[Brett Bellmore]

You are literally defending the proposition that brain damage isn't a problem for Senators. What, do they not need to be able to communicate? He'll handle the voice votes just fine despite not understanding speech?

There is no proposition so stupid you won't defend it if politics demands it. Men are women. Brain damaged people are qualified to do intellectual work.

I actually feel for him, I don't blame him for being depressed: He's lost a large part of what elevates us above the animals, that's a huge blow. I'd be depressed in his position.

But the fact remains that his brain damage renders him incapable of doing a wide range of things, and one of them is being a legislator.

[Nige]

‘There is no proposition so stupid you won’t defend it if politics demands it. Men are women. Brain damaged people are qualified to do intellectual work.’

There is no limit to the sorts of people you will categorise as useless and disposable based on your own prejudices and ignorance. Between throwing the disabled onto the mercy of covid and passing laws against a minority you’re jackbooting your way to fascism by claiming this is reasonable and right.

‘and one of them is being a legislator.’

Again, you voted for Trump, despite his clear moral and intellectual limitations.

[Brett Bellmore]

Somebody doesn't become useless and disposable just because they're medically incapable of doing a specific job, Nige. That you'd think so says terrible things about you.

[Nige]

You're not qualified to determine whether he can do the job or not; you're actively prejudiced against him in terms of your stupid beliefs about disabilities and mental health and your political partisanship.

[Sarcastr0]

Hey Brett, don’t fuck around with the scope like this: “You are literally defending the proposition that brain damage isn’t a problem for Senators.” I’m not talking about all brain damage, and you know it.

I’ve worked in Congress, and there are not many snap decisions, nor ones made purely verbally. Especially these days. You’re pretending Congress is something it hasn’t been for over 80 years.

He’s lost a large part of what elevates us above the animals, that’s a huge blow. Now you’re just being an asshole. Even taking your implied 'he can no longer access speech at all' bullshit as true, plenty of nonverbal people are fully human. Lots of collateral damage in your desire to argue on the Internet this guy should lose his job.

[Mr. Bumble]

The asshole buddies Nige and SarcastrO are up early and true to form.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, you're not talking about the brain damage, because you want to avoid talking about it, but WE'RE talking about the brain damage.

You know, the REASON he's depressed? The REASON he's incapable of doing the job he tricked the voters into picking him for?

If he were a painter, or a gardener, or in any of a long list of careers, aphasia would be a major inconvenience, but it wouldn't be incapacitating.

But he's not. He's in a job that revolves around words, the specific area where he's incapacitated. It's roughly the same as though I had a stroke, and lost my ability to comprehend numbers. I'd likely still be able to do a lot of things, but not engineering, that's for sure.

I think what you're thinking is, "No biggy, he can just delegate all the real work to his staff, and be a figurehead." And I don't doubt that's moderately common in the Senate, and going on in the White House right now, but it doesn't transform "Pretending to do the job" into "doing the job".

[Nige]

There is nothing about the job that cannot accomodate his aphasia.

[Brett Bellmore]

"There is nothing about the job that cannot accommodate his aphasia."

If somebody else is doing the actual job, yeah.

[Sarcastr0]

If somebody else is doing the actual job, yeah.

*This is you not knowing what the job is and are making it up.*

You waive your hands 'this is a job about speech.' And further 'anyone with any kind of delay will become a figurehead.' These are not true. This is not how the job works. Nothing about aphasia means you are unable to make decisions. And Senatorial decisions are not snap decisions. You're just repeatedly not listening to the people telling you that's not how the job works.

And maybe don't speculate about the reasons for his depression to get your political jollies. That's just awful.

[Nige]

‘If somebody else is doing the actual job, yeah.’

You love your utterly baseless accusations, don’t you?

[David Nieporent]

One wonders if Brett thinks a deaf person can't be a senator.

[Brett Bellmore]

“Even taking your implied ‘he can no longer access speech at all’ bullshit as true,”

Would you PLEASE stop recasting into absolutist terms statements I deliberately qualify, and then attacking me for what I carefully avoided saying? It’s highly annoying.

[Sarcastr0]

You say he can't execute his duties as a Senator. That's not qualified.

That's you leveraging a mental health issue into a partisan one.

Which is very shitty of you.

[Brett Bellmore]

You invented an "at all" that I deliberately avoided, because it was obviously not true. You are continually taking nuanced statements by people you disagree with, removing all the nuance, and then attacking them for what they went out of their way to NOT say.

Seriously, it's one of your more annoying rhetorical tics. You should try to stop doing it.

[Stephen Lathrop]

I’d be depressed in his position.

You are well beneath his position, but apparently not alert enough to notice, let alone get depressed about it.

[bernard11]

You are literally defending the proposition that brain damage isn’t a problem for Senators.

Says the guy who no doubt supported Herschel Walker's campaign.

[Mr. Bumble]

,,,and in other news, Pennsylvania’s junior Senator checked himself into Walter Reed for treatment for a bout of clinical depression. Guess he couldn’t handle the Eagle’s Superbowl loss.
How long before he is replaced? Who will it be? His wife would love to take his place.

[Bob from Ohio]

"His wife would love to take his place."

Fetterman looks like a monster, the wife appears to be one. The stroke was far more severe than was let on, he should have withdrawn, but she wanted to be a senator's wife.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I try to look at the bright side concerning Bob from Ohio.

If there weren't shitty, antisocial, backwater graduates of lesser law schools like Bob from Ohio, I probably wouldn't have been paid so much to be a good lawyer at a big firm in a successful community.

So thank you, Bob from Ohio, for making my hourly rate so rewarding!

[Frank Drackman]

You just can't quit the Klinger's Jerry!! And I know they don't spend much time watching the News at
https://www.cor.pa.gov/Facilities/StatePrisons/Pages/Greene.aspx
but try to switch over to CNN or your local station (no way PMS-NBC will cover it) quite a few peoples in E. Palestine of a umm darker tint, Nome Sayin'?
But hey man, Sleepy's got Pete Booty-Judge on the job, (Stuttering John Fetterman was "indisposed")

Frank "Dioxin, Smy-oxin"

[Frank Drackman]

Hey, thank him for his Service, not like there's deserving Veterans who can't get treatment for their Depression.

[Martinned]

If there was just one Eagle in the Superbowl it's no wonder he lost.

[Mr. Bumble]

Since it's open thread time, I thought I'd pass this along to Brett and any other engineers in the peanut gallery:

The best toaster you've probably never heard of. No clock, no wifi, no electronics; just great engineering and perfect toast. And it's from 1948!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y

[Brett Bellmore]

Knew about that; Toasters are about the clearest example of the decline in functionality of appliances. The piece of junk in my kitchen has an overhung arm for lifting the bread that's so flimsy it bends under the weight of denser breads.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Kari Lake knows how to compliment her lawyers:

In December, Lake said she had found it difficult to find legal representatives.
"We had attorneys who did walk away because the left is threatening them with their ability to make a living and practice law,” she said. “And some of our attorneys said, ‘Look, I got mouths to feed, I can’t do this case, I don’t want to be sanctioned.’” She continued: “I got to a point where I said, ‘I’ll take anybody. We’ll take 'Better Call Saul' to come in here.’ "

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The Democrats at fema rejected Ohios request for help.

Evil vile monsters

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If the hayseeds at the Ohio-Pennsylvania line are snubbed by the Biden administration (acting on behalf of the taxpayers in successful communities, who subsidize the can't-keep-up backwaters), that would be understandable and just.

But I do not expect America's better citizens to refrain from helping the bigoted, superstitious, economically inadequate Republicans from those desolate rural stretches.

[OtisAH]

You’re a stupid loser shithead.

To your post, fema can only distribute funds under certain conditions. One is that the Ohio governor must declare a disaster. The Ohio governor refuses to do that for the time being.

Now, it’s not as difficult as it used to be to believe a MAGA would extend Ohioans misery in order to score points and throw shade at federal agencies, and that’s probably not happening. Still, it would be nice for DeWine to answer why he’s so resistant to taking the necessary steps to receive the emergency aid Ohio residents need. It’d be even nicer if he’d just do what the law requires to do to get the help Ohio needs.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

So you think DeWine asked FEMA for assistance knowing he didn't take the necessary steps in advance?

It's his office reporting that FEMA rejected his request.

Of course you're dumb ignorant ass didn't know that because some CIA funded NGO didn't tell you to know that.

[Nige]

'So you think DeWine asked FEMA for assistance knowing he didn’t take the necessary steps in advance?'

Probably.

[ragebot]

I know as my niece say that "this is so last week" but the Biden administration (or at least a senior official who is remaining anonymous) has said we can't keep pissing away money in Ukraine forever.

What do you guys think about this?

https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-war-aid-not-forever-senior-biden-administration-official-2023-2

[bernard11]

Let's note that this comment seems to have been based on a fear the GOP-controlled House is going to resist Ukraine aid in the future.

The senior official told The Post the Biden administration has a "very strong view" that continually approving large aid packages for Ukraine will be difficult with a Republican-led House.

[OtisAH]

MAGA taking over the House is the only ray of hope Putin has to prevail at this stage. And though it might be too little too late to salvage his misadventure, if Putin ultimately takes the entire country he won’t be able to hold it.

[Brett Bellmore]

We entered into an agreement with Ukraine, promising them territorial security in return for giving up their nukes. (So did Russia.)

I don't see how living up to this agreement isn't a proper expenditure of taxpayer dollars. Indeed, if we want people in the future to take US promises seriously, we really need to live up to it.

It was once said by a famous journalist that, "We have two parties here, and only two. One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party… I’m very proud to be a member of the stupid party… Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that’s both evil and stupid. That’s called bipartisanship.’"

The GOP really needs to stop living down to that nickname.

[grb]

Brett Bellmore : “I don’t see how living up to this agreement isn’t a proper expenditure of taxpayer dollars. Indeed, if we want people in the future to take US promises seriously, we really need to live up to it.”

Exactly. Opinion pieces suggesting we abandon Ukraine use puzzling logic. They first say the U.S. has no national interest in the first new war of conquest on the European continent in over eighty years. Then they say we should focus on deterring China instead.

Huh? If we shrug our shoulders at Putin’s war in Europe and dump Ukraine as an inconvenience, I’m pretty sure the Chinese take notice. Even setting aside our massive stake in a peaceful Europe, there is no better/cheaper deterrence against Chinese adventurism than helping Ukrainians defend their country.

There’s another strange thread that runs thru these anti-Ukraine articles. There’re all written by men claiming to be hard-hearted realists who see the situation clearly. Yet they all are unbelievably gullible, obsessing on the maximalist rhetoric from both sides.

1. Putin is not going to use nuclear weapons because of an “existential” threat against Russia. The use of tactical nukes itself is a far greater danger to the country. Russia today gets tacit support from India and China. A nuclear exchange drops that to zero and destroys Putin’s rule. He may be a deluded thuggish bungler, but he’s not that stupid.

2. My guess is Zelensky knows the Crimea is out of reach. He needs to say otherwise for internal consumption, but Ukrainian reconquest of the Crimean Peninsula would probably fracture European support and force the U.S. to advocate restraint. On the other hand, the threat of reconquest is probably the best bargaining chip to end the war.

Somehow the pro-Putin “realists” don’t see that, which is strange.

[David Nieporent]

I absolutely think it's in U.S. interests to support Ukraine, but the Budapest Memorandum was not any sort of promise by the U.S. to defend Ukraine. You can read the text here.

[ragebot]

The point my post was trying to make is that public opinion in the US seems to be changing in support for Ukraine. The question of “is it right to support Ukraine” is different than “is public opinion in the US is getting shaky in support for Ukraine”. Maybe this is only a run it up the flag pole and see how it plays in Peoria but I do seem to notice more stuff along the lines of supporting Ukraine costs a lot of money, is depleting our military stockpiles, is risking Putin using nukes, and other downsides to the support. Not saying there are not pros as well to supporting Ukraine but it does seem like the cost/benefit calculation is changing.

[ragebot]

On another note I am still so ignorant of tax law I pay someone to do my taxes for me and it seems I am coming out ahead of the game.

On the other hand reliable reports are that Hunter Biden's lawyer fronted him a cool two million to pay Hunter's back taxes despite the lawyer not currently being paid. In fact the lawyer has set up some flavor of go fund me accounts to help with Hunter's bills.

So are there any tax law experts who could give me a rough idea of how much money one would have to make to have a two million tax bill. As an extra credit question does anyone know of a lawyer I could hire (but not pay) who would front me two million to help with my debts?

[bernard11]

Unless you are paying the accountant very little, or your taxes are fairly complicated, TurboTax or H&R Block software would likely do a good job for less.

[bernard11]

Incidentally, the lawyer in question appears to be a close friend of Hunter Biden, and extremely wealthy (South Park, The Book of Mormon). It seems he is not actually representing Biden, but acted out of friendship and the transaction has been described as a loan. Plans for repayment are unknown.

So I don't think he's available for you to hire.

[bernard11]

So apparently TN GOP Congressman Andy Ogles is George Santos light.

[ReaderY]

Why haven’t defense lawyers all over the country used this argument in federal cases? Under the Justice Department’s position, it would appear intent can never be proved from circumstantial evidence. Absent a statement from the defendent specifically evidencing intent, no crime that involves intent has ever been committed. Every single criminal defendant whose conviction was based on circumstantial evidence of intent ought to be demanding a judgment of acquital. It doesn’t matter, for example, that the ordinary result of walking up to someone, pointing a gun at their head, and firing it is to kill the person. That simply isn’t enough to infer that a person intended to kill. Unless you made a statement saying you specifically intended to kill, there just isn’t any evidence of intent and there is no intentional homicide. No crime, no harm, no foul. Not guilty.

https://www.justice.gov/olc/opinion/file/1560596/download

[OtisAH]

It’s clear you see no difference between walking up and holding a firearm to someone’s head and ordering through the mail a medication that has multiple applications with only one being to prevent implantation of an egg. So explaining the difference probably isn’t worth anyone’s time. So what response are you looking for?

[ReaderY]

Nonsense. Mifepristone is approved by the FDA for one and only one use, termination of pregnancy. Further, the manufacturer of mifepristone is suing Wisconsin claiming its abortion laws interfere with its ability to send mifepristone through the mails, and in doing so is openly acknowledging that it intends mifepristone to be used for abortion.

Guns have many possible uses, and people don’t always die from gunshots to the head. Indeed the rate of non-death may be higher than the rate of use of mifepristone for non-abortion purposes. If one intends the probable outcome of ones act, the probablity a gunshot to the head will cause death may be less than the probability mifepristone sent through the mails will cause abortion.

One can’t really know what use was intended, can one?

[OtisAH]

Dammit, I think I was thinking of the pill.

Withdrawn.

[ReaderY]

A gun, like mails, is a delivery system. Bullets, the thing delivered, have many legal uses. Under the Justice Department’s theory, the sender is presumed not to have any knowledge of what happens on the receiving end, and it really isn’t any of the sender’s business to know. The sender is in fact advised not to find out.

This willful blindness maked it OK theory can easily be adapted to discharging a gun. As long as the sender shuts his eyes or otherwise willfully blinds himself, there is no evidence of knowledge of what is happenijg on the receiving side, no evidence of intent for any particular use on the receiving end, and all is good. After all the gun might have been accidentally discharged, or the bullet subjectively intended for another purpose.

The Justice Department’s theory of what is needed to prove intent would be laughed out of court if a defense lawyer tried to apply it to any other statute.

[David Nieporent]

So a filing by Dominion on Thursday, quoting from text messages and Fox personalities' own deposition testimony, proves that they all knew, at the time they were peddling the b.s., that the 2020 election fraud stuff was lies, that there was zero evidence of fraud, and that Trump's lawyers were batshit crazy.

My guess is that the online MAGA cult — including several regular posters here¹ — will not conclude from this that the 2020 election was legitimate; they will conclude that the people who work for Fox are heretics, blasphemers, RINOs, swamp creatures, etc.

¹Brett will say, thinking he's scoring some point, "No, no, I never said that there was election fraud. I said that election procedures violated the law."

[David Nieporent]

Just got to the part where Tucker Carlson secretly tried to get one of his Fox News colleagues fired because she fact-checked one of Trump's election fraud tweets.

(Cancel culture is okay if in service of the Orange God.)

[bernard11]

It seems they kept lying out of fear of losing viewers if they didn't.

Waiting for another explanation of how Fox is just everyday honest journalism.

I have to wonder what their lawyers are telling them about this lawsuit.

[Kenneth Almquist]

Yes, it appears that Fox News viewers want to be lied to, and will stop watching if Fox News lets too much truth slip in.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, this is a pretty unhinged rant.

I'm not entirely sure that they're wrong in ruling against local 2nd amendment sanctuary laws, in as much as local governments are just creatures of the state. But, this concurrence suggests that there's some animus present.

The rejection of the fairly well grounded notion that public officials have an independent obligation to refrain from unconstitutional acts, quite apart from being ordered to do so by the courts, is notable, too.

[bernard11]

Seems pretty hinged to me.

[Brett Bellmore]

See, that underscores just how crazy he sounds. 😉

"There is no dispute that courts, not sheriffs, decide whether a law violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or Article I, section 8, of the Oregon Constitution;"

There's no dispute that, if the courts say a law violates the Constitution, a sheriff can't decide, "Nah, it's OK."

There is absolutely dispute that, if the courts say some law doesn't violate the Constitution, a sheriff can't say "Like hell it doesn't." and refuse to enforce it. They're not obligated to do something they think criminal just because a court says it's alright. Each branch of government has an independent obligation to refrain from constitutional violations.

Second, this judge seems to have forgotten the whole idea of "commandeering"; State sheriffs are in no way, shape or form obligated to enforce federal laws, regardless of whether they're constitutional. They are perfectly free as a legal matter, barring some state law, to decide that they're simply not going to enforce federal drug laws, federal immigration laws, or federal gun laws.

Now, I will grant, indeed DID grant, that the sheriffs are on quite a bit thinner ice in regards to state law.

Third, where he really goes off the rails is his assumption that the 2nd amendment sanctuary movement is fundamentally racist and anti-Semitic. "The premise of such writings is the antisemitic and racist conspiracy theory that Jews are at the heart of America's problems."

But, it isn't terribly shocking: He's basing his opinions of the 1619 project!

[Ben_]

Judges can say what they want. If a sheriff doesn't want to gather evidence against someone for a gun charge, it'll be quite difficult for judges or anyone else to enforce their demands that the sheriff succeed in finding such evidence.

[Kazinski]

You seem to need attention too.

[Mr. Bumble]

Sure, had to switch gears after Biden was found to have classified documents. See Andrew McCarthy linked article:
https://nypost.com/2023/02/13/since-everyone-had-classified-docs-prosecutors-are-going-after-trump-for-obstruction/

[Kazinski]

Calling a woman a liar with absolutely no basis, other than you don't like what she is saying seems to indicate a personality flaw.

That seems to be David's point and yours. Besides the easily figured point about Megyn Kelly.

[Martinned]

Well yes, but the question is whether the law should recognise something as a *legitimate* defence of provocation, over and above the other defences that are open to the defendant (like temporary insanity) and factors that are not defences but that might affect sentencing.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, everyone who doesn't go along with you believing this convenient and uncorroborated story you came in hot with, *they* are the one with the personality flaw.

Say, what did you think about Ford's credibility in the Kavanaugh hearings?

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, it's hard to 'obstruct' anything if they don't go after you in the first place. As Trump was the very first President they bothered going after like this, they were able to spin his negotiating with them instead of rolling over and playing dead as "obstruction".

It might occur to you that the way they keep turning up more and more classified documents Biden had squirreled away could be painted in the same light, if the artists at the DOJ actually wanted to. Obviously he wasn't frank about what he had...

[David Nieporent]

Yeah, it’s hard to ‘obstruct’ anything if they don’t go after you in the first place. As Trump was the very first President they bothered going after like this, they were able to spin his negotiating with them instead of rolling over and playing dead as “obstruction”.

Once again, Brett makes stuff up because he doesn't understand the facts or the law. Trump was not the president, and they did not "go after" him "in the first place." They asked him to return stuff that he had, as is routinely done. And he refused. And then refused again, and again, and again. And then subpoenaed him, and he still refused, and lied about it. All he had to do was give the stuff back (or at least the classified stuff) when they asked him.

It might occur to you that the way they keep turning up more and more classified documents Biden had squirreled away could be painted in the same light, if the artists at the DOJ actually wanted to. Obviously he wasn’t frank about what he had…

It might occur to you that… no. He gave back things when he found them. Then he looked in other places, found them, and also returned them.

[SRG]

1.
"We think you have classified docs".
"I don't"
"Yes you do"
"I don't and here's a letter from my lawyer saying I don't".
"We don't believe you. Can you please return the docs immediately?"
"Let's talk about it".

2.
"I found lots of classified docs I shouldn't have had. Sorry about that, Here's some and I'm getting my lawyers to check if I may have more to hand over".

3.
"Hi, I'm Brett Bellmore, and I cannot tell the difference between cases 1 and 2"

[Nige]

‘Yeah, it’s hard to ‘obstruct’ anything if they don’t go after you in the first place’

Biden seems to finding it remarkaby easy not to obstruct. Same with Pence. I still marvel at people's willingness to give up any reputation for honesty they might have had. FOR TRUMP.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, I'm saying that if the DOJ really wanted to mess with Biden, the way they wanted to mess with Trump, the material is there to do it. Obviously they don't want to so mess with him.

[OtisAH]

No, Brett understands the story. He chooses to ignore the facts. That’s all that’s happening. He prefers his storyline and there’s not a single thing that can put him off it. Never let anyone accuse Brett of good faith. Especially when he’s arguing that everyone but him argues in bad faith.

Stay tuned-in all day, all night, and all weekend for more exciting adventures on “That’s Our Brett!”

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

No, Brett understands the story. He chooses to ignore the facts.

Mr. Bellmore has indicated that he is autistic and addled by treatment-related chemicals. That doesn't improve his delusional, intolerant, disaffected ignorance . . . but it might be a mitigating factor, and interfere with a diagnosis that he "understands the story."

[TwelveInchPianist]

I'm not sure what you mean. If TT decided that the Bible and Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility" were "Great Books" and downgraded a Physics professor candidate on the grounds that they were unfamiliar with Psalm 37 or DiAngelo's definition of "fragility", then sure I'd have similar complaints. Not you?

I mean, do you really see a legitimate reason for a public research university to downgrade a cell biologist for not having a land acknowledgment in his presentation?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Are you suggesting one could walk around with nuclear secrets so long as you didn't intend to do criminally?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I'm not sure whataboutism is a winning argument. Do you think it is?

[Krayt]

Financial success in cities attracts corruption. Corruption grows up around it like moss, preying on it by getting in the way.

Decades later, the parasitic, bloated corruption declares itself the cause of the financial success.

See California and NY, where covid showed the financial success didn’t need to be in the city proper itself, and California specifically, where corruption is panicked and trying to steal money from free people who are fed up and fleeing it.

Hmmm. I wonder if the theory financial success doesn’t need the bloated parasitic kleptocratic corruption that grew around it will pan out.

Here’s popcorn bowls for all! (___)

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Do people ever get criminally charged for killing someone on accident?

[Mr. Hook]

To most people, yes, an undergraduate degree is just dipping one's toe in a subject area. But the fact that Mr. Bellmore can go up against anyone, especially people with formal training and experience, and never acknowledge that there may be gaps in his understanding or reasoning, demonstrates that he is a unique meta-expert. He's not going to humour you by pretending that your perspective has worth. He's objectively correct on everything he speaks about and it speaks poorly of people not to acknowledge that.

[Moderation4ever]

Degrees, college or otherwise don't make people experts. Studying a topic does and the paperwork (degrees) are less important. Most people, my self included are jacks of many trades, the true expert is rare.

[Frank Drackman]

OK, it was only Poultry Science, but I can tell you just about everything there is to know about Chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus)

Frank

[David Nieporent]

Anyone who thinks a bachelors degree makes them an expert in most anything is pretty wrong.

I think you meant ¾ of a bachelors-degree.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Wow. Don't put that in a diversity statement.

But no, treating people differently based on different experiences isn't treating them unequally.

[Frank Drackman]

Ahh, the Bart Simpson defense,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTbgsoHDc24

[BravoCharlieDelta]

What is it for classified materials handling?

[Brett Bellmore]

Generally speaking, if you have a security clearance, you've signed a paper acknowledging that you have an affirmative obligation to take care in your handling of classified documents. Carelessness is NOT a defense, it is an offense.

[Estragon]

“Carelessness” is absolutely a defense to the “knowing” element of 18 usc 1924… ??

[not guilty]

"What is [mens rea] for classified materials handling?"

Read the freaking statutes.

18 U.S.C. § 1924 requires knowing removal of documents or materials, combined with intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location.

The subsection of 18 U.S.C. § 793 most relevant to Trump's conduct requires willful retention of the subject materials, combined with failure to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it.

The most relevant language of 18 U.S.C. § 1519 requires knowing concealment combined with intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States.

18 U.S.C. § 2071(b) requires willful and unlawful concealment of the subject materials.

[not guilty]

"Do people ever get criminally charged for killing someone on accident?"

Yes, where an applicable homicide statute criminalizes such conduct, e.g., involuntary manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide or reckless homicide. That is not germane to this discussion.

BCD, if you don't know how to parse a statute, there is no shame in admitting that.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Both would involve “ideological litmus tests,” right?

I can remember a colleague struggling to come up with a “great book” for his STEM class "

Sounds stupid, but how did your colleague's requirement involve an ideological litmus test in the same sense as, say, including a land acknowledgment in a science presentation, or sharing the DEI committee's understanding of the difference between equity and equality?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Didn't Darwin write a "great book"?

And "Silent Spring" is considered by many to be a classic.

[Sarcastr0]

Define your fucking terms. Give some examples.

Quit playing games.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Everybody has different experiences.

How do you incorporate the belief that different groups have different experiences into teaching in a way that doesn't fall under the umbrella of treating students with respect, and equally? It's can't all be about gynecology, and you already botched that example.

Do you think that the concern of the DEI committee above was that the teacher wouldn't know understand that female students might have more experience with gynecologists?

[TwelveInchPianist]

They're not my terms, they're English words that you should be able to understand through your experience using the language, and failing that, by consulting a dictionary.

And I didn't choose the terms, they were chosen by the Texas Tech DEI committee in the context I linked to above to describe why candidates shouldn't be hired.

You quit playing games.

[Sarcastr0]

Different *people* have different experiences.
There, fixed it for you.

DEI guidance often goes into some examples of this, but I've never seen it claim to go into all differences between people.

Knowing certain cultures don't like eye contact, and not to take that as disengagement or disrespect, is good teaching, actually.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, you did use English. No, you did not use any kind of precision in your English to properly relate whatever is in your head.

You've used about 3 different definitions of equality: DEI, 'equality and respect' and an analogy to equality under the law. These are not the same thing.

People can't have a discussion if you won't share what you're really thinking.
Quote the language of Texas Tech if you want to have a discussion about that. Don't just contextlessly put vague language out there.

Maybe the response will be that the TT DEI folks are using overly vague language!

[TwelveInchPianist]

I don't. Can you explain how the Great Books spat justifies downgrading science professor candidates for not having land acknowledgements in their talks, if that's what you're claiming?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Knowing certain cultures don’t like eye contact, and not to take that as disengagement or disrespect, is good teaching, actually."

OK. What does that have to do with it being a weakness to say that you treat people equally?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Different *people* have different experiences.
There, fixed it for you."

What difference do you see between that and my framing?

[TwelveInchPianist]

See my links above.

[John F. Carr]

"Defense" is the wrong word here unless you clarify that you mean a defense only to murder. Heat of passion can reduce murder to manslaughter, life in prison to at most 20 years. You are still, if the jury follows the instructions, guilty of some degree of homicide.

Judges here have no discretion in sentencing an adult on a single count of murder. First degree murder is life without parole, second degree murder is life with parole eligibility after 15 years. There is no such thing as a mitigating factor in sentencing for murder.

For manslaughter sentences are all over the place. The advisory guidelines suggest a sentence in the 8-12 year range. If the crime was really murder but the defendant was allowed to plead to manslaughter, a 15-20 year sentence is likely. Traffic accident involving a cop or a pretty white girl, something that wouldn't be charged as manslaughter with an ordinary victim, probably only 5 years. A widely publicized case from the 1990s had a sentence of 279 days (time served) for a nanny who killed a baby in her care by shaking him violently.

[TwelveInchPianist]

You think professors should grade down some students but not others for avoiding eye contact during presentations?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Queenie's argument suggested "mens rea" was a universal principle applied to all laws.

I was just exploring that implication.

[not guilty]

Uh, there are different forms of mens rea. Ordinarily the culpable mental state required for conviction will be set forth in the statute creating the offense and defining the conduct required to be proven. (There are a few strict liability criminal offenses, but not many.)

[BravoCharlieDelta]

If rural Trump counties aren't doing well, you think that means Democrat governance really does work?

That's the only thing I can think of as to why you'd make that argument.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Again, do you think professors should grade down some students but not others for avoiding eye contact during presentations?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Answer my question first and I’ll happily answer yours."

Well, I asked my question first, but OK. I've never taken a public speaking course as such, but I've taken plenty of classes where I've had to give presentations, in more than one culture, and more than one language.

Now, do you think professors should grade down some students but not others for avoiding eye contact during presentations?

[bernard11]

This is pretty trollish.

When I taught I was told that Asian students, especially women, were often very reluctant to speak up in class.

Should I have ignored this entirely, or somehow take it into account?

(As it happened I didn't grade on class participation, so it didn't affect things, though it certainly might have in other classes.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

Florida CHRISTIAN College -- you neglected to mention that.

We respect religion -- including the religions of others -- in this country. And if the Wiccans or Satanists or whomever want to found a college where their values will be upheld, more power to them...

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Woke cancel culture strikes again!

Cancel culture . . . it's not just for the superstitious any more!

Is it odd that Prof. Volokh didn't find these incidents interesting enough for his grievance-consumed, "free speech champion" blog . . . .

[TwelveInchPianist]

How is that a political/ideological litmus test?

[Frank Drackman]

So is "Mein Kampf"

[Reallynotbob]

Unless it's a non-religious secular college. Then, screw 'em, they better accommodate those religious folk.

[shawn_dude]

If by "neglected to mention" you mean the very clear and legible URL that says "pensacola-christian-college," sure.

We respect the religions of others by making them swear fealty to a monotheistic deity understood to be the Christian god every time they say the national Pledge of Allegiance and by enforcing white, evangelical morality on LGBT citizens of all faiths.

[Sarcastr0]

You mean in the utterly different thread you started before this one?

Though I think we finally get what you're talking about, which elides special needs and cultural understanding and whether timmy may like attention by jimmy likes to be left alone.

You think this means grading on a racial curve, but the language doesn't support that. So here you are, just gesturing over and over again vaguely.

[TwelveInchPianist]

So no evidence that respecting your students and treating them equally is an inferior approach to teaching diverse science classes. Thank you.

[Kazinski]

Big difference, neither MSNBC nor Phil Griffin has denied Ball's story, and it's been a a few days, still silence.

Kavenaugh denied Ford's story immediately, the other people Ford named Leyland Keyser, and Mark Judge also denied it.

Plus Ball did work at MSNBC at the time. There is no evidence that Ford and Kavenaugh ever met.

[OtisAH]

So very very tedious…

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, I'm bucking your premise - "the language doesn’t support that."

I notice you didn't address that.

So now we're off in hypothetical land. Or, more to the point, strawman land.

Your favorite place on this topic.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"I gave you one right away (the gynecology class)."

The one where the DEI committee would have thrown you out on your ass?

"Here’s another: a big thing in immunology is eczema which presents important issues in detection varying on skin color. Eliciting particular input from persons of color would be desirable here, no?"

And again, do you think that eliciting such questions is precluded by a policy of treating students equally, and with respect, in the context were the DEI commission claimed that such a practice was a weakness?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Yeah, I’m bucking your premise – “the language doesn’t support that.”"

You're claiming, as QA seems to be, that a candidate who says that they treat students equally, and with respect, might not know that female students might have more personal experience with gynecologists?

I seriously can't believe that you guys think that these examples justify downgrading a candidate who says he treats his students equally.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"For a lot of understandings of equal *particularly* valuing and eliciting the input of some but not all students, sure that’d be precluded."

I'm skeptical. Can you provide an example where soliciting the input of someone likely to have experience in a particular area is referred to as treating that person unequally?

I mean, come on, guys. If this gynecology and eczema crap is all you have when asked to provided evidence to counter the proposition that treating your students equally and with respect is sufficient to address DEI issues, I'd say that the proposition is on firm ground.

[TwelveInchPianist]

You think treating students equally means asking them all the same questions? I don't believe you really think that. I think you're stuck, and squirming.

[Sarcastr0]

TIP like three people have had issues with your mushy definition of equality. That is not squirming, it’s you being bad at communication.

Or trolling,

Either way, your ideology is not getting a good showing with you as advocate.

[Stephen Lathrop]

I seriously can’t believe that you guys think that these examples justify downgrading a candidate who says he treats his students equally.

Twelveinch, if the subject were disabilities education, do you understand that insistence on treating students equally would be evidence of prejudice and defiance of the law?

See if you can imagine a way to extend that as an analogy to relate it to DEI.

[Sarcastr0]

neither MSNBC nor Phil Griffin has denied Ball’s story

Guilt through silence is a thin reed, especially when it's a story appearing in the NY Post.

[Kazinski]

We aren't talking about guilt or innocence here, nobody is accused of a crime.

It's becoming more and more difficult to have any sort of conversation when you and David, et al, when you insist on disbelieving publicly related facts that no one in a position to know is disputing.

[TwelveInchPianist]

You could defend giving a student who overcame challenges with eye-contact related to his culture a better grade than a student who overcame similar eye-contact challenges that weren't related to his culture?

I doubt that.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"That’s of course not what I said. Try again."

Well, what did you say? Would you treat students differently based on their culture or not?

[TwelveInchPianist]

The article doesn't have anything to do with your analogy of a science teacher candidate getting downgraded for no referencing great books.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Holy non-sequitur, batman!

Your reasoning sucks.

A science teacher being evaluated on DEI in a talk isn't necessarily an ideological litmus test.

A science teacher being evaluated on having a land acknowledgement in a talk is an ideological litmus test.

A science teacher being evaluated being evaluated on great books may be a political litmus test. I gave you some hypos of how it could be. But just being evaluated on the use of great books isn't necessarily an ideological litmus test.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Ooh, what white evangelical morality are LGBT folks having foisted upon them these days?

Also, please describe for us how black evangelical morality, being a little more prevalent among blacks than whites, differs from white evangelical morality.

Or were you just being a racist piece of shit by limiting it to whites?

[bernard11]

Is that the Louise Woodward case?

Didn't she get a much longer sentence than that, which was subsequently reduced by a different, somewhat controversial, judge?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

How so? I still don't get it.

[John F. Carr]

Louise Woodward was convicted of murder and faced life in prison. The judge invited a Rule 25 motion (a motion for a required finding of not guilty, or to enter a guilty verdict on a lesser included charge instead). Such motions are normally pro forma to preserve appellate rights. The judge granted the motion and reduced the charge to manslaughter on the grounds that the weight of the evidence pointed to manslaughter rather than murder. The judge then sentenced her to time served. The prosecution appealed. A divided Supreme Judicial Court affirmed.

The defense had objected to a jury instruction on manslaughter as a lesser included offense, thinking the murder charge was weak and it would be better to beat the rap than to get a compromise verdict. The defense miscalculated. In an advisory opinion the SJC said that the judge should have given a manslaughter instruction. The prosecution as well as the defense is entitled to request an instruction on any lesser included offense supported by the evidence.

In my opinion the prosecution overcharged and it was clearly a manslaughter case based on the prosecution's version of events.

[not guilty]

The Andrew McCarthy article linked by Mr. Bumble falsely posits equivalency between Donald Trump's conduct regarding government documents and that of Joe Biden and Mike Pence. The article also conspicuously fails to mention that the August 3, 2022 application for the warrant to search Mar-a-Lago averred probable cause to believe that evidence of violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1519 would be found there. That was months before Biden's team found (and promptly returned) documents at the Penn-Biden Center.

McCarthy is insightful at times; at other times he is a partisan shill.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I hope and expect the government will respond appropriately to this incident.

I am disinclined to worry about whining from antisocial, anti-government, backwater jerks who suddenly want the government to solve all of their problems, and to do it at light speed.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Twelveinch, I have a quirk. All my life I have discounted visual cues from people who talk with me. I instead have concentrated preferentially on very careful attention to exactly what they say. Probably in my case that is not a cultural phenomenon, but a cognitive peculiarity.

A result is that in moments of especially careful attention, I unconsciously turn my better ear toward the speaker, which means I avert my gaze. Only people who know me very well understand that means I am being especially attentive, instead of disrespectful. I have had to learn to be alert for social disruptions that can cause.

Turn that around, and I suppose you ought to see that it could risk a tendency to discount members of any culture which was socialized to behave the way I do, but for some other reason.