Thursday Open Thread

Comments

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"NY Times Article on Biden Allies Trying to Keep Third Parties & Independent Candidates Off State Ballots [Paywalled]

"...Nowhere in the article is the solution of Ranked Choice Voting or other alternative voting systems mentioned."

Of course, the point isn't to expand voter choices but to throttle them. And a major party wouldn't want it officially certified that to many people, they're just a second (or third, etc.) choice. Can't let that information get out.

https://ballot-access.org/2023/10/08/ny-times-article-on-biden-allies-trying-to-keep-third-parties-independent-candidates-off-state-ballots/

[DaveM]

I’ve always jokingly referred to ranked choice voting as the only method designed to make sure that no one gets what they really wanted.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"Only"?

[Brett Bellmore]

Seriously, if you think people are going to be suspicious of regular elections, add the complications of RCV and it's going to get exponentially worse. I understand the theoretical appeal, but this is coming from the same people who claimed the 'butterfly ballot' was too complicated for people to understand in 2000?

Why not just hold run off elections if nobody gets 50%?

[Nelson]

"add the complications of RCV"

It's not complicated. List your candidates in order of preference. Voters aren't idiots, no matter how hard entrenched interests try to pretend otherwise.

"Why not just hold run off elections if nobody gets 50%?"

Because it would get the same result while costing millions of dollars for each election?

[Brett Bellmore]

The butterfly ballot wasn’t complicated either, until Al Gore lost. Then it was complicated enough to invalidate the results, remember? All those votes Pat Buchanan got in Palm Beach, that just HAD to be intended for Gore, but people screwed up doing the butterfly ballot? And never mind that Buchanan’s state coordinator happened to live in Palm Beach, and was giving the area extra effort…

And that was just ordinary first past the pole, just a formatting issue.

Look, I wouldn’t have trouble voting under RCV, and I perfectly well understand how it works. But, I’m an engineer. I’ve actually been known to do math for fun! I’m hardly your average voter.

Imagine you’re somebody who has trouble just balancing a checkbook, and your candidate loses. Are you going to credit the explanation of how it happened, when you don’t really get how it’s supposed to work?

And in terms of transparency, I’d say the absolute least that would be acceptable would be paper ballots and posting ballot images publicly as they were put in the box, so independent groups could run the calculations themselves, in real time. You up for that?

“Because it would get the same result while costing millions of dollars for each election?”

Oh, now you want to scrimp on election administration, even at the cost of people doubting the results? It’s not like election administration is a major line item in the overall government, you know.

And, we're talking "Rank Choice Voting", not "Instant Runoff Voting"; No, you wouldn't get the same result. And I think as a practical, real world matter, you're not actually guaranteed to get the same result from IRV as from actually having a runoff election, which would nicely focus people's minds on the actual choice before them.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I’m hardly your average voter.

Maybe, in some less advanced jurisdictions, a disaffected, delusional, autistic, antisocial, bigoted right-winger would be relatively common.

[Reallynotbob]

But you're a fan of the electoral college? Complexity doesn't seem to be your real problem with RCV...

[Dr. Ed 2]

I call it Random Choice Voting -- beyond the first choice, it is largely random for most voters.

[Magister]

If it were really random, then those choices would tend to cancel out, so no harm would be done; same effect as not ranking anyone after the first. It would negate the spoiler effect for third party candidates, as everyone who would vote for them could choose between the major party candidates as second. It would negate the argument that a third party candidate is a wasted vote, since the second choice would come into play when that candidate is eliminated (and they might not be, if the wasted vote argument is negated).

[Drewski]

"The butterfly ballot wasn’t complicated either, until Al Gore lost. Then it was complicated enough to invalidate the results, remember?"

What I remember is that it was designed and first used in the 2000 election. I also remember some Mandela Effect lunatics claiming it was in use in 1996. It wasn't, and you probably shouldn't get your information from people who think reality itself is a conspiracy.

[Don Nico]

"Because it would get the same result"
I doubt that is true.
But I am willing to examine the mathematical proof. No blah-blah please, just the rigorous formal mathematics

[Magister]

Separate elections with different turnout, and changes in voter preference due to new information between the first election and the run off, makes this not universally true. But neither of those are good reasons to have run offs instead of ranked choice.

[Don Nico]

So you admit, that there is no proof of the blanket statement: “Because it would get the same result”

[Magister]

Yes, that was my point. It could only be universally true if nothing happened to change the electorate between the two elections: either its composition (people dying, becoming old enough to vote, moving in or out of the jurisdiction, or just not voting in both) or the opinions of those who vote (new information coming out, or greater attention to a smaller number of races, or buyer's remorse; e.g., Trump's obsession with his own election lies in the 2020 runoffs for Senate in Georgia did not help the Republican candidates).

It could be true for a significant number of cases, though, so that the added expense would not be worthwhile. I'm not sure how you would test that (perhaps by comparing exit polling results to the eventual run off result).

[Don Nico]

"It could be true for a significant number of cases, "
You don't even know that. You are just speculating.

[Magister]

That's what "it could be true" means. You seem intent on misunderstanding what I've been saying.

[Nelson]

I was referring to the cases where "spoiler" votes aren't cast for third-party candidates because a voter fears giving the election to someone they dislike. So Republicans voting for Trump in a first-past-the-post election who would vote for two or three different candidates first if their votes still counted for Trump in RCV when their preferred Republicans were eliminated.

I can see how it might artificially inflate voter participation, since people who didn't like either major party candidate might come out to prevent anyone from getting a majority in the first round to highlight the lack of support for the eventual winner, but otherwise I don't see there being a difference between a major party candidate gaining a voter in the second round or the twelfth round.

A more granular understanding of voter intent isn't a bad thing. Knowing voters prefers Biden to Trump, but 5 other people to Biden (in a hypothetical election that takes 6 rounds) says something about the candidates that no amount of spin can hide.

I am not a mathematician or a political scientist, so I have no idea how you would go about designing an equation that reflected the likelihood of a non-major-party candidate beating either of the frontrunners of the two major parties. Data collection would definitely be a challenge.

[Magister]

People who want the same effect as the current system can just rank a single candidate under ranked choice voting.

States rushed to switch to electronic voting after the 2000 election and its misleading ballot structure and hanging chads. Unfortunately, the switch to paperless electronic voting made auditing elections impossible, and is mostly abandoned today. Even with paper ballots and recounts and auditing, there was still a lot of false blame of voting machines in the 2020 election. Any election change must be considered carefully, because often it's used, whether intended for that or not, to enable election fraud. Ranked choice voting runs the risk of fueling election denial, so it would require substantial education of voters, but the benefit is worth it.

Run off elections cost more and require voters to come to the polls a second time, usually a lower turnout election, and can involve candidates who are widely disliked if the initial vote is sufficiently fragmented, and in any case provide little benefit to third parties. I enjoyed the spectacle of staunch Republicans endorsing the Democrat when voters chose Democrat Edwin Edwards and white supremacist David Duke for the run off in the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election, but better to avoid the risk of a candidate like that.

[Don Nico]

"People who want the same effect as the current system can just rank a single candidate under ranked choice voting."
That definitely is false.

[Magister]

From their point of view, it's the same.

[Don Nico]

No, it is not. Have you actually vote under that system? Are you aware how candidate manipulate voter ignorance using just you "method?"

[Magister]

If everyone ranks only one candidate, it's the same. If you insist that people who are too intimidated by the whole system and just vote for one candidate are still going to game out everyone else's rankings, you've obviously got a particular agenda against ranked choice voting.

[shawn_dude]

The most populous state in the union has managed to make RCV and mail-in ballots by default work for years. So... what's the evidence behind your complaint, exactly?

[Don Nico]

That depends what you mean by work. If you all mean is the trivial statement, that the procedure converges to an answer, that is true.

[Magister]

In what way has it not worked? Alternately, show us on the doll where the bad ranked choice voting touched you.

[Don Nico]

All you resort to is the trivial observation that one can run to 11 or more rounds to extract a solution that was very far from the original result that the "winner" was 3rd or 4th in the original poll. To me that is NOT working and that was what happened in Oakland in the last election. So there is your example that touched me.

[Magister]

"I didn't like the result" doesn't justify your tantrum, same as the "red mirage" in the 2020 election. I hope you didn't stage an insurrection over this.

[Brett Bellmore]

The most populous state in the union is a one party state, so it's not like they have to deal with much in the way of partisan disputes.

[Nelson]

Utah also does all-mail-in voting and it has worked just as well for them. It wasn't a partisan issue until Trump made it one by being the sorest of sore losers in history.

[Idihax]

The problem with mail in voting is that people who are lazy and unmotivated tend to be Democrats, and there's no right to vote without having to put in some effort.

[Nelson]

Ah, yes. The "enfranchisement isn't universal" argument. So compelling.

[David Nieporent]

? California uses a jungle primary, but that's entirely different than RCV.

[Magister]

Ranked choice voting has been used in some local elections in California. California uses a top two primary; the top two candidates always go to a run off, even if the top candidate gets over 50%. Although some use the term differently, usually a jungle primary means a system which only has a run off if no candidate reaches 50%. E.g., https://ballotpedia.org/Jungle_primary

[David Nieporent]

Why not just hold run off elections if nobody gets 50%?

RCV is run off elections. (Indeed, it's sometimes called "instant runoff.") The reason to use RCV is because it's a lot cheaper and more convenient for everyone (especially the voters) to hold one election rather than two or more in sequence.

[Brett Bellmore]

"RCV is run off elections. (Indeed, it’s sometimes called “instant runoff.”)"

As I understood it, RCV has each voter rank their preferences in order. In the first round, if nobody gets to 50%, the votes for the least popular candidate are redistributed to their voters' second choice, and it repeats, until somebody is over 100%.

Just off the name, I'd have assumed that IRV would eliminate all but the top two, and then do the calculation. But I find I was wrong. They are just terms for the same thing.

None the less, I would assert that RCV is not interchangeable with actual runoff elections. I doubt people pay much attention to even their third choice on a RCV system. But those who vote in an actual runoff are faced with two identifiable candidates have strong motivation to actually evaluate both.

So I suspect the people who'd have ranked the top two low on their list will either not bother voting in a real runoff, or possibly reevaluate their choice between the two, because I don't think downballot preferences are necessarily firmly held.

[Voize]

it repeats, until somebody is over 100%

To get that result they have to run ballots through the Dominion Voting Systems scanner multiple times.

[Don Nico]

It is cheaper, but if you will look at the last mayoral election in Oakland CA in which the winner narrowly came from behind on the 11th count, several days afterwards, you would see why this is not a system to inspire the voters’ trust in the electoral process.

[Magister]

Way more confidence in such a result than presidential candidates who lose the popular vote and still win. The steps in getting to the result can be demonstrated, with audits and recounts to verify the numbers.

[Nelson]

"the winner narrowly came from behind on the 11th count"

You are insinuating that they were in 11th place from the beginning and somehow vaulted over those with stronger support in the beginning. That is not true.

No candidate ever loses support. Ever.

What happens is they fail to attract more support than their competitors as lesser candidates are eliminated.

So a polarizing figure with a zealously loyal base of 40% of voters will never lose any of those voters unless and until they are eliminated from the race. Which is possible if they are so toxic that they can't gain affirmative support from anyone other than their core supporters.

If you want to think of it another way, RCV requires a candidate to convince voters to vote *for* them, rather than to vote *against* "the other guy".

As far as trust is concerned, look at how many people distrust an electoral system that has been repeatedly proven to be trustworthy (no, not perfect but fair, accurate, and proven so multiple times over multiple years).

It isn't the responsibility of people who have facts, data, history, and math on their side to cajole those who refuse to accept reality into giving up their delusions. The lunatics don't get to run the asylum.

[Brett Bellmore]

"No candidate ever loses support. Ever."

That's silly. At each round, the lowest ranked candidate loses ALL their support; They're eliminated, after all, and their supporters are redistributed to other candidates!

[Nelson]

OK, Dr. Pedantic. No surviving candidate loses support.

[Don Nico]

You call Brett pedantic, but you were caught with your pants down.

[Nelson]

By assuming that everyone would know that the baseline assumption was that the candidate survived to the next round? No, that would be me overestimating the intelligence of others or underestimating their willingness to make a substance-free statement in the middle of a substantive discussion. I know for a fact that Brett is a smart man, so I erred in assuming he wouldn't take a cheap shot.

[Nelson]

Although I suppose you could look at it as they didn't lose any support, but that support lost all electoral relevance. If you wanted to be excessively pedantic.

[Don Nico]

Nelson,
I am not insinuating that the winner was in eleventh place. I did not say that. The winner was in 3rd or 4th place initially. It took two weeks and 11 countings to proclaim her the winner by a very narrow margin.

The zealousness of the base or polarization has NOTHING at all do do with the vagaries of the RCV counting algorithm. Your comment in that regard is a red herring. You just don't want to pay for a runoff between the top two candidates.

If RCV were to converge in 2 or 3 rounds, I'd accept your "requires a candidate to convince voters to vote *for* them, rather than to vote *against* “the other guy". But there again your claim is bogus.

I doubt you have the facts, else you would have stated them accurately. Instead you insult me comment out of your ignorance.

[Nelson]

“The winner was in 3rd or 4th place initially. It took two weeks and 11 countings to proclaim her the winner by a very narrow margin.”

I believe someone else posted a more detailed analysis in which it was shown that it was 9 rounds and the eventual winner was in second place by 1% after the first round. So not the electoral travesty you insinuated.

“with the vagaries of the RCV counting algorithm”

What vagaries? Each round one candidate is eliminated and all of the voters who comprised their support (regardless of which “rank”) are redistributed to the highest remaining candidate. That isn’t an algorithm, it’s simple math.

“You just don’t want to pay for a runoff between the top two candidates.”

No, I don’t want to be artificially limited to only two choices by the gatekeepers at the RNC and DNC.

Also, I hate wasting money on a system that isn’t superior to the cheaper alternative.

“If RCV were to converge in 2 or 3 rounds, I’d accept your “requires a candidate to convince voters to vote *for* them, rather than to vote *against* “the other guy”. But there again your claim is bogus.”

Why? What is so magical about the third round that makes it valid and every other round after invalid?

If you know you hate a candidate, you’re not going to put them on your ballot at all. Getting a ranking from a voter means that they have convinced you that they are worth voting for.

For example, I would vote for Satan before Trump because Satan is less awful. But I wouldn’t put either of them on my RCV ballot because I would never support them.

“I doubt you have the facts”

Well you clearly don’t, so I’m at least half a step ahead of you. I can at least logically explain how it is better, rather than putting arbitrary limits like “2 or 3 rounds” without any reasoning.

[Voize]

It was nine rounds rather than 11 as there were 10 candidates. The top 4 in the first round were
Taylor 33%
Thao 32%
De La Fuente 10%
Villaneuva 9%

Taylor held a slim lead until the 7th round where Villanueva was eliminated. Almost 3/4 of those votes when to Thao, putting her in the lead in the final two rounds. This doesn't seem to me to be an unreasonable result. What they need to improve is the mechanics of execution, this shouldn't take days to determine, but still it's much quicker than a runoff.

[Don Nico]

You are correct. It was 9 rounds not 11. My error.

[Nelson]

I think the biggest advantage of ranked-choice voting is that it demonstrates the mandate that the eventual winner has.

If Winner A gets only 45% in the first round, they can’t credibly claim that they have a mandate from the voters. By the same token, if Winner B gets 51% of the vote, they can make that claim.

The complaint that no one gets the candidate they want is completely spurious. We all know that the two major party candidates will get the vast majority of the votes and their supporters will get the representation they desire. The only way a voter’s first choice would ever be eliminated is if they never had enough support to win in the first place.

An exception would be in a race like Alaska, where two candidates from the same party hated each other so much that they urged their voters to chose the candidate from the other party over their intraparty rival. And those people deserve to lose, since they are making it about them and their petty feelings over a desire to represent their constituents.

Another exception would be that the voters truly preferred the policies and positions of the other party’s candidate. Imagine a race where there is a wingnut and a moderate from each major party on the ballot. Someone who opposed polarizing candidates could easily choose their party’s moderate first, the other party’s moderate second, and the two wingnuts at the very bottom of their ballot.

Both of those scenarios would represent an important advantage of RCV, since it would make it far less likely that extreme candidates in gerrymandered districts would be able to cruise to a general election victory by winning the primary. Candidates would be required to address the issues of all voters in their district, not just those of primary voters, who have been shown to be much more extreme than the general electorate.

RCV is a way to decrease the power of the RNC and DNC while allowing voters to vote for candidates whose positions they support, not just the lesser of two evils. Think about a race between Trump and Biden and imagine what would happen with RCV. Do you really think that either of them would actually win? Or would a younger, more dynamic candidate be able to get around the gatekeepers in the major parties?

It isn’t about increasing the possibility of a third party candidate winning, although that is a possibility. It’s about neutering the ability of the major parties to dictate candidates to the voters.

[Life of Brian]

Generally agree. I'm big on RCV in concept, though the devil's in the details and I think getting enough of the electorate to understand and trust the process is going to be one of the most significant barriers.

One thing I didn't quite track was your first point re mandates: If a candidate has to get 50+% in the first round to have a mandate, then won't the only races resulting in mandates be races where RCV wasn't needed?

[Reallynotbob]

Worked great in Alaska.

[Nelson]

Yes, it did. I said why in my post, but I'll recap for you: when you tell your supporters to put the candidate from the other party second because you hate the other candidate in your party that much, you aren't focused on your constituents, you're focused on yourself.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes?

What's the problem with recognizing that positions have to be filled even if there isn't a mandate for some grand program?

[Nelson]

It weakens marginal candidates because they have to acknowledge that they are only a compromise candidate, not a preferred candidate. That's good because in order to get a mandate you would have to convince more than 50% of your constituents that you will represent their interests.

It forces candidates to respond to their constituents, not coast on the D or R after their name or slavishly support the national platform.

[Nelson]

"If a candidate has to get 50+% in the first round to have a mandate, then won’t the only races resulting in mandates be races where RCV wasn’t needed?"

Yes. As of now, someone who wouldn't reach that threshold in a ranked-choice race can claim that they did because they were the preferred candidate in a two-person race. Add more choices with the assurance that you wouldn't be "spoiling" the major party candidate's election chances (which is what RCV does) then a lot of candidates who end up winning would have to admit they didn't have a mandate.

[Life of Brian]

then a lot of candidates who end up winning would have to admit they didn’t have a mandate.

Yeah, and my gut would say that due to the very mechanics of RCV that would be more than "a lot" and likely would be the case for nearly every winner in a race of much significance (i.e., more than token same-party competition), because critical mass wouldn't consolidate behind a winner until a later round. So I'm not sure the concept of a "mandate" (at least the 50+% varietal) really carries over cleanly to RCV.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's more a case of "mandates" usually being phony in the first place.

[Absaroka]

Indeed. I agree that when Joe-Bob gets 90% of the vote while pushing, I dunno, a program to prioritize fixing potholes, he 'has a mandate' to fix potholes.

More commonly, though, people who get elected in a 51/49 election seem to think they 'have a mandate' for every policy they like, sometimes including policies that poll well under 50%.

A politician who gets 51% of the vote also represents, and has a duty to, the 49% who didn't vote for him.

[bernard11]

Seems to me that a bit more modesty about the winner's mandate would be welcome.

[Nelson]

"More commonly, though, people who get elected in a 51/49 election seem to think they ‘have a mandate’ for every policy they like, sometimes including policies that poll well under 50%."

Exactly. A majority of votes does NOT equate to agreeing with every position a politician (or a national party) supports. But they all act like it.

[Nelson]

"It’s more a case of “mandates” usually being phony in the first place."

Exactly. And RCV helps expose that falsehood.

[ducksalad]

[Don Nico]

Indeed the 11th round winner in Oakland has NO mandate

[Nelson]

Correct. And they can't claim they do, like so many politicians do even when the numbers are against them.

[BadLib]

In principle RCV, as most commonly implemented/proposed as an instant runoff (IRV), sounds appealing. However in practice some of the corner cases concern me.

Supporters of IRV make claims along the lines of “you can safely rank your favored candidate first even if you think they are very unlikely to win because your second choice will then get your vote”.

However, that’s not really “true” in some cases and I don’t think most voters are sophisticated enough to understand the impact of doing so in those cases. Even those that do understand the impacts would have to rely on unreliable polls to decide when it was “safe” and when it was not “safe” to rank a “less likely to win” candidate first.

My particular concern is that IRV may, over time, result in an increase of “single issue” candidates and voters. Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, Anti-Second Amendment, Pro-Second Amendment, Pro-labor, Pro-business, etc.

“Single issue” candidates today have little chance since few voters will “throw their vote away” because even though they feel very passionate about their pet “single issue” the voter knows that the corresponding candidate has little chance of winning. Therefore they choose a candidate who has a reasonable chance of winning and is the “least objectionable” of such candidates even though that candidate may not be the most passionate about the voter’s “single issue(s)”.

With IRV , the most acceptable candidate may never get in office because they get eliminated very early even though they were pretty much every voter’s second choice but very few voter’s first choice.

After a few elections in which a candidate that was actually quite unpopular wins perhaps voters will return to a “I will pick as my top choice the candidate I find least objectionable but most likely to win” strategy. However that negates the value of IRV while leaving IRV as a ticking time bomb waiting to go off as voters forget, or fail to apply, the lessons of the past.

Perhaps using a Condorcet method (even with all of its problems) rather than “instant runoff” would be preferable — but try explaining such methods to the typical voter.

[Nelson]

"However, that’s not really “true” in some cases"

It's completely true. Why would you believe differently?

"I don’t think most voters are sophisticated enough to understand the impact of doing so in those cases."

Which cases?

"My particular concern is that IRV may, over time, result in an increase of “single issue” candidates and voters. Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, Anti-Second Amendment, Pro-Second Amendment, Pro-labor, Pro-business, etc."

And? What's the problem with that? Unless it is an overwhelmingly relevant issue that no one else supports, the support will be distributed across multiple candidates. And even if not, why is that a problem if it's the dominant issue concerning voters?

"the most acceptable candidate may never get in office"

Actually, that's exactly what RCV is better at than first-past-the-post. If a candidate is most people's second choice, they are virtually assured of winning once the eliminations start. They would increasingly gather support as people's first choices were eliminated, which is the point. It eliminates voting against someone you dislike in favor of voting for someone you do like. That makes the most acceptable candidate more, not less, likely to be elected.

"After a few elections in which a candidate that was actually quite unpopular wins"

You mean like George W Bush? Or Donald Trump? The system we have now results in unpopular candidates winning. Worst case it's stays quo, but all evidence says it would be much better.

Right now, assuming nothing changes, we have two people well into their twilight years as the only viable choices for President. It's even worse in Congress, where incumbency has over a 90% reelection rate. Something has got to change. RCV is the simplest way to bypass the RNC and DNC.

[Kenneth Almquist]

Suppose voter preferences are as follows:

31% A B C
18% B A C
10% B C A
41% C B A

If the 31% of voters who supports candidate A actually vote their preferences, candidate C wins. To avoid that outcome, they have to list candidate B as their first choice.

This is a problem with instant runoff voting, not with ranked choice voting in general.

[Nelson]

In your scenario, Candidate C is the most popular candidate by first-choice votes. So you're complaining because the one that has the most support in the first round ends up being elected and the least popular ends up being eliminated?

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. It seems like your scenario is proof that it works, not that it doesn't. In a first-past-the-post election, Candidate B wouldn't even be on the ballot, unless the district was so gerrymandered that 72% of voters supported one party.

Which is an even better example of why RCV is a superior system. If Candidate C and Candidate A were in the same party, Candidate C wouldn't have to worry about actually addressing the concerns of constituents because they won the primary and don't have to worry about the "other guy" who is almost 50 points behind. But if the margin was only 2 points, like RCV would cause, Candidate C needs to worry about what their constituents want, not just what their party preference is.

So your example is an excellent illustration of how RCV forces candidates to be concerned about their voters' actual issues, not just their binary party preferences. 2 points is a tight race.

[Life of Brian]

If a candidate is most people’s second choice, they are virtually assured of winning once the eliminations start. They would increasingly gather support as people’s first choices were eliminated, which is the point.

I started to post almost the same thing earlier (the only way they could lose would be in the first round), but as I thought it through I don't think that's quite right.

Consider, for example, first choice results of 35/30/20/10/3/2. If popular 2nd choice (P2C) gets 2%, she's out right away. If P2C gets 3% in round 1, she picks up the 2% and then loses to the 10% candidate in round 2. If P2C gets 10% in round 1, she picks up 2% in round 1 and 3% in round 3, and loses to the 20% candidate in round 4.

The same "firebreak" effect should hold for any distribution where the first-choice percentage for a given candidate is higher than the sum of percentages of lower candidates. (And that's assuming P2C actually picks up 100% of 2nd-choice votes for the losers -- in the real world it would be less, allowing the spreads to be even lower.)

So if P2C really is most voters' second choice (and thus by definition very few voters' first choice), this seems like it has much greater potential to happen than I first thought. I do think it's an open question how likely a true P2C scenario really is (i.e., how likely it really is that a candidate can be that popular and yet not get enough of a chunk of the first-round vote to stay safe).

[Nelson]

That's an interesting take. I was assuming that a candidate who was overwhelmingly popular as a second choice would have enough first choice votes to be near the top, but that isn't necessarily true.

I was also thinking more along the lines of the opposite scenario, a candidate with rock-solid support among their adherents but not able to garner much support outside of their core supporters.

States and localities are experimemting with RCV, so we should have more data available soon that shows not just the practical results, but also whether there's a noticeable effect on turnout, third-party support, and voter strategy over time as people become used to the system.

I also think that it would be interesting if, once the votes were tabulated, they had a special-report-like show that showed every round and where the eliminated candidate's voters moved after each round. It would help people understand the process, plus it would be dramatic. It could be Survivor, Politics Edition.

[Life of Brian]

I also think that it would be interesting if, once the votes were tabulated, they had a special-report-like show that showed every round and where the eliminated candidate’s voters moved after each round. It would help people understand the process, plus it would be dramatic. It could be Survivor, Politics Edition.

Yeah, dramatic or not, I think something like this could be a really good way to help people understand the process and feel comfortable that it's not just a smoke-and-mirrors way to kick out the "wrong" candidates. It's not really that complicated, and a visual walk-through likely would demystify it for most that are persuadable.

[Martinned]

You mean like this? (Click on “full results” to see how the preferences flowed.)

https://www.irishtimes.com/election2020/results-hub

[Life of Brian]

Something like that, but just seeing the bars of the survivors of each round grow doesn't teach how the votes flow from eliminated candidates. I was thinking of something more animated, like a bubble for each candidate scaled to their current vote count, and where a bubble from an eliminated candidate would split into smaller ones representing the next-round picks that would then float to and get absorbed by the surviving candidates. A good graphic artist (not my day job) likely could refine that even further.

[Martinned]

Above the bars it shows the vote numbers too. But to a newcomer I can see how it would become extra confusing due to the fact that in Ireland they have multi-member constituencies.

Eg. in Carlow-Kilkenny they had to count 73,643 valid votes to elect five candidates. Since one of the candidates got more than 20% of the first preference votes, she was immediately declared elected, and her 2nd preferences were re-allocated in the 2nd round of counting. You can see exactly how many of her votes went to each of the other candidates by comparing count 2 and count 1. Only for the 3rd round did they take out the three least popular candidates. (Their 2,000-odd 1st and 2nd preference votes went mostly to the one remaining independent and to the People Before Profit candidate.)

https://www.irishtimes.com/election2020/carlow-kilkenny

[Life of Brian]

Yikes. I'm sure folks get used to it after a while, but a good bit of the barrier to entry here is just how starkly different of a system even plain-vanilla RCV is from first past the post.

[Magister]

Eg. in Carlow-Kilkenny they had to count 73,643 valid votes to elect five candidates. Since one of the candidates got more than 20% of the first preference votes, she was immediately declared elected, and her 2nd preferences were re-allocated in the 2nd round of counting.

That would seem to be like "at large" voting, which is not allowed in the US for elections of representatives, if not quite as bad. Unless a minority bloc could also achieve 20% for a single candidate in the first preference votes, they could be steadily frozen out by the majority bloc's reassigned votes.

[Nelson]

Well, shit. If drunken Irishmen can understand that, Americans will have no problem with RCV.

Or perhaps you have to be half in the bag to understand that?

[Life of Brian]

Assumes facts not in evidence. Maybe they stay too sotted to really give a rip.

[Nelson]

An equally plausible theory.

[Krayt]

Hopefully not too many innocent people die today. What that means is an exercise for the reader.

[Dr. Ed 2]

There are no "innocent" members of Hamas....

[John F. Carr]

According to one report, two members of Hamas leadership are among over 1,100 people killed in Gaza. Not a good batting average.

[Mr. Bumble]

Are you assuming that the other1,098 were "innocent civilians"?

[Frank Drackman]

Batting Average isn’t a great measure of Offensive effectiveness, as it doesn’t factor in walks or extra base hits (a bloop single with nobody on is just as valuable as a grand slam?) Like that great General Sun Jew once said, “Wiping out Hamas starts by killing one Hamas” I wonder what they’re doing with their shit in Gaza with no water, although that seems to be an Ish-yew every where I’ve been in the Mideast, except for in Israel.

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

There's a reason why shellfish are not Kosher....

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Other than childish superstition? I doubt it.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Kirkland, do you know WHY state marine departments close shellfish beds whenever there is a sewerage leak?

Yep, shellfish are filter feeders and all of the nasty bacteria in sewerage builds up in their bodies. Doesn't harm them, but WILL harm you if you eat them.

That's basic biology that humanity has known about for at least a century, probably longer.

HOW the Jews figured out the Kosher laws is a good question, but the 21st Century science behind them (in a society that lacked refrigeration & chlorine bleach) is solid.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Can you explain the mystical objections to a cheeseburger?

Try not to lose sight of the fact that it is rooted in silly superstition.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Simple: Milk has enzymes (or something) that breaks down meat. One delicious working-class WASP dinner is less choice beef tenderized with (and cooked with) sour cream.

Now it is one thing to cook this in a thermostatically-controlled electric oven, but they didn’t have those in Biblical times. Nor an equally thermostatically-controlled electrically-powered refrigerator. (One thing we had that the Jews didn’t was cold wells — even in summer, the water in a well would often be 45-50 degrees and you could lower perishables in a bucket.)

We know that this will go bad quickly if you don’t cook it properly, or leave it at room temperature for any length of time — so we don’t.

As I write this, I have Hake (fish) soaking in milk. It's the second rinse and when I get typing this, I will dump that milk out and go with some more -- along with bread crumbs and butter (also dairy).

My guess is that I probably could produce something toxic if I didn't cook it in a slow oven (350 degrees) and then promptly eat it. I wouldn't be doing this around a campfire, and without refrigeration, I would salt the fish -- e.g. salt cod, which is a process I never really quite learned but was done before refrigeration.

There's real science here.

[BrotherMovesOn]

Is there anything this guy doesn't know?

[Nelson]

His political "knowledge" is highly suspect, but the man obviously knows how to cook. His technique is sound and the dish sounds delicious.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

When I was a kid, I sometimes would start to make this type of argument to my Rabbi, and he would immediately stop me. "We keep Kosher," he would say, "because God commands it."

[bernard11]

That was the response I got also. It often went,

"Moses was not a public health official. He was a religious (and secular) leader."

[Dr. Ed 2]

If you don’t want to go with divine inspiration, it’s entirely possible that Moses was a damn good statistician who kept track of who died and who didn’t, and the discrepancies in their diet and food preparation methods.

We (WASPS) knew not to eat shellfish in “months that didn’t have an R in them” — only eat them in the winter months — and that’s when Red Tide isn’t an issue as it is an algae that grows in the summer. The Indians had similar tribal legends along with an “evil spirits” legend that was a textbook description of Red Tide poisoning.

Someone made the connection between eating shellfish in the summer and dying. Now we have biologists who grind up a clam and inject it into a mouse and see if the mouse dies — but that’s modern science — two different cultures somehow figured out not to eat clams in the summer, and mussels (which we always considered unfit to eat) are *most* susceptible to Red Tide.

Moses the mortician — it’s possible…

[Commenter_XY]

Not to worry John F Carr, Israel will shortly begin the ground campaign, systematically pursue Hamas members, and kill them. For Hamas, there is no safe refuge, nowhere to hide, and no reprieve. They will not leave Gaza alive. They will all die violent deaths.

I am very sorry for the hostages. We'll see videos of torture, rape, execution, and desecration of the bodies of some of the hostages soon. A few are already out there.

Gaza civilians should leave Gaza immediately, however they can. Physically separate from members of Hamas; there is very significant risk being in physical proximity of any Hamas member.

[John F. Carr]

Civilians have nowhere to go.

Digging out Hamas is a fine goal. I fear IDF in Gaza will end up like the U.S. military in Vietnam, unable to tell civilians from soldiers.

[Frank Drackman]

Kill them all, let Allah sort them out

Frank "I love the smell of burning A-rabs in the morning"

[Mr. Bumble]

Apparently Hamas terrorists had no trouble telling civilians from soldiers when targeting them.

[John F. Carr]

Give Deif and the rest of his gang to Israel to put on trial. Give Netanyahu and his people to Palestine to put on trial.

[Bob from Ohio]

“Give Netanyahu and his people to Palestine to put on trial.”

Holy Both Side-ism Batman!

Israel would actually give Deif a fair trial. You can’t believe the Palestinians would do the same to Bibi.

The comparison to what Hamas just did and Israeli reaction is immoral and obnoxious. Do better.

[Michael P]

Fortunately the terrorists made a fatal mistake about their targets in at least one instance: https://nypost.com/2023/10/10/israeli-woman-25-hailed-as-hero-for-killing-terrorists-leading-security-team-at-kibbutz/

[John F. Carr]

Israel has a lot of civilians with military training. The Hamas attack worked because of surprise and complacency. Even the guards on duty weren't paying attention.

[Mr. Bumble]

...and no 2A in Israel.

[Martinned]

Israel is the very definition of a well-regulated militia, so I'm not sure what the 2nd amendment has to do with anything.

[Brett Bellmore]

Maybe the fact that virtually nobody is allowed to own a gun, and only police and active military get to carry one? So that approximately zero people were in a position to shoot back until the IDF showed up hours later?

Try that in the US and you'd find a significant fraction of your targets were packing heat, and a much larger fraction could get their hands on a gun in a matter of minutes.

[jb]

Looks like Israel is pretty close to the world median in terms of gun ownership, but agreed definitely a lot fewer guns than in the US:

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

[Martinned]

@jb that's interesting. My understanding was that gun ownership was quite common in Israel, at least outside the major cities. Perhaps that's the explanation? That so many Israelis live in/around Tel Aviv that that brings the average down? Wikipedia puts the population of the Tel Aviv/Gush Dan metro area on 4,156,900, which is almost half of the Israeli population.

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

[Brett Bellmore]

"My understanding was that gun ownership was quite common in Israel, at least outside the major cities."

"Was". Starting in '93, there was a major government push to discourage gun ownership, confiscate guns if any chance presented itself, and progressively increase the barriers to ownership.

At present getting licensed is practically impossible unless you're a Gaza settler or active military/police. Even after the "relaxation" this attack prompted, their gun laws are incredibly strict by American standards.

[Idihax]

That push in 1993 coincided with loosening restrictions on abortion. You can't be a conservative and support abortion or sodomy. It's that simple.

[Frank Drackman]

Hmm, I thought we “Gun Nuts” were crazy for sleeping with an Assault Rifle next to our beds??? (Obama Bin Laden did, didn’t really help when the SEALS are calling) In the Free State of Georgia you no longer need a permit from the Yankee Occupational Government to carry a concealed firearm, I carry everywhere, except the Airport (Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson-Zimbabwe) which is where I feel most at risk (remember the 1985 PLO Airport Massacres in Rome and Wien?) The 300 lb Rent-a-Security Cops at the Airport don’t inspire much confidence.

Frank

[John F. Carr]

From the article:

So Lieberman rushed to open the armory, distributed guns to the 12-member security team and coordinated their decisive response amid the unfolding attack.

It used to be said during debates over gun control in America that every man in Switzerland had a military rifle locked up in his house, not carried in public.

[Mr. Bumble]

"It used to be said during debates over gun control in America that every man in Switzerland had a military rifle locked up in his house, not carried in public.
"
Glad the debates are over.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The Japanese said of America: Behind every blade of grass is a rifle barrel.

Back in the 1940s, in rural America, it was true...

[Absaroka]

That is commonly repeated, but the quote doesn't seem to have a source.

[Commenter_XY]

War is all hell -- William Tecumseh Sherman

[Don Nico]

Hence the siege. Gazans know their prison guards. Let them turn on Hamas.

[Martinned]

Do you have any understanding at all of human psychology? Whatever Israel does here, it will cause the people of Gaza to support Hamas more, not less.

[Frank Drackman]

Well when it's 100 or so Palestinians left in Gaza to wipe the shit off the rubble I think the violence will be more manageable

[Bob from Ohio]

"it will cause the people of Gaza to support Hamas more, "

Their choice. 1940s Germans made a similar choice

[Nelson]

The rare case where Poe's Law is actually an apt analogy.

[not guilty]

"The rare case where Poe’s Law is actually an apt analogy."

Only to those otherwise unfamiliar with Bob from Ohio's comment history. He is a shameless loon.

[Nelson]

Granted. But he’s not wrong.

[Don Nico]

Not in a full siege with minimal bombardment. It depends how Israel plays its hand.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Let's hope Israel starts playing its hand differently, because the cost of more right-wing belligerence and policy choices will predictably be a loss of American support.

[Don Nico]

Martin,
In the Battle of Britain, the city police, the conscript civil guards were out after each German bombing to help the populace. Not surprisingly, British resolve stiffened.
In contrast Hamas is absent for Gazans,; there are no offers of trading hostages for food and water for civilians or for medical assistance. Instead Hamas hides and lets its citizens bear the brunt of the attacks

[Kazinski]

Well hopefully Gaza survivors in a generation will be as friendly to Israelis as the Vietnamese are to Americans now.

[Tom for equal rights]

Same good example with the japanese and germans
for the most part - We destroyed the culture of war the permeated the Japanese and german culture.

destroying the culture is the only long term solution

[Nige]

A few decades of peace and co-operation can really work miracles.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You're responding to someone who doesn't give any fucks whether Palestinian civilians die.

He thinks they should all just get up and leave, and does not consider whether they actually can do so. Notice how he's such a fucking hateful bigot that he won't even refer to them as Palestinians.

[jb]

"Gaza civilians should leave Gaza immediately, however they can."

If you think Gaza civilians have any real ability to do this, you are deluding yourself:

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/bombardments-hit-area-gaza-sinai-border-crossing-gaza-officials-2023-10-10/

[Frank Drackman]

They can fly those fucking paragliders into the Sinai, I'm sure the Egyptians will welcome them with open arms.
Or some kind of arms.

[Bob from Ohio]

"They can fly those fucking paragliders into the Sinai,"

Yes. Some of them can swim, they can swim a few mile to Egyptian territory too.

[Frank Drackman]

I know, but c'mon man, don't the fish/whales/dophines have enough trouble with plastic, Sharks, Fishermen without having thousands of stinky A-rabs polluting the Med?

[Jacob Grimes]

The crossings reopened almost immediately. We've seen what deliberate Israeli targeting of an area looks like. This wasn't it. The IDF said it's targeting tunnels, which you know Hamas uses and which certainly exist between Gaza and Egypt.

[Martinned]

But it looks like Egypt isn't particularly welcoming: https://www.reuters.com/world/egypt-discussing-plans-provide-aid-gaza-under-limited-ceasefire-security-sources-2023-10-11/

Presumably that's because Hamas are an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and because they reckon that any Palestinian that crosses the border will never been allowed to return.

[Harvey Mosley]

You mean Gaza has a border that Israel doesn't control? And that somehow makes Israel responsible for the Gazans having no way out?

[jb]

Literally no one (in this thread) said that. This discussion was in response to the "people in Gaza should just go somewhere else", which is completely delusional. Who cares if it's Egypt's or Israel's fault? They still have nowhere to go.

[Nelson]

"Not to worry John F Carr, Israel will shortly begin the ground campaign, systematically pursue Hamas members, and kill them."

This is a situation where Hamas has perpetrated atrocities (yet again) and proved (yet again) that they are barbaric terrorists.

The concern is that, in their rage over that barbarism, Israel will take a "kill 'em all, let God sort them out" approach, surrendering their moral high ground and acting more like terrorists than a military force with ample justification for their actions.

Hamas (and Hezbollah and dozens of other state-backed militias) are abhorrent. They are terrorists, full stop. None of what they do is justified, since they target civilians and non-combatants.

But I fear that Israel will throw away the support they have now in a rush for vengeance, surrendering long-term benefit for short-term catharsis. I hope that gear is unfounded.

[Brett Bellmore]

The idea that it's even possible for Israel to lose the moral high ground in going after Hamas is mistaken, it fails to come to grips with just how awful Hamas actually is. Hell, they could go into Gaza and just randomly kill people, and they'd retain the moral high ground by just not raping them first!

The real concern here is giving anti-Semites cover, not losing the moral high ground. Giving them enough of an excuse that they can obfuscate where they're actually coming from.

But I think even that over-estimates how concerned the anti-Semites are with pretending they aren't anti-Semitic, at this point. They're not really in hiding anymore.

[Nige]

'The idea that it’s even possible for Israel to lose the moral high ground in going after Hamas is mistaken,'

It really is post 9/11 all over again. One atrocity justifies anything.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The idea that Israel -- after years of right-wing belligerence, religious bigotry, and parasitism -- holds moral high ground is obsolete.

[bernard11]

Moral high ground is not measured solely by comparison with Hamas.

[Commenter_XY]

Nelson, you are correct. The challenge for Israel will be maintaining world support while physically obliterating Hamas. Having a unified government in Israel (I personally would like to see Lapid and Lieberman join the coalition government for the war) is very important. It ensures a very consistent message.

I am biased, but I am certain that the IDF is guided by a higher set of principles and respect for life, than Hamas. I do not believe the IDF would deliberately target civilians for the sake of just killing civilians. Or mutilate their dead bodies for sport. Or burn them alive. Never. That would be completely antithetical to everything Torah teaches, regarding conduct in war. Will Gaza civilians die? Yes. Their deaths are regrettable and lamentable. That is an unfortunate part of war. I wish it were not this way.

I can appreciate the linkage of Hamas to ISIS. It is apt. To me, Hamas is Amalek. There is no co-existence with Hamas.

[Nelson]

"I am certain that the IDF is guided by a higher set of principles and respect for life, than Hamas"

I agree, but that's a very low bar. Hamas are barbarians and terrorists, which the IDF will never be. My fear is that, like some US soldiers in Vietnam, frustration and anger will cause some soldiers to do reprehensible things that will hurt Israel's position on the moral high ground.

Mai Lai isn't what the US military embodies, but it's used to this day to tarnish them and our country.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Bingo. Israel has exhibited a strong appetite for shitty conduct, including disgusting and unwarranted violence against innocents. Those who ignore or welcome that are lousy people.

[Nige]

'Their deaths are regrettable and lamentable.'

Well of course they are. The idea that Palestinians might view these deaths the way anyone sane views the Hamas atrocities is just inconceivable.

[Nelson]

It's not how the Palestinians view it that moves the needle. For better or for worse, the assumption that Israelis overwhelmingly think they are justified and the Palestinians overwhelmingly think Hamas was justified is baked in.

The moral high ground is basically the consensus perception of the rest of the world. And right now the rest of the world, justifiably, sees Hamas as barbaric terrorists and Israel as justified in hunting down and eliminating Hamas.

There is nothing the Palestinians can do to make what Hamas did seem justified. The attack and their actions were too brutal and inhuman. But if Israel overreacts they will be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being just as barbaric.

If they keep their discipline, this could permanently cripple the cause of a separate Palestinian state on Israel's border. I have always been a supporter of a Palestinian state and a vocal opponent of Israel's settlements, especially the fact that they populate those settlements with the most extreme Ultraorthodox Jews, virtually assuring nonstop conflict.

I'm not any more. Unless the Palestinian leadership completely disavows Hamas and publicly condemns this attack, they have lost all legitimacy. Some things require vocal and immediate approbation. Terrorism, targeting civilians, and killing captives in cold blood all qualify, and Hamas has either done or threatened all three.

[Nige]

Well, yes, sidelining the Palestinians and hemming them in in an open-air prison was not, I suggest, by itself, the best way to resolve the confict. Making these demands on the Palestinian leadership while Palestinian civilans are dying by the score is just arrogance. I’d love to see them do it, and if there’s a miraculous move towards some sort of peace process, it’ll be a precondition I’m sure, but otherwise I suspect it won’t slow a single Israeli bomb.

As is often the case in situations of extended low-level conflict, going against the more violent and ruthless groups ostensibly on your side isn't very good for the health.

[Nelson]

I never suggested "sidelining" Palestinians. I pointed out that the opinions of both Palestinians and Israelis are largely irrelevant to determining who has the morally superior position.

The fact that Israel has blockaded Gaza for 16 years is obviously a point against Israel. But the tolerance, if not encouragement, by the Palestinian government of Hamas constantly launching rockets into Israel puts the in a bad light, since raining unguided rockets on civilians is considered pretty awful. Then Hamas steps up the barbarism with an attack like this?

How do you think the world is going to perceive a government that has made no effort to reign in the terrorists that are so far beyond the pale to anyone with even a rudimentary moral compass?

[Nige]

The hardest part of a peace process is to stop vying for the moral high ground. Well, no, all the parts of a peace process are hard, and that is one of them. Truth and reconciliation is not sexy, but it does the hard grind of airing grievances without turning into slagging matches. Obviously we are even further away from that than ever, but the lesson of 9-11 is that people will take the moral high ground and do appalling things with it.

I don’t think the world really views the Palestinians as having much a functioning society, economy or political system, largely because the current Israeli regime doesn’t really want them to have one. It's the sort of place where there is little that can be done about well-armed, well-funded groups of ruthless bastards.

[Nelson]

"The hardest part of a peace process is to stop vying for the moral high ground."

No principal strives for the moral high ground. As I pointed out, it is entirely external to the main parties. Each will always assume they have it, so it falls to others to point out which party (or possibly neither) has it.

"Truth and reconciliation is not sexy"

Truth and reconciliation is for governments. Hamas has shown themselves to be outside the borders of civilized and rational behavior. Unless the political arm of Hamad disassociates from the terrorists, they won't have the necessary legitimacy to negotiate anything.

"largely because the current Israeli regime doesn’t really want them to have one"

That is actually the exact opposite of what several former military leaders admitted to soon after the attack. The Israeli belief was that having Hamas as the governing power was beneficial to Israel. They were badly mistaken.

"It’s the sort of place where there is little that can be done about well-armed, well-funded groups of ruthless bastards."

Considering the government and the ruthless bastards are the same group and the government never stopped (and, in fact, aided) the repeated rocket attacks on Israel, no one is shocked that the terrorists were able to thrive.

[shawn_dude]

Israel's fear and frustration with terrorists has led them to elect an authoritarian government to protect them. That government is going to respond accordingly. At some point, they may start to look more like Russia than Ukraine in the way they treat the weaker nation.

[Nelson]

I disagree. Look at the pushback that authoritarian and his religious zealot allies have gotten from the military for trying to destroy the independent judiciary.

I think that average Israeli is very aware of what they stand for as a nation. They take democracy and freedom very seriously. Often more seriously than we do because they are an island of liberalism in the region and constantly under threat from authoritarian regimes.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Israel has a shitty government, a years-long record of shitty conduct, and plenty of parasitic, delusional citizens. That reflects quite poorly on the average Israeli.

[David Nieporent]

Now he's openly spouting Nazi rhetoric.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You are a fine shill for Netanyahu and Israel’s right-wing misconduct . . . and part of the reason Israel is deservedly losing American support.

[David Nieporent]

Israel, much to your chagrin, is not losing American support.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Many Republicans probably didn't foresee losing the educated voters.

Many Democrats probably didn't foresee losing the South.

If you think the modern American mainstream is going to continue to subsidize Israel's immoral, violent, right-wing belligerent and shitty, bigoted, authoritarian right-wing government . . . good luck with that. Israel's right-wing assholes aligned with the losing end of the American culture war and the wrong side of America's moral trajectory, which should -- and I believe will -- generate important consequences.

[Nige]

'That reflects quite poorly on the average Israeli.'

Same logic is being used to pre-emptively justify however many Palistinian civilians are going to die. Be better.

[Nelson]

Pithy comments from the safety of a country not being attacked by terrorists is callous and smug. Be better.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You figure that voting for Netanyahu and sticking with a shitty, authoritarian right-wing government and its brutal, un-American practices doesn't reflect poorly on the average Israeli?

Why not?

[Nige]

'Pithy comments'

Tell me I'm wrong.

'Why not?'

I prefer to take each Israeli as they come not treat them as an undifferentiated mass.

[Nelson]

"Tell me I’m wrong."

You're wrong.

[Nige]

Set myself up for that.

[Brett Bellmore]

"According to one report, two members of Hamas leadership are among over 1,100 people killed in Gaza. Not a good batting average."

What, you think Hamas has only "leadership", no soldiers?

[Dr. Ed 2]

There is (or was) a Hamas Chapter at UMass Amherst.

It's an organization that is far more extensive than a lot of people realize.

[David Nieporent]

Sure there was.

[Brett Bellmore]

Eh, they call themselves "Students for Justice in Palestine", but that's what they actually are, if you look at what they do and say.

[Nelson]

So they're a completely different organization, but they're the same? Overgeneralize much, Brett?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

It's much like the racists, superstitious gay-haters, gape-jawed immigrant-bashers, old-timey misogynists, backwater Islamophobes, chanting antisemites, and vestigial white supremacists call themselves the Federalist Society, the Republican Party, etc.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

According to one report

There's your first problem.

, two members of Hamas leadership are among over 1,100 people killed in Gaza.

So Hamas "leadership" are the only valid targets?

Not a good batting average.

Batting averages for a single inning don't mean anything.

[Frank Drackman]

Hopefully thousands of Arab Terrorists are killed today (“Die” is such a mealy-mouth word, “22 Americans’s “Died” in Israel” Oh, they “Died”?? Cancer? Heart Attack? Stroke? Machine Gunned with an AK-47??) I’m not in the IDF (My Hebrew’s even worse than my Engrish) but I hope they’re showing the guys the opening scene from “Patton” as if they need any more motivation.

Frank “That’s as Kind and Gentle as you’ll get today”

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I hope the people who invaded Israel and attacked Israelis are strenuously held to account.

[DaveM]

2 million people is a very large number. Sorting out combatants from non-combatants is obviously going to take a very long time. A massive ground offensive is clearly needed, this can't be done at arm's length. The strip will need to be progressively partitioned as they clear the militants and terrorists out.

Maybe the non-combatant Palestinians can be resettled in Iran. They want to pay for war, let them pay for peace.

I sure hope the Israelis were watching the US as we messed up the overthrow of Iraq. We never put a lot of thought into what we'd do after we'd won, and it turned out winning only took a couple of months.

[Nelson]

Wait, nation-building doesn't work? Shocking.

[Nige]

'They want to pay for war, let them pay for peace. '

Collective responsibility for thee, not for me.

[Frank Drackman]

Like the Door Gunner said in one of my favorite movies, "Full Metal Jacket"
"Any one who runs is Hamas. Any one who doesn't run is a Well-Disciplined Hamas"

Frank "Git Sum!"

[John F. Carr]

Axe-wielding January 6 defendant Shane "Skullet" Jenkins was sentenced to seven years after the prosecutor asked the judge to think about what he might do if Donald Trump were convicted of a crime.

[Mr. Bumble]

"Minority Report" territory?

[Mr. Bumble]

Wonder how the courts will treat the knife wielding Jan. 6 prosecutor who actually stabbed someone?

[Brett Bellmore]

Jan. 6 Lawyer Accused of Stabbing Man Gets Better Bail Than Capitol Rioters

"Scruggs was released from the Pinellas County Jail on Tuesday evening after posting the $65,000 bail. He posted it before an advisory hearing so his bond doesn't include any conditions, but it's possible a motion will be filed to add conditions at a later date."

Former federal prosecutor charged with stabbing after road rage incident

"Scruggs was arrested by FHP and was charged with Aggravated Battery, Aggravated Assault and Burglary of an Occupied Convenience.

Scruggs posted bond and was released from the Pinellas County Jail just before midnight."

No word since then that I can find, so far as I know he's still out on bond, with no conditions.

[Nelson]

What is your point? That all criminals should be treated the same? Good luck with that.

Trying to excuse J6 criminals by saying "yeah, but" about a different criminal doesn't work because it's a terrible argument.

[Brett Bellmore]

I had no point except to provide Mr. Bumble with relevant data.

At this point we know he got better treatment in terms of bail than a lot of the rioters on Jan 6th did. But for all I know he'll go to trial and they'll make a real example of him.

Or not. Something we should follow.

"Trying to excuse J6 criminals by saying “yeah, but” about a different criminal doesn’t work because it’s a terrible argument."

Yeahnope. We're not talking about excusing people who committed crimes, but instead about disparate treatment people got while they were still just accused of crimes.

Generally much less violent crimes than Scuggs'.

[Noscitur a sociis]

At this point we know he got better treatment in terms of bail than a lot of the rioters on Jan 6th did.

Do you think he fact that he was charged with a different crime in a different state under a different system with different rules might play some role in the different treatment?

[Brett Bellmore]

When it was a much more violent crime? No, I don't.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Are you seriously saying you expect bail decisions in state court in Florida to work the same way as in federal court in DC?

[Frank Drackman]

You probably got a hard on typing that. 1 out of millions isn't a great "Batting Average" (See what I did there? I threw your stupid anal-ology back in your face, that's what we Jews do)
"I kid the Palestinians, but they're not the swiftest Swords in the Sheath, I heard that last week a bunch of them threw hand grenades at some Israeli Soliders. The Israelis pulled the pins and threw them back!, but seriously folks, Ilhan Omar, what's going on under that Turban? probably has a whole Hamas Sleeper Cell there!"

[Commenter_XY]

I have a question you might be able to answer John F Carr….

Has there ever been a study of whether Judges have been swayed at closing arguments and summation, to increase (or decrease) the sentence of a guilty defendant, based on the summation?

In other words, maybe a judge enters the courtroom that morning thinking, “You know what, that [insert name of defendant] guy/gal, I’ve listened to the evidence, and think that 4 years is appropriate”. Then upon hearing the summation, increases the sentence to seven years for no other reason than inflamed passions (from a compelling summation by prosecutor).

Has this ever been looked at? Measured? Is it really ‘a thing’? Do judges get influenced sufficiently at summation to increase (or decrease?) sentences ‘on the spot’?

I am just curious about that, not alleging anything like that happened in the Jenkins case.

[John F. Carr]

I have heard of occasional defendants mouthing off in state court and being punished for that. I have not heard of any studies on the effect of victim impact statements, tearful apologies, and demands from the prosecutor. In the federal system the judge has had time to consider sentencing recommendations. If the defendant comes from a broken home or did the same thing to his ex, the judge has considered it before the formal hearing starts.

Like most defendants at contested sentencing hearings, Mr. Jenkins got less than the prosecutor asked for.

This is his case: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59763797/united-states-v-jenkins/
I have not read the sentencing memoranda. I posted because I thought it was interesting that the prosecutor cited Trump as a reason to imprison Jenkins.

[John F. Carr]

The most serious of his many crimes, according to the prosecutor, is smashing a window with an axe. That is a terrorist act. The other misdemeanors and felonies are not. See pages 23-24 of the government's sentencing memorandum on the docket I liked above.

[Michael P]

Prosecutors across the country must really be failing at their jobs of they're not charging more people with terrorism for using a dangerous tool to break windows.

Or maybe you're wrong about "smashing a window with an axe" being terrorism.

[John F. Carr]

I gave a citation to my source.

Politico discussed the great scope of the sentencing enhancements for terrorism last year: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/04/doj-domestic-terrorism-sentences-jan-6-526407

[Michael P]

And? That article agrees with me.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

smashing a window with an axe. That is a terrorist act.

Only in your fevered imagination.

I gave a citation to my source.

No you didn't. You pasted a link to a page with absolutely no mention of "terror" in any form, and links for downloading 107 separate PDF documents.

Politico discussed the great scope of the sentencing enhancements for terrorism last year: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/04/doj-domestic-terrorism-sentences-jan-6-526407

I don't see where that says anything like your claim that breaking a window with an axe is an act of terrorism, nor support your claim in any way.

[John F. Carr]

There is only one government's sentencing memorandum on the page I listed. Quoting from the pages I listed:

Count Five: 18 U.S.C. § 1361 – Destruction of Government Property
The defendant used a metal tomahawk to attack a window next to the LWT tunnel of the United States Capitol Building.
...
Adjustment (Terrorism)
Pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 3A1.4(a): “If the offense is a felony that involved, or was intended to promote, a federal crime of terrorism, increase by 12 levels; but if the resulting offense level is less than 32, increase to level 32”
A “federal crime of terrorism” is defined in 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5) and means an offense that “is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct” and is a violation of an enumerated statute, such as 18 U.S.C. § 1361. Judge Kelly recently held that this enhancement applied to the Offense Level calculation for violations of § 1361 in the Proud Boys cases See, e.g., United States v. Nordean, 21-cr-175 (TJK)
Jenkins committed his crimes on January 6 in an effort to stop or delay Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote, as charged in Count 2. The defendant’s attack on the window and LWT tunnel entrance were specifically part of an effort to get inside the Capitol Building in order to stop or delay Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote. His intent was to intimidate members of Congress and the Vice President and thereby affect the conduct of the government.

Terrorism under the guidelines covers acts such as smashing windows with a political motive.

Based on the low sentence, the judge likely declined to apply the requested enhancement.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

There is only one government’s sentencing memorandum on the page I listed.

Which was the 85th entry on the page. You didn't exactly link to the information you're referencing.

[Commenter_XY]

Thanks for the complete response. It was something I thought about. Mostly because of Professor Volokh's post on that mentally and morally confused college student whose employment offer was pulled. I wondered if there had ever been a rigorous study on how often people had that happen, because of expressed political belief.

When I saw your post this morning, I wondered if that had ever been looked at in a rigorous, systematic way for judges. I am not saying it happens a lot, but it does happen and we should know how often (and why).

How could one even go about doing that study? I am pretty swift with some stat packages, that is something that would interest me greatly.

[John F. Carr]

Most likely you need field work, reading transcripts and interviewing judges and lawyers. This isn't like major league baseball where a standardized set of statistics has been recorded since forever.

One of the January 6 defendants made statements after sentencing that undermined his claimed regret. Did he lose his plea deal over that? I didn't follow the rest of the story.

[David Nieporent]

Has there ever been a study of whether Judges have been swayed at closing arguments and summation, to increase (or decrease) the sentence of a guilty defendant, based on the summation?

Nit: I think you mean to ask about arguments made at the sentencing hearing. Summation is before there's even a verdict.

[Commenter_XY]

Yeah, I gotta learn that stuff. Thx!

[Commenter_XY]

David, is there a special latin term or something for 'arguments at the sentencing hearing'?

[Noscitur a sociis]

No.

[John F. Carr]

There is "allocution" for the defendant's statement, which is only a part of the hearing.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I’ve certainly had judges say they were influenced (in both directions) by what happened at the hearing. Which is how it’s supposed to work, obviously, and why there isn’t really any way to conduct the study you’re interested in: most judges will say that they don’t make up there minds beforehand (some of them are probably even telling the truth!), much less provide that data in a way it can be statistically analyzed.

[Commenter_XY]

See, that actually surprises me = I’ve certainly had judges say they were influenced (in both directions) by what happened at the hearing. Which is how it’s supposed to work, obviously, and why there isn’t really any way to conduct the study you’re interested in: most judges will say that they don’t make up there minds beforehand (some of them are probably even telling the truth!), much less provide that data in a way it can be statistically analyzed.

See, I would have thought the judge would have made a decision already, before walking in the courtroom. In a sentencing hearing, what 'new' things come out to change their minds that weren't litigated during trial?

[not guilty]

"In a sentencing hearing, what ‘new’ things come out to change their minds that weren’t litigated during trial?"

Many things. For example, the defendant may have criminal history, unrelated to the instant charges, that was not brought out at trial. Victim impact may not have been fully vetted at trial. A defendant may want to present facts which were insufficient to constitute a defense, but which mitigate his culpability or the severity of the conviction offense. The defendant's background and social history, for good or for bad, may have been irrelevant at trial. Where the defendant did not testify at trial, the sentencing hearing may allow him to present mitigating evidence, whether directly related to the conviction offense or not.

[David Nieporent]

Many things. For example, the defendant may have criminal history, unrelated to the instant charges, that was not brought out at trial. Victim impact may not have been fully vetted at trial. A defendant may want to present facts which were insufficient to constitute a defense, but which mitigate his culpability or the severity of the conviction offense. The defendant’s background and social history, for good or for bad, may have been irrelevant at trial. Where the defendant did not testify at trial, the sentencing hearing may allow him to present mitigating evidence, whether directly related to the conviction offense or not.

And, of course, he may express remorse — or not.

[Absaroka]

I dunno how common it is, but suppose Billy-Bob was remorseful at trial, pledging to never do anything bad again, but at sentencing he loses his temper during the victim's statement and shouts 'I'm glad I did it and when I get out I'll do it again!'. That might cause a reasonable judge to revise the previously lenient sentence upward.

[apedad]

DOJ release on Jenkins' sentencing: https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/texas-man-sentenced-felony-and-misdemeanor-charges-actions-during-jan-6-capitol-breach-0

[Dr. Ed 2]

There is an interesting First Amendment issue brewing in Massachusetts. It involves a blogger/journalist named Turtleboy who has broken several major stories about the Massachusetts State Police -- one involving an attempt to cover up the OUI arrest of a judge's daughter, another involving a high-ranking trooper hiring his girlfriend as a trooper even though she'd been convicted of perjury and money laundering in her prior relationship with a drug dealer -- that scandal took out most of the MSP command.

His blog is at: https://tbdailynews.com/

Well, a Boston police officer was found frozen to death (hypothermia) in a snowbank, with other injuries. The official version is that his intoxicated girlfriend backed into him and then left him to die and she's charged with second degree murder with a trial scheduled for the spring. Turtleboy essentially alleges that what actually happened was that the officer was involved in a fight inside the house, bitten by a dog there, and then dragged outside to die -- this was at night in the midst of a snowstorm.

In my opinion, Turtleboy's explanaton of what happened is far more consistent with the available evidence, and there is rumor of a Federal Grand Jury investigating the nine people who were in the house that night, most of whom are police and/or politically connected. Allegedly, none of them saw anything.

Yesterday, Turtleboy was arrested and charged with "interfering with a witness" even though -- according to the Commonwealth -- there were no witness to the crime. They confiscated (and kept) both his phone and his laptop.

In addition to this not passing the smell test (and the rumored Federal Grand Jury), this raises an interesting First Amendment issue because it's widely believed that his sources include police officers. That is a given with the two earlier stories, honest MSP troopers were p*ssed that the boss's girlfriend was not only hired but immediately promoted to the coveted K-9 unit without spending the required time in grade -- and the attempt to cover up the drug OUI arrest of the judge's daughter involved an attempt to destroy the careers of two honest cops.

So seizing his cellphone and laptop not only silences him (until he can buy new ones) but allows a warrantless investigation into his sources -- or the suspicion that there was one. And arresting a journalist who writes things you don't like inherently doesn't pass the smell test.

Like I said, an interesting First Amendment issue....

[John F. Carr]

I was very concerned but the article I read had no information on how he allegedly interfered with a witness. There is at least a slight chance that he did something that would land him in trouble even if the police were not out to get him.

When I first heard about the charges I assumed that a traffic accident was charged as a more serious crime because a police officer was the victim.

[John F. Carr]

To clarify, when I first heard about the murder charges.

[Dr. Ed 2]

As I understand it, she was initially charged with OUI/Manslaughter and it was later upgraded to the 2nd Degree murder, for unexplained reasons.

As to TB, the only think I can think of is getting people to run plates for him, but that would be the persons who did it more than him. See: https://tbdailynews.com/canton-coverup-part-167-detective-yuri-bukhenik-got-a-warrant-for-a-turtle-riders-phone-to-see-if-they-ran-license-plates-for-turtleboy/

[apedad]

‘Turtleboy’ blogger arrested for witness intimidation, jury tampering in Karen Read case

https://lawandcrime.com/crime/turtleboy-blogger-arrested-for-witness-intimidation-jury-tampering-in-karen-read-case/

More details.

[Michael P]

What details does that add? It doesn’t talk about what supposedly qualified as witness intimidation, what they supposedly witnessed, or how public advocacy like “Free Suspect X” media impermissibly taints a jury pool.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Yesterday, Turtleboy was arrested and charged with “interfering with a witness” even though — according to the Commonwealth — there were no witness to the crime.

Should be a short trial then!

(Seriously, even you’re not dumb enough to think that “witness” here means “someone who directly observed the offense being committed” rather than “someone who will testify at the trial”, right?)

In addition to this not passing the smell test (and the rumored Federal Grand Jury), this raises an interesting First Amendment issue because it’s widely believed that his sources include police officers.

This is not at all an interesting first amendment issue. Or even an uninteresting one.

So seizing his cellphone and laptop not only silences him (until he can buy new ones) but allows a warrantless investigation into his sources — or the suspicion that there was one.

What makes you think there is a warrantless anything?

[Magister]

Seriously, even you’re not dumb enough to think that

Dr. Ed 2 regularly exceeds expectations about his dumbness.

[Michael P]

The EU wants to make social media prohibitively expensive to operate, so only rich people can afford to use it: https://twitter.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1711837984293630265

[Frank Drackman]

Wow! sort of like our Marxist Stream News Media/DemoKKKrats are trying to do with Cars!

Frank "C'mon Man, you can't afford an $80,000 Electric F150? too bad!"

[Martinned]

So you're a fan of antisemitic misinformation? Why do you hate Israel so much, particularly now?

[Michael P]

Try to address what I actually wrote instead of making shit up, you Hamas-defending, decapitation-denying pond scum.

[Martinned]

I might do that once you extend me the same courtesy.

[Michael P]

You've done exactly what I said. https://reason.com/volokh/2023/10/10/two-law-school-deans-on-the-massacre-in-israel/?comments=true#comment-10270267

[Martinned]

That comment, which pointed to the actual evidence that did and did not exist, was in no way "Hamas-defending".

[Michael P]

Strictly speaking, that was just you denying that Hamas decapitated babies. Your defense of Hamas consists of a whole suite of denials that they are as culpable as they actually are, spread across that entire thread and others this week.

[Martinned]

consists of a whole suite of denials that they are as culpable as they actually are

Care to give an example? Because this, too, is a figment of your imagination, I'm afraid. I have never said anything of the sort.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Speaking of liars, how have you been lately Michael?

Martinned has not defended any action of Hamas. You, as you always have been, are full of shit.

[Michael P]

Turn off your projection, champ.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

It can't be projection when your propensity to lie your ass off is proven a few lines above your response.

By all means though, please demonstrate where I have ever lied, lest anyone somehow presume that your accusation is yet another one of yours.

[Michael P]

What a great example of your being dishonest and full of shit. You pretend that your ignorance and wrongheadedness means somebody else is lying, and then can't figure out why you get criticized for so much hot air.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

I see a lot of finger-pointing without an iota of evidence, Michael.

Try again (with links this time) to identify anything I've ever said which was a lie.

I know you can't, and I know you aren't man enough to admit as much.

[Michael P]

Also, the evidence that Hamas beheaded those babies absolutely exists. People posted a lot of pointers in response to you. Someone more honest than you might have posted in that thread to say "I was wrong; evidence of what I Callahan said existed before he posted his comment, and I allowed myself to be misled by slimy war-crime deniers."

[Martinned]

As they were welcome to. Occasionally having a conversation about whether there is actual evidence behind various claims isn't the worst thing.

[Michael P]

Where does "acting like a Holocaust denier" rank on the list of worst things?

[Martinned]

Why do you ask? Are you under the impression that I've ever denied the Holocaust?

[Michael P]

You were acting very much like a Holocaust denier in how you latched on to a single argument to reject contrary evidence about atrocities, especially after people pointed out the internal inconsistencies and problems in that argument.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think he fairly described you, though I might dispute that you're pond scum, which serve an important role in our ecosystem.

[Martinned]

For the record, Breton has written to Meta too: https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1712126600873931150

[VinniUSMC]

“To Elon Musk: Stop ignoring us”

“To Mark Zuckerberg: Thank you for your continued cooperation”

To EU: Fuck off

To martin: Fuck off Nazi scum. I think you'd have more success talking to Misek.

[Martinned]

And Breton has now written to Tiktok as well: https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1712472108222329056

[Nelson]

"The EU wants to make social media prohibitively expensive to operate, so only rich people can afford to use it:"

That isn't at all what your link indicates. You seem to be manufacturing motives for others that aren't supported by evidence. Why is that?

[John F. Carr]

According to Wikipedia, the Digital Services Act mainly applies to platforms with more than 45 million EU users. You need to be rich to run such a platform.

I don't know if the prohibition on politically unsound content applies to smaller companies.

[Martinned]

The DSA is here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/2065/oj

What it does isn't to introduce new substantive regulation, but to require platforms to take down content that is already illegal based on other legislation (typically Member State level legislation). Depending on the size of the platform, it is required to have more or less advanced processes in place to sort that out. (Simplifying slightly.)

[Michael P]

Google is strongly on one side of cancel culture. https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/11/google-nukes-college-terror-list-naming-students-who-support-hamas/

[John F. Carr]

Some guy tweeted that Google deleted the document. A 404 error is not proof that Google deleted the document.

[Michael P]

Look at his earlier post. Twitter's automated link handling saw that the document was there. Who do you think blocked or deleted the document?

[David Nieporent]

1) The Federalist's headline shows the careful attention to detail that the visual tabloid is famous for; the document listed student groups, not individual students.

2) Maybe the author. Maybe the author's girlfriend. How do any of us know? There's no evidence google had anything to do with deleting it, is there?

[jb]

Huh? Google taking down a list of names by someone trying to cancel them is somehow evidence that Google is on the side of cancel culture?

Maybe you want to make the argument that Google is pro-terrorist or something, but the cancel culture angle doesn't make any sense at all.

[Michael P]

You might remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shitty_Media_Men, which led to zero adverse actions or policy announcements by Google. That's why their reaction here shows which side of cancel culture they're on.

[jb]

I'm glad we're on the same page that the Site in question served roughly the equivalent function, which leads me to a few observations:

1) I supposed I misunderstood your original argument as being either pro or anti-cancel culture, but really you're just saying that you think cancel culture is fine, but you just want different people cancelled than Google. Which is an argument that makes sense, I guess, but probably not very interesting or persuasive to anyone who doesn't already agree with Michael P about which flavor of cancel culture is good.

2) If you bother to read the Wikipedia page you linked to, you'll see that the Shitty Media Men spreadsheet was up for about twelve hours, almost the exact same amount of time the Site listing pro-Hamas people was up. This hardly seems like evidence of bias by Google.

So, overall what we've learned here today is that Michael P is cool with cancel culture as long as it's cancelling the right people, and there's no evidence that Google has a particular bias one way or another on the topic.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Michael P has always been a partisan consumer of cancel culture information and conduct. Like most clingers.

[DaveM]

The missing document was stored on a sites.google.com subdomain. Google sites are user-created web pages. There is no evidence provided at all that Google removed that page. It is much more likely that the author removed it.

There are clearly students who are trying to distance themselves from this declaration of support for Hamas. On X, there are posts of people claiming the documents were signed without consulting members, and in some case, without even consulting the Boards overseeing the groups.

Ergo, the author taking down that list is by far the more likely explanation.

[Commenter_XY]

Those students will be identified, and they will deal with the social ostracism that comes out of their ill-considered actions.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Much like the right-wing bigots whose deserved ostracism generates such whining and wailing among culture war rejects at faux libertarian, conservative blogs.

[apedad]

‘Clearly dangerous to human life’: Texas gun store employee accused of murdering fleeing shoplifter he claimed to shoot in the back in self-defense

The Houston Police Department announced the indictment against (Mark Winger, the 58-year-old employee of Carter’s Country) on Monday, noting that when authorities were first called to the shooting scene they were told that Evans had a “sharp object” (initial reporting about the shooting based on police information described the incident as a “would-be robbery,” but the differences between robbery and theft are legally significant).

“HPD patrol officers responded to a business at the above address and found a man, later identified as Evans, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Officers were advised he entered the business, armed with a sharp object, opened the cash register, and stole money,” cops said this week. “Winger, an employee at the business, advised officers he shot the male in self-defense as the male was leaving the business.”

https://lawandcrime.com/crime/clearly-dangerous-to-human-life-texas-gun-store-employee-accused-of-murdering-fleeing-shoplifter-he-claimed-to-shoot-in-the-back-in-self-defense/

Looks like this'll turn on the legal difference between Theft and Robbery - and that the incident was not at night.

[Martinned]

Looks like this’ll turn on the legal difference between Theft and Robbery – and that the incident was not at night.
(...)
shoot in the back in self-defense

Hmmm...

[John F. Carr]

Under Texas law you are often allowed to shoot fleeing thieves in the back to recover your property. You don't have to get into a fair fight. Often. Not always. If the crime takes place in the daytime you can only shoot to kill if it is robbery or burglary and not if it is simple larceny.

[Martinned]

Under Texas law you are often allowed to shoot fleeing thieves in the back to recover your property.

These people are completely deranged.

[VinniUSMC]

Yeah, they should stop stealing. And in broad daylight, in Texas, no less. Oh, that's not what you meant. The thief should have just walked in and started decapitating people. That'll get martin's support for sure.

[Martinned]

You're right, we should definitely gun down criminals in the streets. That's definitely how a civilised society should work.

[Longtobefree]

Well, a truly civilized society would put the criminal's head on a pike outside the store for three days.

[Martinned]

Like I said, deranged.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Conservatives will change their tune when bigotry is criminalized.

[Brett Bellmore]

Typical that you didn't think it was the thief who was deranged.

[Martinned]

Typically thieves are just lazy.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Just" lazy? Really, being "just" lazy is enough to result in you hauling your lazy ass off to a gun store and robbing it at knife point?

Strange, being lazy usually results in me relaxing on the couch with a book. Maybe I'm not lazy enough to end up committing armed robbery?

Are you sure there aren't some moral deficiencies in operation here, too?

[SimonP]

The thief was perhaps "deranged" insofar as they should have been more careful to incapacitate and disarm any potential defenders of the property they're stealing, given how permissible it is to shoot someone in the back in "self-defense," in the state of Texas.

True to the cowboy image, at least, that.

[Nige]

No-one is claiming that a law that puts thieves in prison is deranged, just a law that allows someone to shoot another person in the back.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

These people are completely deranged

You know what's completely deranged? Trying to rob a gun store.

Stick to trying to defend Hamas.

[bernard11]

Under Texas law you are often allowed to shoot fleeing thieves in the back to recover your property.

First, was Winger the owner of the store? If not, it was hardly his property.

Second, Is there a lower limit on the value of the stolen property?

Third, we have only Winger's claim that the guy had a knife. Was it found?

Fourth, that law is insane.

[Noscitur a sociis]

First, was Winger the owner of the store? If not, it was hardly his property.

Under Texas law, a person can use force to protect another’s property if

(1) the actor reasonably believes the unlawful interference constitutes attempted or consummated theft of or criminal mischief to the tangible, movable property; or
(2) the actor reasonably believes that:
(A) the third person has requested his protection of the land or property;
(B) he has a legal duty to protect the third person's land or property; or
(C) the third person whose land or property he uses force or deadly force to protect is the actor's spouse, parent, or child, resides with the actor, or is under the actor's care.

Tex. Penal Code § 9.43.

Second, Is there a lower limit on the value of the stolen property?

No.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Under Texas law, a person can use force to protect another’s property if
.
(1) the actor reasonably believes the unlawful interference constitutes attempted or consummated theft of or criminal mischief to the tangible, movable property; or (2) the actor reasonably believes that: (A) the third person has requested his protection of the land or property; (B) he has a legal duty to protect the third person’s land or property; or (C) the third person whose land or property he uses force or deadly force to protect is the actor’s spouse, parent, or child, resides with the actor, or is under the actor’s care.

You omitted the first part of that statute, which requires justification under two other statutes as well:

A person is justified in using force or deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property of a third person if, under the circumstances as he reasonably believes them to be, the actor would be justified under Section 9.41 or 9.42 in using force or deadly force to protect his own land or property and

The sections in question:

Sec. 9.41. PROTECTION OF ONE’S OWN PROPERTY. (a) A person in lawful possession of land or tangible, movable property is justified in using force against another when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to prevent or terminate the other’s trespass on the land or unlawful interference with the property.
.
(b) A person unlawfully dispossessed of land or tangible, movable property by another is justified in using force against the other when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to reenter the land or recover the property if the actor uses the force immediately or in fresh pursuit after the dispossession and:
.
(1) the actor reasonably believes the other had no claim of right when he dispossessed the actor; or
.
(2) the other accomplished the dispossession by using force, threat, or fraud against the actor.

…and…

A person is justified in using deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property:
.
(1) if he would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.41;  and
.
(2) when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary:
.
(A) to prevent the other’s imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime;  or
.
(B) to prevent the other who is fleeing immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property;  and
.
(3) he reasonably believes that:
.
(A) the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means;  or
.
(B) the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.

[Brett Bellmore]

I could wish that the video of the robbery that they displayed had started at least a few seconds earlier. It doesn’t show what was happening before he opened the cash register, and that could easily be relevant.

“A person is justified in using force or deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property of a third person if, under the circumstances as he reasonably believes them to be, the actor would be justified under Section 9.41 or 9.42 in using force or deadly force to protect his own land or property and”

9.41 and 9.42 are alternate justifications, as I read this. You don’t have to satisfy both.

9.41: “(b) A person unlawfully dispossessed of land or tangible, movable property by another is justified in using force against the other when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to reenter the land or recover the property if the actor uses the force immediately or in fresh pursuit after the dispossession and: . (1) the actor reasonably believes the other had no claim of right when he dispossessed the actor;”

Fresh pursuit? Check Necessary to recover the property? Check. The actor reasonably believes the other had no claim of right when he dispossed the actor? Check.

“the other accomplished the dispossession by using force, threat, or fraud against the actor.” follows an “or”, which again means it’s an alternate justification.

So it appears to me the requirements of 9.41 are satisfied here. Given that first “or”, I don’t see how he has to satisfy 9.42, also.

****

I guess the distinction, then, is that 9.41 has to do with "force", and 9.42 to do with "deadly force". I initially missed that.

OK, hard to argue that shooting somebody in the back isn't deadly force. He should have kneecapped him.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Necessary to recover the property? Check.

That one might actually be in question. It could be reasonably argued that an attempt to demand return of the property at gunpoint was an alternative. I’m not making that argument, but it being made and a jury buying it wouldn’t be beyond the pale.

His bigger problem might be that his lying about shooting in self-defense destroys his credibility and casts doubt on anything he might claim to have reasonably believed at the time.

[Brett Bellmore]

" It could be reasonably argued that an attempt to demand return of the property at gunpoint was an alternative."

Right, while they're running away as fast as possible...

[Nelson]

The problem is that most people don't think a few bucks (or even a few hundred bucks) justifies shooting someone in the back.

The idea that deadly force is justified in response to any crime is problematic.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

My wording wasn't clear in my previous post when I said...

"requires justification under two other statutes as well"

That should have been something like, "also requires justification under one of two other statutes, depending on the level of force used".

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

First, was Winger the owner of the store? If not, it was hardly his property.

Which is not relevant here.

Third, we have only Winger’s claim that the guy had a knife. Was it found?

Also not relevant here.

[Frank Drackman]

Police indict people in Tay-Hoss?? Guess this is another case where I’m on my own personal Island (Frank-Largo, come by sometime, or better yet, don’t) I’d give the employee a medal for preventing future crimes by the piece of shit (people outside the store he would run into) maybe check to see if he used hollowpoints (good: don’t usually penetrate more than the target, do more damage than FMJ, bad: don’t penetrate body armor or even thick clothing/fat with lower powered calibers) Frank ” Here’s lookin’ at you kid Missing all the things we did We can find it once again, I know Just like they did in Frank Largo”

[hobie]

Carter's Country is the largest, most redneck gun store in Houston. That's a helluva place to rob. No one with itchy trigger fingers there

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

I'm not going to lose any sleep over the loss of yet another oxygen thief who didn't even value his own life, but the store employee is an idiot.

[Nelson]

Wait, this guy literally brought a knife to a gunfight? Why didn't the owner shoot him in the face instead of the back?

[Martinned]

The answer to the question of "cui bono?"

https://twitter.com/juliamacfarlane/status/1712412544462189015

[John F. Carr]

The leadership of Iran must be loving it, but how did they convince Hamas to do something so bad for Hamas and the Palestinians?

[Mr. Bumble]

Promise of 72 virgins after IDF kills them?

[Martinned]

Are you kidding me? This is excellent for the Palestinians and Hamas. Israel was busy establishing diplomatic relations with the gulf states, who were perfectly willing to ignore the Palestinians for a while. Now Arab public opinion is firmly on the Palestinian side again, putting relations between the gulf states and Israel back years. This benefits the Palestinians and Iran equally.

[Michael P]

If that claim about public opinion in the region is true, we should probably burn down the whole region and let people who aren't psychopaths take over.

[Martinned]

The US tried that already.

[Frank Drackman]

If turning Gaza into a parking lot is "Excellent for the Palestinians and Hamas" Just call me Frank Yasser Arafat Khomeni (Peace be upon me)

Frank "Hey! you didn't say they'd be 72 BOY Virgins!"

[John F. Carr]

The Palestinians are not better off with Gaza reduced to rubble.

[Mr. Bumble]

Don't worry. Ilya Somin will soon be advocating for their right to asylum in the US.

[Bob from Ohio]

"excellent for the Palestinians"

You are increasingly insane.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Are you kidding me? This is excellent for the Palestinians and Hamas. Israel was busy establishing diplomatic relations with the gulf states, who were perfectly willing to ignore the Palestinians for a while. Now Arab public opinion is firmly on the Palestinian side again, putting relations between the gulf states and Israel back years. This benefits the Palestinians and Iran equally.

You've said a lot of truly idiotic things here, but you may well have outdone yourself with this one.

[Martinned]

This happened within days of Hamas attacking: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/11/arab-ministers-urge-israel-to-resume-talks-on-two-state-solution

[Martinned]

And this: https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-arab-allies-navigate-israel-ties-pro-palestinian-public-opinion-as-war-erupts/

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

And...?

[Bob from Ohio]

Arab governments issuing statement to appease their rabid populations don't matter.

There is not going to be a "two state solution in the lifetime of anyone posting here. No Israeli government is going to allow an Arab state in either Gaza or Judea and Samaria after this. Too risky to have armed Arabs in either place.

[Martinned]

I don't think so either. Eventually Israel and Palestine will become some version of Northern Ireland or Bosnia. The irony is that the Israeli extremists who advocate annexing the occupied territories are bringing that outcome closer.

[Bob from Ohio]

"some version of Northern Ireland or Bosnia"

Nagorno-Karabakh is more likely

[Martinned]

The ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh is only happening because nobody cares about that region. As this comments thread amply demonstrates, that isn't true for Israel.

[Don Nico]

I doubt it was that hard

[Frank Drackman]

That's what SHE said!!!!!!
I crack myself up, I can't get
through a "Leave it to Beaver" episode
without falling over laughing

Frank "Ward! you were really hard on the Beaver last night!"

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

The leadership of Iran must be loving it, but how did they convince Hamas to do something so bad for Hamas and the Palestinians?

You're wondering how they were able to convince a mob of religious fanatics hell bent on genocide to do something really stupid?

[Krychek_2]

What is currently going on in the Middle East is yet another example of how religion poisons everything. On the one side, you have the Jews who say they are entitled to the land because God gave it to them. On the other side you have the Palestinians who say they are entitled to the land because Allah gave it to them, and furthermore, Allah wants them to kill Jews. And of course the Holocaust that led to the creation of Israel in the first place was simply the culmination of centuries of Christian anti-Semitism because Jews, after all, are Christ-killers.

It may be that without religion people would still find other reasons to hate each other. But religion sure isn't helping any.

[Michael P]

Surely you can produce a less specious moral equivalence than that, dude. Put some effort into it!

[VinniUSMC]

Anti-Semites throw all of their effort into killing Jews, not into making good arguments for why they need to kill the Jews.

[Krychek_2]

Michael, and Vinni, you're both idiots but pretty much everyone else here already knew that.

First, it's not a moral equivalence. Offering an explanation for *why* people do bad things is not a claim that the bad things are morally equivalent.

Second, when did I advocate for killing Jews?

[Michael P]

On the one side, you have the Jews who say they are entitled to the land because God gave it to them. On the other side you have the Palestinians who say they are entitled to the land because Allah gave it to them

That implicitly puts those two positions on equal footing, ignoring that one side has been a successful liberal democracy while the other has been a fascistic hellhole that bends all its resources to terrorism rather than the good of its citizenry. Nobody required you to put those claims on equal footing -- you chose that.

[Krychek_2]

In both cases the source of the irrational belief is the same. Doesn’t mean you always get the same results.

[Nelson]

"That implicitly puts those two positions on equal footing"

I don't see how that is the case. It's merely pointing out that both groups believe they have a religious justification for their position, not that the two groups are morally equivalent.

Religious justifications are inherently suspect, since they are based on the biases of their adherents. That's the point that was being made, not whether either group was justified in their beliefs.

[Nige]

'ignoring that one side has been a successful liberal democracy'

The US is a lberal democracy. That hasn't stopped you and your political ilk describing it as a fascist state committing evil acts against people.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If you think Israel is a successful liberal democracy, you might be a superstitious, partisan clinger — or just an uninformed, bigoted dumbass.

[Martinned]

Historically no amount of irreligiosity has protected Jews from antisemitism...

[shawn_dude]

That poses an interesting question. Is an atheist who grows up in a majority religious culture (choose any religion) going to hold some of the same cultural beliefs regardless of their lack of religion? I notice, for example, that people who leave Catholicism and Mormonism to become non-believers don't stray too far from those cultures despite lacking belief. So even if the reason for the cultural belief begins in religion, the religious faith isn't always required to hold that belief if you're raised in a society that broadly adheres to it.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Everything is better without superstition. Gullible children of all ages disagree.

[bernard11]

In recent times, by which I mean the past 150 years or so, this is partly to do with the fact that what was anti-Judaism was turned into antisemitism, which does not consider religious belief relevant.

This has the advantage, from the antisemite's point of view, of not allowing anyone to escape from opprobrium merely by converting.

[Nelson]

A lot of people (including a good number here) don't accept the fact that being Jewish is a racial description, not just a religious one. They don't accept that there is any such thing as a secular Jew, even when you bring up one of the most famous Jewish secular humanists, Albert Einstein.

[Martinned]

I don't agree. I think humans are perfectly capable of getting into centuries-long blood feuds without religion being involved. Azeris and Armenians have different religions, but that doesn't seem to enter into their dispute at all, for example.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Religion makes everything worse. That doesn’t mean things can stink without religion.

[Dr. Ed 2]

You do know that Jesus was a Jew -- don't you?

[Moderation4ever]

I am not sure the point you are trying to make here? The fact is that Christians religions have for many years held that it was the Jews killed Jesus. While it was a Roman execution the stories tell that Jewish mob called for Jesus to be crucified and that Pilate washed his hands and gave the mob what they wanted. So, Krychek_2 's point is correct.

[Frank Drackman]

I never got that part, 1: Hey-Zeus had to die to pay for our sins???(What "Sins"??? eating a friggin Apple??, and I wasn't even there, so eff you God) 2: If he does have to die to save Mankind from eternal Damnation (again, for eating a fucking Apple??), then why are you mad at the Jews for saving Mankind? (it's like all we do for the Goyim, Polio, umm, OK, I'm sure Einstein saved some lives with his explanation of Brownian Motion, )

Frank

[Krychek_2]

While I agree that the premise is absurd, the answer to your question is that if committing a murder prevents some other evil, the murder is still culpable for the murder. You don't get a free pass just because you can point to a beneficial side effect.

[apedad]

"Insightful as always."

(VinniUSMC said we can rate everyone's comment now.)

[VinniUSMC]

Now you listen me?

[apedad]

Even a stopped clock is right sometimes!

[Dr. Ed 2]

Corrupt INDIVIDUAL Jews killed Jesus.

Read the part about the money changers at the Temple -- Jesus was p*ssed because they weren't following Jewish law.

[Frank Drackman]

“Why didn’t he come down off the cross?” the second soldier asks. “He didn’t want to come down off the cross. That’s not his play,” the first suggests. “Show me a guy that doesn’t want to come down off the cross,”

100 Shekels to the first to identify the 1: Work, 2: Author

Frank

[BrotherMovesOn]

Man of Nazareth
Anthony Burgess

[Krychek_2]

But the problem is that in Matthews Gospel the Jews tell Pilate, “his blood be upon us and upon our children.” That verse has been widely quoted by Christian anti-semites ever since.

And again, I don’t believe it myself, but for people looking to the Bible to justify their anti-semitism, those passages are there.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The first readers of that Gospel probably thought the comeuppance of the Jews was referring to the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D.

But yes, there is a great deal in the New Testament that supports antisemitism. Certainly more than would support a condemnation of gay people or premarital sex.

[apedad]

NO HE WASN'T!

He was a goddamn, gun-toting, Christian, immigrant-hating AMERICAN.

AND he would have (and will vote for!) President Trump.

At least that's what some folks in Tennessippi are saying.

[VinniUSMC]

Insightful as always.

[Kazinski]

Really? I may have to reconsider my atheism.

[Bob from Ohio]

Bigot.

[apedad]

When you die (and I sincerely hope that's not for a very long time - because I want you to see the continued trend toward progressive ideals in our nation), are you going to regret that the only thing you did to halt this progression was to call some online doofus a "Bigot?"

[Bob from Ohio]

Been drinking?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

That might constitute a weak justification for believing that fairy tales are true.

What is your excuse?

(Those 12 and under, as always, get some slack in this regard, especially if afflicted by childhood indoctrination involving substandard parents.)

[VinniUSMC]

apedad's turning into Artie? That's one hell of a decline.

[Moderation4ever]

Religion is a common mechanism to hold people together and provide common values. We can point to many good things accomplished and facilitated by religions. This is especially true of charities that often have a religious foundation. The downside comes when individuals exploit the commonalities created to bend it to their will and use it for power. The tricky part is to keep the good and avoid the bad. That may be best done at a personal level. If your religion is telling you to do something you think is wrong, trust your judgement and walk away. God will not abandon you for questioning religious leaders.

[Krychek_2]

But religion colors people's judgments. Especially if they were taught religion before they were old enough to develop critical thinking skills. And religion does in fact make otherwise sane, rational people do crazy things.

One of the questions that ultimately led to me abandoning religion was asking myself, "If I were hearing this for the very first time as an adult, would I believe it?" to which the answer was no. I only believed religion as long as I did because it's what I had been taught as a small child.

[Dan Schiavetta]

True of me also.

E.g.

Jesus died for our sins? That makes no sense!

The scales fell from my eyes (ha) when I finally allowed myself to say that.

[Joe_dallas]

One of the five pillars of the muslim religion is Jihad

[Nelson]

For anyone who doesn't already suspect it, this is not true.

[Joe_dallas]

Nelson 1 min ago
Flag Comment Mute User
"For anyone who doesn’t already suspect it, this is not true."

Odd you would say that it wasnt true considering a large segment of the muslim population believes otherwise,

[Nelson]

You creating something out of thin air and saying it is one of the cornerstones of an entire religion (replacing, I suppose, one of the actual five pillars) with a billion adherents is as dishonest as it gets.

[Moderation4ever]

Never heard that, so tell me what are the five pillar of Islam?

[Krychek_2]

1. The profession of faith - there is one God, Allah is his name, and Mohammad is his prophet.

2. Praying five times a day.

3. The pilgrimage to Mecca

4. The giving of charity

5. Fasting during Ramadan.

So no, Jihad is not one of them.

[Moderation4ever]

Hope J_D reads this and learns something.

[Nelson]

There are two chances of that: fat and no.

[Nige]

Doc, Sleepy, Grumpy, Denial and Acceptance.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Joe_dallas proving to everyone for the umpteenth time that he's a weasel and a fucking liar.

https://www.google.com/search?q=five+pillars+of+the+muslim&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

1) Profession of faith.
2) Daily prayers.
3) Alms-giving.
4) Fasting during Ramadan.
5) Pilgrimage to Mecca.

[Life of Brian]

Just so you don't get flooded by nitpickers next time, Jihad is merely one of the ten Ancillaries of the Faith (aka the Ten Obligatory Acts of Shi’a Islam).

So it's only obligatory for a quarter billion or so. No biggie.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Do you understand that all fairy tales are fairy tales, or are you a selective consumer of silly fucking nonsense?

[Nelson]

If you want to get specific, let's get specific.

1) There are roughly 1.9 billion Muslims in the world.

2) Shia Islam is followed by 10–15% of all Muslims (so 190-285 million Shia).

3) The Ten Ancillaries are ascribed to by Twelver Shia Muslims, comprising 85% of all Shia (so 161.5-233.7 million Twelvers).

4) While Jihad is one of the Ten Ancillaries, it does not mean "holy war", nor is it necessarily about violence. It means "struggle". In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with God's guidance.

So your insinuation that a quarter of a billion Muslims support holy war against unbelievers is completely wrong. It would be like claiming all Christians are the same as the Lord's Resistance Army.

[Life of Brian]

OK, here come the fallback arguments. I found it interesting that nobody even tried to go down that path in the first round.

As I read it, all you're saying that the number of Twelvers is only at most 233 million instead of the quarter billion I estimated (#1-3), and that not all of them necessarily interpret Jihad as violence against unbelievers (#4).

There may well be more to the story (maybe that's the next round of fallback arguments?), but I'm not sure why this one would give me any particular comfort.

[Nige]

Can't comfort someone set on scaring themselves.

[Nelson]

"As I read it, all you’re saying that the number of Twelvers is only at most 233 million instead of the quarter billion I estimated (#1-3), and that not all of them necessarily interpret Jihad as violence against unbelievers (#4)."

No, I was saying that almost none of them interpret jihad to mean holy war. That is an accusation that is dominated by non-Muslims.

The idea of an armed stuggle against unbelievers is a particularly ancient interpretation. Like interpreting everything in the New Testament through an Old Testament lens. It isn't unheard of, but most Christians do it the other way around.

It isn't a "fallback argument". The idea that there are a quarter billion Muslims who believe holy war is the proper interpretation of one of the cornerstones of their religion is ridiculous on its face.

The ceiling (if you use the max on every estimate and believe that 100% of Twelvers interpret "jihad" as "holy war", which is patently ridiculous) is 233 million. The reality is that it is a fringe position of maybe 5% of the Twelver sect of the Shia branch of the Muslim faith.

Claiming Muslims, writ large, believe that holy war is a cornerstone of their religion is pure, unadulterated bullshit. It is the most obvious way to view the situation, not any sort of "fallback".

At this point the analogy we're talking about is equivalent to the Amish subsect of the Protestant branch of the Christian faith (which, for those who love historical trivia, was the first Protestant subsect after Lutheranism). So basically a vanishingly small, but well-known, subset of a subsect.

[Life of Brian]

The ceiling (if you use the max on every estimate and believe that 100% of Twelvers interpret “jihad” as “holy war”, which is patently ridiculous) is 233 million.

Yup. We clearly agree on that, through three posts now.

The reality is that it is a fringe position of maybe 5% of the Twelver sect of the Shia branch of the Muslim faith.

Well, I guess my sleep would marginally improve if only 10-15 million people in the world believe their god wants them to kill, maim, or otherwise compromise my life for my supposed heresy. But I'd love to hear more about your confidence in that number. Seems like a rather difficult polling exercise.

[Nelson]

Fearing that the Muslom equivalent of the Army of God is going to show up and kill you is rank paranoia. Characterizing the vast majority of Muslims who, like the vast majority of any other religion and the vast majority of nonbelievers, have zero desire to kill anyone is rank bigotry. And pretending that it's justified because you believe in defining words in a dishonest way is rank dishonesty.

Saying "See? The top estmate of 233 is almost 250, 100% isn't an unreasonable assumption, the word "jihad" is scary to ignorant people, and I don't sleep well at night because I'm a paranoid, dishonest bigot" says a lot about you and nothing about Muslims.

[Life of Brian]

OK, so given that when I politely inquired about the source of the 5% all you did was hurl invective and pound the table, I'm going with straight out of your ass.

[DaveM]

Yes, religion is so very problematic. We can't have people being taught to love one's neighbor as yourself, or that all people are created in God's image, or to do good, even if causes you to suffer, or to care for the widow and the orphan, or to understand that everyone is under an authority of some kind, so the most valuable personal characteristic to develop is humility.

Yes, we'd all be much better off under the kind of "humanitarian" ethics practiced by Communism, or the death cult value systems of groups like Hamas.

[Dan Schiavetta]

You're talking not about religion but about ethics.

Ethics pre-existed religion and will survive the end of it.

[DaveM]

Sorry, but secular humanism is a very recent philosophy that has no bottom. Once you get to meeting one's own needs, it has no motivating power at all, because it provides no reason to do more. Obviously concepts such as self-sacrifice, being created in God's image, and being under authority had to arise far upstream of humanism, and thus predate it by a very long time.

[Krychek_2]

I don't know that I would disagree with you that non-religious people have proven themselves any better at governance than religious people, but they certainly haven't proven themselves to be any worse.

And in the case of communism, well, the issue is communism rather than atheism. Had the old Soviet Union been run by libertarian atheists rather than communist atheists it would have looked a lot different.

[Dan Schiavetta]

In the Soviet Union Communism was their religion. It resembled, most of all, medieval Catholicism, with its inquisitions, its holy texts, its insistence on doctrinal purity, its punished heretics, its forced conversions of conquered peoples, and its palace intrigues.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Early religion was doing rain dances and offering human sacrifices to placate deities who punished the good and rewarded the bad. The idea that God is the source of what is good is a relatively new idea.

Ethics is a product of evolution. Even animals practice self-sacrificing behavior for the good of the herd. Prehistoric tribes that developed the Golden Rule stayed together and grew (for reasons that are obvious when you think about it) while those that didn't fell apart (or maybe never got together in the first place).

[Nelson]

"Sorry, but secular humanism is a very recent philosophy that has no bottom."

I don't what you mean by "has no bottom", although I recognize that it is meant to be derogatory. It's true that secular humanism is relatively new, as moral philosophies go, but it has so far proved superior to religious morality.

That's mostly attributable to the fact that there isn't an assumption of an infallible messenger in secular humanism, so there's no need to twist oneself into pretzels trying to justify, for example, a holy book that finds slavery acceptable and genocide laudable.

[Brett Bellmore]

I assume he means no foundation.

"It’s true that secular humanism is relatively new, as moral philosophies go, but it has so far proved superior to religious morality."

The amount of willful blindness necessary to make that claim, in light of... essentially the whole 20th century, is awe inspiring. Explicitly secular and purportedly humanist regimes have racked up a track record of horror to match anything religion ever got up to. Even getting away from government, the secular humanist fondness for elective abortion right up to, and sometimes past, birth, reminds one of ancient religions such as the worship of Baal.

You must be No True Scotsmaning like mad here.

[Nelson]

"The amount of willful blindness necessary to make that claim, in light of… essentially the whole 20th century, is awe inspiring."

So you think that putting the track record of liberal democracies against that of theocracies in the 20th century would be bad for ... liberal democracy? Seriously?

"Explicitly secular and purportedly humanist regimes have racked up a track record of horror to match anything religion ever got up to."

Would you like to be more specific? Because Iran and Saudi Arabia, as a modern example, or the Inquisition and the Crusades, as medieval examples, or the Catholic Church, throughout its history, certainly out-horrors anything liberal democracies have done.

"Even getting away from government, the secular humanist fondness for elective abortion right up to ... birth"

There is no "fondness" for abortion. No one says "Yay! I finally got pregnant so I can get an abortion!". Secular humanism (and libertarianism, for that matter) says that such decisions are subject to the individual's moral decision, not a religious or governmental mandate.

"elective abortion ... sometimes past, birth"

Do you really believe that BS propaganda from the lunatic fringe? I know you aren't a stupid man, so it would shock me if you believed such a stupid thing.

"You must be No True Scotsmaning like mad here."

Not even a little bit. Religion is inherently flawed as a guiding principle for governing and moral behavior because it has massive blind spots caused by indefensible portions of the various holy books. That's not even taking into account the actual history of horrifying religiously-based violence.

When the Bible, for example, accepts slavery as moral (as long as you give your slaves Sundays off) and genocide (as long as it's the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite) as good, it instantly becomes less valid as a moral guide than secular humanism. Because everyone with the slightest moral compass knows that slavery and genocide are evil.

And that's not even taking into account the modern international pedophile ring based in Vatican City. If you're curious, pedophilia is evil and those who engage in it should be exposed and incarcerated, not hidden, protected, and foisted off on a new, unsuspecting parish. Nor should the victims who come forward be shamed, blamed, condemned as liars, and harassed like the Catholic Church, knowing they were telling the truth, did to victims before the overwhelming evidence of their perfidity made it obvious they were perpetrating evil. Thou shalt not lie is apparently one of the Ten Suggestions, not the Ten Commandments, if you're the Church.

[bernard11]

People can learn to love their neighbor, or do good, care for the widow and orphan, and to develop some humility without religious belief.

Why can't someone accept those ideas as arbitrary beliefs, rather than having to derive them from equally arbitrary religious beliefs?

[Longtobefree]

While God may have been involved on one or both sides, I'm pretty sure it was the UN that created Israel as a modern nation. 1948, I think it was. Only the Arabs didn't think God could handle it.

[Nelson]

You're missing the point, possibly on purpose. It isn't about who created the modern state of Israel, it's about the fact that religion forms the basis of each group's "claim" to that same piece of land.

[Mr. Bumble]

I think the Jews have firsties.

[Nelson]

Pithy and inaccurate, but it did make me laugh when I read it.

[Ben_]

That’s what empty minded religion-haters say. Wars, with very few exceptions, are about wanting land. Religion is sometimes one of the cultural differences that divides the two sides. Take away the religions, you still have two very distinct groups with different customs and different languages who want the same land.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Big fan of childish superstition and silly nonsense, Ben?

[Joe_dallas]

Under Trump we had the heads of Israel and Arab states in the Middle East signing peace accords together at the White House

We had a President who physically visited Israel himself and visited the wailing wall in Jerusalem— the first to ever do so.

Less than three years ago we had a president dedicated to world peace.
Now chaos reigns supreme.

The obscene Obama Iran Deal will ultimately lead to a nuclear power terrorist-supporting entity in an unstable Middle East. Trump nullified it, of course, but Biden reinstated it. The latter’s embrace of Iran has been a catastrophe for our ally, Israel, and for world peace generally. As Robert Gates, former defense secretary in the Obama administration, once put it, Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” The final nail in the coffin of Middle East peace will be Biden’s mangling of Trump’s Abraham Accords.

Biden is a train wreck of epic proportion

[Nige]

Yeah, those Accords worked out well. I'm sure Netanyahu apreciates you blaming Biden for his and his government's absolute failures, but then again you guys somehow came round to re-electing the guy who let the worst terrorist atrocity on US soil occur on his watch.

[Nelson]

"Less than three years ago we had a president dedicated to world peace."

Yes, we all remember how he got us out of our foreign military ... oh, wait. That wasn't him.

"The obscene Obama Iran Deal will ultimately lead to a nuclear power terrorist-supporting entity in an unstable Middle East."

Yes, the only thing making a nuclear-armed Iran possible was Obama's Iran Deal. And Trump getting us out totally stopped their nuclear ambitions. Do you really believe that nonsense?

"Trump’s Abraham Accords."

The Abraham Accords were a cheap PR stunt by Trump and Arab countries. Nothing changed after they were signed. Arab countries that were already engaging with Israel continued to do so and those that weren't continued that behavior.

Compare it to the Good Friday Accords mediated by Clinton. That's what a relevant agreement looks like.

But "negotiating" that empty agreement did create the opportunity for Jared Kushner, famous for grossly overpaying for 660 Fifth Avenue and struggling to finance his father's real estate company while his dad was in prison, to impress the Saudis with his business ... acumen? At least enough for them to invest $2 billion in his company, notorious in the New York real estate world for its terrible decisions.

Hm, I wonder why they did that?

[apedad]

Video shows woman opening fire in police department lobby, then lighting up cigarette

A Connecticut woman is now charged with attempted murder after she allegedly fired multiple shots into the bulletproof glass of a police department before lighting up a cigarette in the lobby.

Meanwhile, officers behind the door are captured on body camera video assessing the situation.

“She’s got a gun in her hand right now,” one officer can be heard saying.

During the incident, Bristol Police Officer Spencer Boisvert fired two shots toward Laprise but both were stopped by the bulletproof glass.

https://lawandcrime.com/crime/video-shows-woman-opening-fire-in-police-department-lobby-then-lighting-up-cigarette/

The cop shot INTO the bulletproof glass?!?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Sometimes, you gotta wonder about training protocols if not basis intelligence.

[DaveM]

Obviously intoxicated. Watch the video. It's pretty clear she wasn't trying to hit anyone. She first starts banging on the glass with her hand, then bangs on the glass with her pistol, and after getting no response, she fires first at a side door, then at the front desk. When even that doesn't get her whatever attention she's looking for, she starts yelling her head off, pacing around the lobby.

So. Obviously pissed, in both senses. I don't fault the police one bit. Getting her under control would be like trying to capture a venomous snake.

[Dan Schiavetta]

That kind of stuff simply doesn't happen in countries with real gun control.

[Mr. Bumble]

Seems to me CT has pretty strict gun control, so how did she get the weapon?

[Absaroka]

"Laprise said she would carry out the shooting with a gun belonging to her boyfriend — a retired New York Police Department officer, Hearst Connecticut Media Group has confirmed."

source

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Well, we all know how lax NY's gun control laws are.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Actually, there is a national exception for retired cops.

[John F. Carr]

I wonder if the boyfriend will get in trouble. For Connecticut I have only found a law requiring that guns be secured from minors. In Massachusetts unattended handguns must be protected from access by adults as well.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

That kind of stuff simply doesn’t happen in countries with real gun control.

It's not surprising that you're stupid enough to parrot the same lie that Obama was busted on multiple times.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Fine, let her trash the lobby -- and warn other officers not to go in there -- but shooting at a bulletproof window yourself?!?

This is where you need to either explain to your officers why this is not acceptable, or simply order them to never do it.

This has "death by cop" written all over it, and that's an issue -- but shooting at a window you know is bulletproof?!? Flying glass shrapnel is not going to be that different from flying steel shrapnel...

[Frank Drackman]

Forget it Jake, it's Bristol

[Ridgeway]

"What are you gonna do? Charge me with smoking?"

[Martinned]

Here's some red meat for the base: [English] Judges told not to send convicted criminals to prison – they’re full

The UK is often a strange kind of EU/US amalgam. In this case, they're cruel enough to prisoners to let the prisons fall into disrepair and overcrowding, but not so cruel that prisons have no rights.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

If they're not sending any more criminals to prison, the question of prisoners' rights seems irrelevant to those offenders.

[Martinned]

The reason why more people don't get sent to those prisons is that doing so would violate their rights. So no.

[John F. Carr]

California was under a prison decrowding order. No matter how tough on crime the voters were, prosecutors couldn't lock up everybody who was eligible for prison.

[Brett Bellmore]

They could, hypothetically, have built larger prisons...

[Martinned]

And on Israel, it's unofficial leader of the extra-parliamentary opposition has now weighed in:

Israelis and Palestinians are facing their moment of greatest danger since 1948
Yuval Noah Harari
(...)
What has already happened cannot be undone. The dead cannot be brought back to life, and the personal traumas will never completely heal. But we must prevent further escalation. Many of the forces in the region are currently led by irresponsible religious fanatics. External forces must therefore intervene to deescalate the conflict. Anyone who wishes for peace must unequivocally condemn the Hamas atrocities, put pressure on Hamas to immediately and unconditionally release all the hostages , and help deter Hezbollah and Iran from intervening. This would give Israelis a bit of breathing space and a tiny ray of hope.

Second, a coalition of the willing – ranging from the US and the EU to Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority – should take responsibility for the Gaza Strip away from Hamas, rebuild Gaza and simultaneously completely disarm Hamas and demilitarise the Gaza Strip.

There are only slim chances that these steps will be realised. But after the recent horrors, most Israelis don’t think they can live with anything less.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/12/israelis-palestinians-greatest-danger-since-1948

[DaveM]

Hamas is a death cult. They literally value death more than life. I mean that completely seriously. That is precisely what they are saying, they want to die as martyrs. Even if their own children die, they are happier with that outcome than with them living.

"You cannot negotiate peace with someone who is coming to kill you."

Hamas is not going to be stopped by anything or anyone short of lethal force. That is not something anyone who doesn't belong to a death cult wants or plans. But it is what they insist on happening.

What else can be done? The idea of having a united front to clear out the Gaza strip is a good one. But everyone needs to understand that doing that will come at the willing death of every Hamas combatant.

War is hell. One only survives it, there are no winners.

[John F. Carr]

The U.S. fought WW2 in the Pacific on such terms.

[Joe_dallas]

Japan emerged as a peaceful and prosperous country after WW2 (78+ years), precisely because we destroyed the culture.

That is the only long term solution to the Hamas problem.

[Nige]

'because we destroyed the culture.'

No, because the process of building peace was taken very seriously.

[Bob from Ohio]

"unofficial leader of the extra-parliamentary opposition"

Huh?

[Martinned]

It means that he spent the last year doing this:

https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&sca_esv=572890011&rlz=1C1GCEU_enGB1040GB1040&sxsrf=AM9HkKnfi51CrQbXlz7WEXjjl8CQawPUsQ:1697122866667&q=yuval+noah+harari+protests&tbm=vid&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjiiu6s4_CBAxUoQ0EAHRu7C8IQ0pQJegQICxAB&biw=1920&bih=931&dpr=1

[Bob from Ohio]

Doing a few tv hits doesn't make him a leader of anything.

[Martinned]

And, since I’m going through my RSS reader, here’s a useful blog post by a professor of international criminal law, going over the various crimes (possibly) committed.

http://opiniojuris.org/2023/10/12/international-criminal-law-analysis-of-the-situation-in-israel/

[John F. Carr]

If we want to try people in existing court systems, as opposed to an ad hoc Nuremburg style tribunal, we need to ask questions like

Is any particular treaty in effect in Israel? In Palestine? For example, Palestine has not signed the treaty on hostage taking and Israel has not signed Geneva Convention Protocol II prohibiting starvation as a weapon of war.

If the country where the act was committed did not sign the treaty, is the crime sufficiently grave to be subject to universal jurisdiction?

Are claims of customary international law sufficiently widely accepted to be considered normative, or are they disputed?

[Martinned]

Palestine has joined the Rome Statute, so any crimes committed by Palestinians or in Palestine can be tried in The Hague, under the definitions of crimes set out in the Rome Statute. (Which include things like hostage taking and starvation.)

If the ICC has jurisdiction over the Myanmar junta because it ethnically cleansed the Rohingya people into ICC state party Bangladesh, there should be no legal - as opposed to practical - problem hauling any Palestinian or Israeli leader in front of the ICC if there is no other place to try them.

[Bob from Ohio]

No "Israeli leader" is ever going to be tried by your worthless court, so stop salivating.

[Martinned]

I don't think so either. The US doesn't even prosecute its own war criminals, never mind Israel's.

[John F. Carr]

Under Biden or Trump the U.S. would veto a Security Council resolution that threatened Israel's leaders. There is also the ICC, which does not answer to the United States. I will not hold my breath waiting for the ICC to act. They have had Palestine on the agenda for quite a few years already.

[Bob from Ohio]

"which does not answer to the United States"

Every organization answers to the United States in the end.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Including the right-wing assholes in places like Turkey and Israel.

Aligning with the losers of America’s culture war seems masochistic if not suicidal.

And those assholes will deserve everything that is coming to them.

[Martinned]

Every organization answers to the United States in the end.

Don't think we haven't noticed that the Hague Invasion Act still hasn't been repealed after 20 years, even though the Democrats were in charge of both the White House and Congress for parts of that time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act

[Moderation4ever]

As a follow-up to earlier comments on redistricting in Wisconsin.
Justice Janet Protasiewicz has now said she will not recuse from cases on the legitimacy of the currently drawn districts in Wisconsin. In addition, in a panel of three retired conservative Justices, formed by Republican Legislative leader Vos, two of the three Justices have said that impeachment of Justice Protasiewicz is not a legitimate route to pursue. It appears that Republicans will need to compromise on the district maps. Republicans don't need to fear loss of control of the legislature, but they will see their margins decrease.

[Jonathan Affleck]

The Harvard Doxxing Truck: As Students Face Retaliation for Israel Statement, a ‘Doxxing Truck’ Displaying Students’ Faces Comes to Harvard’s Campus.

Does this truck meet the bar of recklessness and true threat for stalking or harassment? See Counterman v. Colorado, No. 22-138 (U.S. Jun. 27, 2023). Zionists seem to be identifying anti-Zionist Harvard students so that they can be targeted for harm. From Jacob Israël de Haan to Alex Odeh, Zionists assassinate critics and opponents.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The left has been doxing people for years -- actually decades -- but it suddenly is wrong when the right does it?

Remember the Tiki Torch Parade in Charlottesville? They all got doxed....

[Jonathan Affleck]

Zionists have been murdering and assassinating critics and opponents for at least approximately a century. Zionists murdered Jacob Israël de Haan in 1924.

[Frank Drackman]

Up early Anti-Semiting I see. Did you know the inventor of the “Uzi” was named “Uzi” and the inventor of the “Kalashnikof” was named “Kalashnikof” but the inventor of the M-16 was named “Stoner” so why is it the "M-16" instead of the “Stoner-16” OK, I know why, but it would be so cool to be like “Hey man, anyone see my Stoner?!?!?!? I left it right on my footlocker”
and yes I know it was called the "M1" but also as the "Garand"

Frank "Mr. Gun, meet Mr. Nut"

[David Nieporent]

Does this truck meet the bar of recklessness and true threat for stalking or harassment?

No. This has been yet another episode of Simple Answers to Stupid Questions.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Now about those Jewish Space Lasers -- may I suggest targeting Cambridge and Medford?

https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2023/10/11/tufts-group-criticized-pro-hamas-comment-israel-conflict/?p1=recirc_mostpopular

[bernard11]

Now about those Jewish Space Lasers — may I suggest targeting Cambridge and Medford?

First, fuck you.

Second, what makes you think those towns are hotbeds of antisemitism?

As it happens, I was walking past MIT yesterday and there was bunch of students posting pictures and descriptions of murdered and kidnapped Israelis. You want to kill them, and the many Jews who live in those towns?

[Dr. Ed 2]

The diameter of a laser beam from an orbital altitude would be what -- 1/16th of an inch? Above and beyond the fact that these don't exist, wouldn't it stand reasonable that a Space Laser would be able to target a narrow beam like that.

I don't know how much you know about lasers, but the power is that the beam is concentrated.

[bernard11]

I know almost nothing about lasers, as a matter of fact.

I also have no idea what you are talking about, or why.

[Dr. Ed 2]

You can start a fire with a magnifying glass by focusing all the light into one fine point, which then produces enough heat to start a fire.

A laser is just one specific wavelength/frequency (and hence color) of light and hence can remain in a small focused beam over distance. But the issue is the POWER of the laser, i.e. the brilliance of the light, which can then damage eyesight, roast flesh, or cut steel depending on strength.

However, to be of any strength, it's because the beam is concentrated.

[Noscitur a sociis]

That’s okay, Dr Ed knows almost nothing about almost everything!

[Brett Bellmore]

The diameter of a beam from orbital altitude would be hugely greater than that.

First, you're going through the atmosphere, which is inhomogeneous, and so unpredictably unfocuses the beam.

Second, a tiny fraction of the beam will be absorbed by that air, heat up, expand, and disturb the focus. This is known as "blooming".

Third, even in vacuum, and assuming perfect optics, you can only maintain a spot size based on the size of the aperture, and the distance. Laser spot size calculator You get diffraction rings even then, that's just where most of the energy is in the central spot.

To get to a 1/16" spot from even low Earth orbit, your laser aperture would have to be about 8.5m in diameter, 28 feet. Not exactly inconspicuous, even in orbit. And you'd need almost perfect phase coherence across that entire width.

The sweet spot is actually when your laser aperture and spot size are about the same...

[Nelson]

I think the point was to mock the whole "Jewish space lasers" idiocy, embraced by such intellectual giants as Marjorie Taylor Greene.

At least I hope that was the point.

[Nige]

Who, of course, stands with Israel, and sometimes stands with the odd neo-Nazi.

[Jonathan Affleck]

The Zionist colonial settler population is not a protected population under The International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. If it became a protected population, the whole purpose of the Convention would be defeated, the ban on genocide would be negated, and jus cogens would be violated.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Fuck you.

They are human beings with an inherent human right not to be raped & murdered. Now as to the Palestinians, after what happened on Saturday, I'm not so sure....

[Jonathan Affleck]

The Zionist movement has clearly stated its intent to commit genocide of Palestinians from the start of the movement in 1881 until today.

Since the start of this Israeli government, the program of genocide has accelerated.

Zionist colonial settler anti-Jews had already decided to complete the genocide, which had started in Dec 1947. Hamas responded by making a stand now and not waiting for a death of a thousand cuts as Zionist colonial settler anti-Jews murder children, make living conditions unbearable, and steal el-Aksa along with other Palestinian holy sites.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Bullshyte.

Israel has nukes, they could exterminate the Palestinians if they wanted to.

And as to that trespassing mosque, you do know what was there first, don't you?

[Jonathan Affleck]

If one reads Josephus, one quickly realizes that al-Haram al-Sharif is not at the site of the Temple Mount but is located with the area of Ft. Antonia. Zionists want el-Aqsa in order to express racial dominance over Palestinians.

Even if al-Haram al-Sharif were at the location of the Herodian Temple, Herod was a Levantine Arab, and the Roman Expulsion is discredited fairy tale. Rabbinic Jews all descend from non-Judean converts to Judaism. Greco-Roman Judeans converted to Christianity and then substantially to Islam. The ancestors of Palestinians are these selfsame Greco-Roman Judeans.

Rabbinic Judaism is an alien Mesopotamian religion in stolen Palestine and is completely different from Hebrew/Canaanite-language Palestinian Biblical Temple Judaism.

Palestinians can do whatever they want with their land and the cultural product of their ancestors. Zionist colonial settlers in stolen Palestine are invaders, interlopers, thieves, impostors, and genocide-perpetrators.

[Jonathan Affleck]

Mass murder and genocide are completely separate crimes. Murder is a crime against an individual. Genocide is a crime against a group. Genocide does not require any murders of individuals.

Practically every Zionist leader since 1881 has expressed dolus specialis of genocide (pernicious goal of eradication of Palestinians within the territory of Palestine).

The creation of a Zionist state in Palestine is predicated on the genocide of Palestinians.

Zionist colonial settlers went insane when they realized (a) that Palestinians are a slight majority than the depraved and evil Zionist colonial settlers and (b) that the Palestinian population is much younger than the depraved and evil Zionist colonial settler population.

[Jonathan Affleck]

The Zionist state acquired nuclear weapons not because it was worried about attacks by the Arab states but because it wanted insurance against the possibility of enforcement of international anti-genocide law by the international community.

[Nelson]

Wow. Your weird beliefs expand beyond the law into virulent antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Why am I not surprised?

[not guilty]

In the D.C. prosecution of Donald Trump, the Government has moved the Court to order the defense to provide notice by December 18 if it intends to assert the affirmative defense of advice of counsel. It requests that such notice should describe with particularity the following: (1) the identity of each attorney who provided advice; (2) the specific advice given, including whether the advice was oral or written; (3) the date on which the advice was given; and (4) the information the defendant communicated or caused to be communicated to the attorney concerning the subject matter of the advice, including the date and manner of the communication. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149.98.0_2.pdf

Reliance on advice of counsel is an affirmative defense, an assertion more positive and specific than a general denial of criminal intent. United States v. White, 887 F.2d 267, 270 (D.C. Cir. 1989). A defendant is entitled to an advice-of-counsel instruction to the jury if he introduces evidence showing: (1) he made full disclosure of all material facts to his attorney before receiving the advice at issue; and (2) he relied in good faith on the counsel's advice that his course of conduct was legal. United States v. DeFries, 129 F.3d 1293, 1308 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (per curiam).

Given that Trump would bear the burden of production on this issue (though not the burden of proof), I wonder how he may adduce evidence of what advice he received from counsel. Trump could testify himself, but that would subject him to a trainwreck of wide open cross-examination. The attorneys who likely gave Trump the advice he wanted to hear -- John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Rudolph Giuliani, Sidney Powell -- have criminal exposure themselves and each would have a Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Persecution, not prosecution.

[OtisAH]

Stupid, not lying.

[Longtobefree]

Damn biased spell checkers - - - - - - - -

[Zarniwoop]

Seems persuasive to me, it will be interesting to see the brief in opposition.

[not guilty]

Some defenses, such as alibi, insanity and reliance upon expert evidence of a defendant's mental condition, require pretrial notice under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. There is a split of authority as to whether a trial court in its discretion can require pretrial notice of reliance upon advice of counsel. Compare United States v. Crowder, 325 F.Supp.3d 131 (D.D.C. 2018) (requiring pretrial notice and discovery), and United States v. Wilkerson, 388 F.Supp.3d 969 (E.D. Tenn. 2019) (declining to order pretrial notice).

The majority of district courts that have considered the question have exercised their inherent authority to impose a pretrial notice and discovery requirement regarding the advice-of-counsel defense. United States v. Dallman, 433 F.Supp.3d 804, 812 n.6 (E.D. Va. 2020).

[Moderation4ever]

I am struck by the fact that in a number of cases, the defense of Donald Trump would rely on his own testimony. Testimony that would be devastating in cross examination. I offer the Jean Carroll case as evidence that Trump's testimony played a big part in the juries decision for Ms. Carroll. Trump's lawyers need better court room defenses than are being suggested in public or they need to plead their client out before he does more damage.

[Reallynotbob]

As an evidentiary issue, isn't it just a matter of Trump producing paper records or emails containing his attorneys' advice? They're privileged, but advice of counsel defense waives the privilege with respect at least to the advice in question. The lawyers do not enjoy privilege over their communications with the client. And there's no 5A problem because the advice rendered is not testimonial.

There might arise a joint trial and right to confront problem depending on whether Trump is going to testify against his lawyer co-defendants, and whether those co-defendants prefer to stand on their own rights not to incriminate themselves, i.e. testify about the advice they gave. I haven't looked at the law on that in a long time.

[Zarniwoop]

They’re privileged, but advice of counsel defense waives the privilege with respect at least to the advice in question.

According to the government, it waives ACP for the entire subject - so Trump would also have to produce previously-withheld materials that undercut his position - for example, advice from other lawyers that undercuts his defense, and would undercut an assertion that he acted in good faith.

[Brett Bellmore]

I can understand the government making that argument, but does that necessarily follow? Do they then get to see everything his lawyers said to him, just to make sure they didn't follow the advice with "Or so I'd say if I wanted you to go to jail."?

[Zarniwoop]

Yes, from the basic principle that you can’t simultaneously use ACP as both a sword (proffer evidence of attorney advice that makes defendant look good) and a shield (withhold evidence of attorney advice that makes defendant look bad). That goes straight to the heart of good-faith reliance on attorney advice; you have to disclose everything the attorney (or multiple different attorneys!) advised, and everything related to it.

[Zarniwoop]

and for clarity, it's not necessarily "everything his lawyers said to him", but rather "everything his lawyers said to him that's relevant to the defense of reliance on attorney advice".

So if he wants to rely on advice from Eastman saying this one weird trick will win you the election (props to John F Carr for that phrase!), anything related to overthrowing the election results is fair game - pro and con.

But if Eastman separately advised him how to get out of a NYC parking ticket in 2014, that's so unrelated that it's not within the scope of the waiver of ACP related to the attorney advice defense.

[Brett Bellmore]

"and for clarity, it’s not necessarily “everything his lawyers said to him”, but rather “everything his lawyers said to him that’s relevant to the defense of reliance on attorney advice”. "

And, who decides if it's relevant? Does the court assign a special master, or does the government just make a pinky promise to forget everything else it looks at?

[not guilty]

"And, who decides if it’s relevant? Does the court assign a special master, or does the government just make a pinky promise to forget everything else it looks at?"

Brett, are you familiar with the Federal Rules of Evidence? The trial court decides what is or is not relevant -- that is, what has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence and whether fact is of consequence in determining the action. F.R.E. 401. There are even provisions for holding hearings on preliminary questions to determine disputed claims. F.R.E. 104. Per Rule 104(a), the court makes these decisions.

[John F. Carr]

On the other side, how does the court ensure that Trump has handed over all evidence that ought to be handed over? What if he forgets about a private email server?

The system trusts the government to have people uninvolved in the case review potentially privileged evidence. When a search warrant is executed on a lawyer's office a so-called "taint team" will review the haul, hand over whatever the prosecution is entitled to, and keep legitimately privileged records confidential.

[not guilty]

[Comment deleted]

[not guilty]

"On the other side, how does the court ensure that Trump has handed over all evidence that ought to be handed over? What if he forgets about a private email server?"

It's not foolproof, but the prosecution knows the identities of 25 persons who invoked privilege during the investigation, and they have privilege logs with some (non-content) identifiers of communications as to which the witnesses claimed privilege. If the defense production does not match up with this information, Special Counsel can bring that to the court's attention. If the defense attempts to offer at trial anything that should have been but was not disclosed pretrial, the court can exclude such matters from evidence.

The trickier situation would be if Trump is deceiving his current lawyers, as he did with Evan Corcoran regarding the Mar-a-Lago documents.

[Brett Bellmore]

"and keep legitimately privileged records confidential."

And theoretically keep legitimately privileged records confidential, anyway. The pinky promise I referred to.

[not guilty]

Uh, we are talking about the potential assertion of an affirmative defense which waives the otherwise applicable privileges.

Trump is the holder of the privilege. He can waive it if he chooses to do so.

[Brett Bellmore]

And I was pointing out to Carr that "taint teams" are barely more than a pinky promise not to use the privileged information they come across.

Are we pretending law enforcement in the US is entirely on the up and up, never does anything underhanded? Seriously?

[Reallynotbob]

An option is for the Court to review the lawyer advice "in camera," i.e. in secret, before making a ruling. Happens every day in ordinary privilege battles.

[not guilty]

That is not applicable to a privilege that has been waived by the privilege holder -- which assertion of advice of counsel as an affirmative defense would do as a matter of law.

[not guilty]

The Government argues at page 4 of its memorandum that "once the defense is invoked, the defendant must disclose to the Government (1) all 'communications or evidence' the defendant
intends to rely on to establish the defense and (2) any 'otherwise-privileged communications' the defendant does 'not intend to use at trial, but that are relevant to proving or undermining' it[,]" (emphasis in original,) citing United States v. Crowder, 325 F.Supp.3d 131, 138 (D.D.C. 2018).

That should include disclosure of advice given by attorneys which Trump rejected (Cipollone? Philbin? Hirschmann?) who may have advised that the Eastman/Chesebro scheme was unlawful.

[not guilty]

"As an evidentiary issue, isn’t it just a matter of Trump producing paper records or emails containing his attorneys’ advice? They’re privileged, but advice of counsel defense waives the privilege with respect at least to the advice in question. The lawyers do not enjoy privilege over their communications with the client. And there’s no 5A problem because the advice rendered is not testimonial."

The paper records or emails are not self-authenticating. Trump could authenticate them, but that would require him to testify. The authors of the papers or the senders of the emails, if called as witnesses, could authenticate them, but the attorneys on whom Trump likely would claim to have relied have criminal exposure themselves. Several are criminal defendants in Fulton County, Georgia. The content of the papers and emails may tend to incriminate them, such that each would likely exercise the privilege against self-incrimination.

[John F. Carr]

The government is asking for all emails on the subject, not only the ones Trump wants to reveal.

For example, Trump has emails from Eastman saying this one weird trick wins you the election. The prosecution would like to respond with the email admitting that the legal theory is a 9-0 loser if it goes to the Supreme Court.

[Zarniwoop]

And also with emails/documents/advice/testimony from any other attorney saying the same thing, not just Eastman. If Trump had 10 attorneys advising against using Eastman's one weird trick to overthrow an election, that would be highly relevant to whether Trump was acting in good faith, so he can't pick and choose to waive ACP as to Eastman, but not as to the other 10.

As far as I can tell, the debate here is between when the evidence needs to be identified and disclosed in support of the defense of attorney advice, not the scope of a waiver of ACP if the defense is used. And the waiver is is pretty much "there's zero ACP for this entire subject if you voluntarily choose to waive some ACP communications."

[not guilty]

A ruling at this stage of proceedings will help the defense make an informed decision as to whether to assert advice of counsel as an affirmative defense or not. If Trump forgoes assertion of that defense, he avoids having to make the pretrial disclosures that such an assertion would entail.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY

This white, male, movement
conservative blog has operated for

THIRTEEN (13)

days without publishing
a vile racial slur; it has
published racial slurs
on at least

TWENTY-EIGHT (28)

different occasions (so far)
during 2023 (that’s at least
28 different discussions,
not 28 racial slurs; many
of those discussions
featured multiple racial slurs).

This assessment does not address
the broader, incessant stream of
gay-bashing, misogynist, antisemitic,
Islamophobic, racist, and immigrant-hating
slurs and other bigoted content
published daily at this faux libertarian
blog, which is presented from the
right-wing fringe of modern legal
academia by members of the
Federalist Society for Law
and Public Policy Studies.

Amid this blog’s stale and ugly thinking, here is something worthwhile.

Related: This is a good one, too.

[StonewallDeSoto]

Haven't I seen you use autistic as an insult?

[Frank Drackman]

Hey, that's former Penn State Defensive Coordinator Jerry Sandusky you're responding to! Now drop and give him 20! (not "push ups", Jerry will take care of that part, he prefers "push ins")

Frank

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Autistic is a descriptor, useful when autism seems to explain someone's abnormal perceptions (the delusions of conspiracy theorists, for example) and conduct (bigotry, lack of empathy).

If that bothers you, why do you patronize a blog that habitually uses racial slurs and intentionally attracts an audience of ardent right-wing bigots?

[StonewallDeSoto]

Israel being invaded really brings out the "blood and soil" talk among right-wingers. The ethnic defensiveness and bloodlust is something I don't remember ever seeing (and I remember 9/11).

[Frank Drackman]

Yeah, the US didn't do anything after 9-11, no invasion of Ear-Rock, Off-gone-ee-Ston (it's fun to pronounce words like Barry Hussein Osama did) no massive new Government Agency for Transportation Security, no new Patriotic Law/Act,
Man, Umbilical Cord Compression is such a horrible condition (for the Scientifically Illiterate among the Brethren/Sisteren (Get the feeling there aren't many XX "Conspirators" this is a regular Legal Sausage-Fest)
I'm insinuating that Stone Wall suffered some Brain Damage "In Utero" (HT K Cobain) see, the Umbilical Cord gets compressed, blood flow go down, brain cells go ca-blooey

Frank

[Mr. Bumble]

Maybe fetal alcohol syndrome or lead poisoning.

[Jonathan Affleck]

Zionism an explicit ideology of genocide. The right-wing longs for the good old-days of murdering non-Euro and darker ethnic groups.

[Dr. Ed 2]

If that's what it takes.....

[Mr. Bumble]

Sleep well America knowing that Slo Joe is our President:

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/10/how-checked-out-is-biden.php

He can't even remember the names of his national security team.

[Longtobefree]

The nice thing about being a figurehead is that no one actually expects you to do anything other than show up.
Ever wonder exactly which unelected person(s) are really running this country?

[Martinned]

I don't think that someone who is planning to vote for an octogenarian himself should bring that up.

https://twitter.com/BidenHQ/status/1712518509211590760

[Ben_]

All the non-leftist news this week shows BLM and various Democrats siding with the terrorists. No one who was paying attention is really surprised.

[SRG2]

Fortunately, those paying attention noted Biden's unequivocal support for Israel. And it wasn't Biden - or indeed, any Democrat - who called Hezbollah "very smart".

[Frank Drackman]

They are smart. So was Hitler, the Japs, the North Vietnamese, the Russians now. There’s a difference between “Smart” and “Evil”. “45” wasn’t the one who signed a bullshit Nuke-ular agreement with the Ear-Ronians or gave them $6 billion (that’s the most recent gift, how much did Barry Hussein send them during his rain?) And don’t give me “It’s their money” Bullshit, I thought you guys were all for “Reparations” I’d charge $6 billion/day as “Reparations” for the Hostages in 1979, Lockerbie, all the other shit they’ve stirred up for 50 years, Second prize is a Knife Set, Third Prize They get a Hydrogen Bomb but not in the way that they want.

Frank

[SRG2]

An enemy may be smart, but you don't go around telling the world they are.

[Frank Drackman]

I'm sure you have actual combat experience ( I do, may have only been 4 days during the "Ground War" in Desert Storm, but it was "Combat"(really, I had some Iraqi's shooting in my general direction (man, that came out wrong) I mean firing, in my direction, dammit, pointing their weapons, at me)
OK, why does every Foo-bawl Coach worth his salt, even our own Reverend Sandusky always say the other team is the reincarnation of the 67' Packers, 74 Steelers, and 76' Raiders??? so you don't give the other side "Bulletin Board" material.

Now go get your fucking shine box!!

Frank

[SRG2]

The only reason you defend someone calling Hezbollah "very smart" is because Trump said it. Had it been Biden or Harris - or some posters here - you'd have excoriated them and rightly so.

[Frank Drackman]

Wrong as usual, I respect Poke-a-hontas's Native Amurican Ancestors, or at least 1/1024th of them, and as a Vette Lover myself (2008 ZO6) Parkinsonian Joe does have a nice one (not sure, I think his is a 67'? with a 327, actually better than a big block IMHO) but as the
Great Sun Jew said,
"Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster."
Or maybe it was Caine from "Kung Fu" ??

Frank "Lefty Loosey, Righty Tighty"

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, 67. Personally I like the 68-69 better, but I can't fault his taste in cars.

Everything else, but not the cars.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Shouldn't you be using your vehicle to chase former Pres. Obama's Kenyan Muslim Communist birth certificate, clinger?

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

An enemy may be smart, but you don’t go around telling the world they are.

I might not agree with the assessment, but there's also no good reason to underestimate an enemy, nor encourage others to do so.

That said, attempting to counter actual support of Hamas with that example is...well...NOT very smart.

And...remind us which team Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib play for?

[Zarniwoop]

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a well-executed surprise attack.

It wasn't "smart".[*]

FDR didn't address Congress on Dec. 8th and praise the Japanese for being "smart".

The analogy here is left as an exercise for the reader.

*Admiral Yamamoto's quote that "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve" is probably fiction (from Tora! Tora! Tora!), but it's a much better assessment of reality than calling the attack "smart".

[Frank Drackman]

Tora Tora Tora Great movie, saw it when I was 8 at the West Roads Theater in Omaha NE, great Panavision,
man, did I want to be a Jap Zero pilot!
And the ending surprised me, again, I was 8

Frank "Didja ever notice that the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor on Pearl Harbor day??"

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

FDR didn’t address Congress on Dec. 8th and praise the Japanese for being “smart”.

Recognizing or even stating a fact about someone isn't inherently "praise". The literary Hannibal Lecter's character was extremely intelligent. Did that make his character any less evil?

[Ben_]

Biden’s teleprompter guy has message discipline.

[apedad]

HA! OK . . . got a LOL for that.

[Commenter_XY]

POTUS Biden deserves props for his unequivocal support of Israel; he has spoken with moral clarity. I commend him (and appreciate) for that. May that unequivocal support be steadfast and unwavering for the long-term. Israel will need it.

[SRG2]

^^^ What he said

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Pres. Biden should be commended for not letting the Israeli prime minister's detestable nature control Pres. Biden's presidential conduct in this context.

[Nelson]

He has a decades-long record of supporting Israel. He's not going to suddenly change his opinion.

[Ben_]

Here's a poll from earlier this year:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/poll-earlier-year-found-more-democrats-sympathise-palestinians-israelis

"Democrat voters 49% to just 38% said their sympathy lies more with the Palestinian side than with Israelis"

[Ben_]

Here’s a story about an 18-year-old who got a 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT, GPA in the 4.0 ballpark, rejected by 16 Universities because he's not black:

https://abc7news.com/stanley-zhong-college-rejected-teen-full-time-job-google-admissions/13890332/

The racist universities are: MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UC Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cornell University, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Caltech, University of Washington and University of Wisconsin

Not racist: University of Texas and University of Maryland

[Frank Drackman]

1590? what question did he get wrong?
I was a High Screw-el National Merit "Semi Finalist" only instead of 4, like in an actual semifinal there were thousands. Finally realized it was a scam like that "Who's Who in American High School Students"

Frank

[Krayt]

Semi-finalist means you are vetted. Now it's your job to go find someone who offers finalist scholarships.

[Brett Bellmore]

Eh, not a scam, you could get some primo scholarships based on it. While "Who's Who" only got you a bill in the mail.

[Gasman]

In Harvard's defense, the University does believe that asians are just not likable people. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html

[Ben_]

He didn't apply to Harvard. Presumably he wants to do things and build things, not preside over and try to divide up the work of others.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

These are your fans, Volokh Conspirators . . . and the reason you should always have a moving company's number handy so long as you try to associate with a strong, mainstream institution (rather than a conservative-controlled, nonsense-teaching school).

[Brett Bellmore]

To be fair, 1590 on the SAT is a lot less impressive today than it was 40-50 years ago, when you actually would have had to have only made one mistake on the entire test. SAT Score Conversion Chart These days you could make as many as 3 mistakes and still get a 1600 score.

Which is not to dismiss the accomplishment, even taking the downgrade into account, he did better than me, and my score would have gotten me into any school I wanted.

Without racism in play, you'd just about have to be an ax murderer to have trouble getting into the college of your choice with a 1590.

[Ben_]

Does anyone doubt that he’d be accepted by 13 or more of those universities if he was black? Probably all 16 of them.

Asians in California should see Berkeley, UC Davis, UCSB, UCLA, UCSD, and Calpoly on that list and understand that California government institutions don’t think serving the public extends to Asians.

[jb]

"Without racism in play, you’d just about have to be an ax murderer to have trouble getting into the college of your choice with a 1590."

Something like 2/3 of the applicants to Harvard with 1600s get rejected. Unless Harvard were to accept people on SAT score alone, they're necessarily going to need to reject a bunch of people with extremely high scores, just given the size of the incoming class and the number of people who want to go there.

[Ben_]

They won’t be rejecting any black students with a 1590. Do you think they would?

[Frank Drackman]

Are there any?

[Nelson]

Yes. And they do. Every year.

[Ben_]

Citation needed.

[Nelson]

That Harvard would reject a black applicant with a 1590? They reject a lot of people with amazing test scores every year in favor of those with better overall applications.

I'm not sure about now, but back in the 90s the applications for Princeton and Harvard were exclusively essays. No questions, just topics, essay length, and parameters. An SAT standard got you to the second round, but had nothing to do with the rest of the process. Because elite schools understand that those who can nail the basic, standard qualification are ideal as followers, but unless you can be imaginative and creative you'll never be a leader.

People who own perfect SAT scores and lack imagination are what you stock your laboratories with, not your C-suites.

[Ben_]

So no citation. Zero rejections of black students with a 1590.

You obviously have no knowledge of them ever rejecting such a student.

[Nelson]

I noticed your on-point cite when you claimed that blacks always got in when others with the same score didn't ... oh, wait.

If you want to have your assertion be the startpoint of an empirical debate, start with your own data supporting your position. Expecting your conclusion to be blindly accepted as a factual premise is called "begging the question".

If you want a philosophical debate, start with a philosophical position. That's what you did, so that's how I responded.

Expecting any unfounded nonsense you say to be accepted without proof is evidence that your position has no factual basis.

[Ben_]

You should just stop being a liar — pretending you have knowledge when you obviously do not.

[Brett Bellmore]

I didn't say that Harvard would never reject somebody with a 1590 SAT. I just asserted that it they'd need an extremely good or extremely bad reason to.

About 300 people get a 1600 SAT each year, Harvard's incoming class is close to 2,000, with about 1,200 by the regular admissions process. So, actually, they could admit every person in the country who got one, without a bit of trouble. In practice, not everybody who gets a 1600 SAT is even going to want to go to Harvard.

So, you say they reject 2/3 of people with 1600 SATs who apply? Hm, I wonder if they don't tend to be Asian...

[jb]

The data sources on the number of perfect SAT scores don’t seem great, but I think after recentering the number is rather higher than 300 (I’ve seen estimates as high as 1000). Assuming a normal distribution, there are going to be considerably more people with 1590s in any case, and by the time you get to 1550 (which happens to be both Harvard’s 75th percentile score and the national 99th percentile score) you’re talking about something like 17K people per year at that score or above so they clearly have to reject most of those applicants.

But yes, I’m willing to concede that Asian Americans are likely to be over-represented in the group of people with very high scores who get rejected from Harvard. That would almost certainly be true even if you used purely race-neutral (or even perfectly race-blind) frameworks for admission, though.

[Life of Brian]

Something like 2/3 of the applicants to Harvard with 1600s get rejected.

What, have they dumbed down the SAT so much that perfect scorers have their own statistical category?

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, actually, they have. The entire especially high range on the old SAT is compressed into 800 on the new, the test does a terrible job of distinguishing levels of brilliance.

[jb]

Alternative view: attempts to measure "levels of brilliance" within the top 1% of a test like this are likely to give you a pretty strong false sense of precision.

[Life of Brian]

I get that as far as it goes, but certainly that doesn't just apply to the top 1%. To the extent a test is going to try to differentiate between the relative performance of takers, it seems to me it should be designed such that it can do that across the entire range of performance. If Brett's comment upthread was correct that you can get 3 answers wrong and still get a perfect score, that seems like an unforced error by the designers (and profoundly unfair to any who actually got all the answers correct!).

[John F. Carr]

How many of him are there applying to top schools? Being rejected is consistent with institutional racism but does not compel a finding of institutional racism.

[Ben_]

He should sue most of those schools and subpoena them to get the number of blacks with 1590 SAT scores that the schools rejected. I’m guessing that number is zero for all except maybe MIT and Stanford. It should be fairly easy to show racial discrimination.

Since very many university people are self-involved narcissists who can’t keep quiet, it’s probably also easy to show discriminatory intent from emails and public statements.

Intent to discriminate plus actual de facto discrimination should result in him winning some of the 16 cases.

Then every other rejected student should sue.

[Nelson]

"I’m guessing that number is zero for all except maybe MIT and Stanford. It should be fairly easy to show racial discrimination."

Of course that's your guess. Which is a comment on you and your bigotry more than anything else. You probably believe that blacks get so much preferential treatment that whites are worse off than blacks under Jim Crow.

"Then every other rejected student should sue."

It's funny that you think scores are all that makes a candidate attractive to elite universities. Funny sad, not funny ha-ha.

But it definitely proves that you wouldn't even make the first cut at any of them, Ivy League or otherwise.

[Ben_]

They prefer applicants based on skin color.

[Nelson]

And other than your bias, what makes you think that skin color is the only criteria?

[Ben_]

It’s illegal for it to be any part of the criteria.

Thanks for agreeing that these guys illegally use skin color basis to accept and reject students though.

[M L]

Who is lying, Israel or the anonymous Egyptian intelligence officials?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/egypt-intelligence-official-says-israel-ignored-repeated-warnings-of-something-big/

[Mr. Bumble]

Was a "warning" given and never passed on?

[M L]

Could be. I see there are some more articles about this as it was brought up by a US rep, the truth might be somewhere in the middle.

[John F. Carr]

Although somebody may be lying, nobody needs to be lying.

(Late 1941)
Report: The Japanese are planning something big.
Action: Send two divisions and two capital ships to Singapore.

The wrong response (by Churchill) did not mean the threat was ignored.

IDF may have expected Iron Dome to deal with the "something big".

[Zarniwoop]

And the resulting loss of the Prince of Wales and Repulse to aircraft seems like an obvious outcome now, but notsomuch in Dec. 1941.

[grb]

Two works of architecture (linked below)

Poplar Forest by Thomas Jefferson House on a Hill by Tham & Videgård Arkitekter

The term “parti” describes the ordering system that gives built form significance. There are a million approaches to take, but one binds the construction to pure geometry. The geometry itself can signify – as witnessed thru history by architects wanting to build churches organized around absolute rotational symmetry vs dull-witted short-sighted church bureaucrats with a bias towards longitudinal layouts (for all their petty rites). Victims of the latter include Michaelangelo and Wren.

The second factor is making a complicated program work within geometric stricture. Watson and Crick despaired over getting four irregular bases to fit within DNA’s helical chain. Yet when they found the structure, it was simplicity itself. That’s an architectural moment.

Which brings us to octagon houses. These were quite the rage in the mid-1800s U.S., but the grandaddy of them all was Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest. Wanting a remote get-away, he constructed a second house three-days travel from Monticello, near the then-frontier of the country. The building’s plan is beautiful in its simplicity. Four longitudinal spaces with beveled ends rotate around the eight-sided perimeter. The ends where they meet are thickened masonry for eight back-to-back fireplaces. The octagon corners are each flanked by two tall windows. The changes to the four spaces needed for program are deft and minimal. Together they form a central dining space that’s a perfect square in plan, cube in height.

Of course this ideal layout couldn’t survive the need to separate aristocratic living from the messy business of food preparation, slaves doing all the work, or necessary bodily functions. For that, Jefferson made a long side wing, half-sunk below grade. And the house has Jeffersonian quirks, like the cramped barely-functional stairs or beds open to two different rooms. Still, it’s a wonderful house.

Fast forward 216 years for the same challenge, different solution. The Swedish firm Tham & Videgård Arkitekter built an octagon house atop a hill, opening to all sides like a blossoming flower. The trick here is disguised thickened slabs, which allow the wall planes to meet at a point. The lowest level has one side cut-out for covered parking, the main space has one side cut-out for a small pool and the three spaces of kitchen, dining and living room nestled in the remaining wings. The upper floor has five bedrooms rotated around four wings. An elegant circular steel stair connects all floors. It’s a wonderful house.

https://www.historicalconcepts.com/sightseeing/poplar-forest/

https://www.archdaily.com/992961/house-on-a-hill-tham-and-videgard-arkitekter/63865816a885b20188704b34-house-on-a-hill-tham-and-videgard-arkitekter-plan-2nd-floor?next_project=no

[grb]

Four interior photos of Poplar Forest :

https://www.instagram.com/p/CqdFYHlOnO5/?img_index=1

[Brett Bellmore]

Nice, I should visit it some time.

[grb]

I want it visit it sometime as well, both for the house and because my grandparents lived somewhere nearby in a big drafty old farmhouse. It'd be nice to walk the hills, creeks and old abandoned quarry where we played as children. The house was freezing cold in winter and had a late bathroom addition to replace the decaying privy outside. This was only reached by a long open screened porch, which was covered over by plastic sheeting in wintertime. That didn't stop it from being a freezing race to get to the bathroom on midnight trips.

The problem? I think there's only one uncle left who could tell me where it was.

[Brett Bellmore]

It was worth visiting "the little White House", FDR's summer retreat. Not out of architectural significance, of course, it was very unimpressive in that regard. But it was quite close to "the little Grand Canyon", which was a nice hike, and having been to both, the resemblance IS undeniable.

https://gastateparks.org/ProvidenceCanyon

Always remember, kiddies: Plow ACROSS the hill, not up and down!

[Commenter_XY]

Wow, I had no idea. I gotta go and check it out.

[jb]

I remember some recent narrative that the Biden administration was cooking the books on economic numbers and consistently releasing good numbers and then revising them to be worse a few months later, but I noticed in the jobs report this week that the July and August numbers were both revised upwards.

Is there any sort of study that tries to look at overall trend in error, or is everyone just cherry picking examples that match their priors?

[grb]

Revised economic statistics are a commonplace fact, seen under every administration. If they've been running one way, perhaps that's because this post-covid economy has proved a mystery to economists, who've frequently confessed they're not sure what's going one.

[jb]

I don't disagree. I was just cherry-picking my own data point to see if anyone could actually point to a trend rather than their own cherry-picked data points. But it seems like yes, everyone is just cherry-picking and no one has bothered to try to figure out if there's any meaningful trend/bias.

[Aunt Teefah]

Do people have the right to use armed resistance against a tyrannical government?

Normally, commenters on this site would say yes. News of some hapless Democrat proposing some new milquetoast half-measure is regularly met with calls for a new civil war. Talk of "watering the tree of liberty with blood" is common.

Yet when people actually take up arms against a government that really is oppressing them, everyone loses their fucking minds. People in Gaza live under a constant state of government tyranny beyond what the persecution fetishists on here can even imagine. Whatever you think of Obamacare or proposals for universal healthcare, Israel actually imposed real-life death panels on Gazans. As in, they do not have access to basic medical materials like antibiotics or gauze because of the blockade and sanctions. Whatever you imagine the "Green New Deal" to be, Israel actually limits Gazans to 4-5 hours of electricity per day. In a desert.

Conservatives in the US complain of "Big Brother" government overreach when a city bans the sale of 64-oz sodas at convenience stores. Meanwhile, the official policy of the Israeli government is to put Palestinians in Gaza "on a diet." As in, they calculated the minimum amount of calories needed to keep Gazans from starving to death, and let no more than that through the blockade. And while conservatives threaten violence whenever a blue state tries to limit guns' magazine capacity, Israel prohibits Gazans from purchasing or owning guns of any sort.

It's frequently said that Israel keeps 2 million Gazans in a prison, but that isn't really accurate. Prisoners are at least afforded clean water, medical care, and electricity. It would be more accurate to say it keeps them in hell.

Who could possibly blame people subjected to such to such tyrannical abuse for engaging in armed collective self-defense? Wouldn't you?

Of course, that does not excuse those who targeted innocent civilians. Those who did so are war criminals, and should be tracked down and punished as such. But we should not tar all Gazan fighters for the crimes of a few. Those who killed only the IDF thugs imprisoning their people ought to be seen as heroes.

[Martinned]

Exactly. All of those wingnuts who talk about the 2nd Amendment as a safeguard against tyranny are envisaging exactly what Hamas did here.

[Mr. Bumble]

You and Auntie are being quite the assholes today. Hamas is the government of Gaza and if there objection was to Israel they still had no justification to attack and kill civilians.

[Aunt Teefah]

Can you read? I very clearly distinguished between those who killed civilians (unjustified and wrong) and those who killed the soldiers who terrorize and imprison their people (justified and good).

"Of course, that does not excuse those who targeted innocent civilians. Those who did so are war criminals, and should be tracked down and punished as such. But we should not tar all Gazan fighters for the crimes of a few. Those who killed only the IDF thugs imprisoning their people ought to be seen as heroes."

[Nige]

Any armed popular resistance is going to kill civilians. Attacking or occupying armies do it all the time as well. It’s the reason jaw-jaw is preferred to war-war.

[Mr. Bumble]

The attack was aimed at civilians!

[Martinned]

@Mr. Bumble. I agree 100%. That's exactly my point. People who claim that there is a realistic possibility of armed resistance against a hypothetical US tyranny are, realistically, envisaging barbaric terrorism.

[Frank Drackman]

It's been awhile since my High School history, but didn't the Barbarians win?

[jb]

I'm far from a 2A absolutist, but I also don't think this is really true. Whether it be the Revolutionary War or various forms of armed resistance to invasion, there's plenty of examples of people using guns to throw off an oppressive regime without intentionally slaughtering a bunch of civilians.

[Brett Bellmore]

Context is all important here: The Palestinians have been trying to murder Israelis, with varying success, for over half a century now. All the grief they get from Israel is a consequence of that.

Scarcely a month has gone by when the Palestinians haven't sent something Israel's way that any normal country wouldn't treat as a cause for war.

"How dare you oppress us just because we keep launching rockets into your residential areas, and sneak in assassins whenever we can!" is not a terribly persuasive plea.

[Aunt Teefah]

Yes, Palestinians lob rockets, most of which are essentially improvised fireworks. Israeli settlers burn down Palestinian homes, and burn Palestinian children, with impunity. On and on it goes.

Neither side of this conflict has clean hands. But only one keeps the other trapped in a prison.

[Frank Drackman]

“Improvised Fireworks”?? OK, thats so fucking stupid you should wrap an Ilhan Mullah Omar towel around yo nappy haid' (Seriously, Bin Laden could have hidden in that thing) and pose as the new Aunt Jemima

Frank

[Aunt Teefah]

Well said.

[Mr. Bumble]

Auntie, you're confusing Hamas with BLM and ANTIFA.

[Nige]

It says a lot that you are.

[Nelson]

No, Auntie. Handwaving away constant rocket attacks on Israeli civilians doesn't cut it. The settlements are illegal and immoral, but they don't justify terrorism. Hamas is an obscenity that is indefensible and unjustified.

I am in no way excusing Israeli excesses, most notably building illegal settlements and populating them with religious zealots, but there is no justification for what Hamas did.

[Bob from Ohio]

"over half a century now"

Goes back to 1929 with the Hebron Massacre, at least.

[David Nieporent]

Do people have the right to use armed resistance against a tyrannical government?

Sure. Do they have the right to use armed resistance against a tyrannical music festival?

As in, they do not have access to basic medical materials like antibiotics or gauze because of the blockade and sanctions.

Israel has no control over what comes into Gaza through the Rafah crossing.

[Aunt Teefah]

"Do they have the right to use armed resistance against a tyrannical music festival?"

No. I very clearly said "that does not excuse those who targeted innocent civilians. Those who did so are war criminals, and should be tracked down and punished as such. But we should not tar all Gazan fighters for the crimes of a few. Those who killed only the IDF thugs imprisoning their people ought to be seen as heroes."

"Israel has no control over what comes into Gaza through the Rafah crossing."

Never said they did (though let's be real, of course they do). But they have more than enough to answer for based their enforcement of the blockade by sea and across the barrier.

[Brett Bellmore]

As a first approximation, (Second, too, I bet.) NONE of the Hamas soldiers targeted military. They weren't there to fight military, they were there to slaughter as many civilians as they could, and then retreat with hostages.

[Aunt Teefah]

"Israel's military said at 10 a.m. that Palestinian fighters had penetrated at least three military installations around the frontier - the Erez border crossing, the Zikim base and the Gaza division headquarters at Reim. It said fighting at Erez and Zikim continued.

Hamas videos showed fighters running towards a burning building near a high concrete wall with a watchtower and fighters apparently overrunning part of an Israeli military facility and shooting from behind a wall."

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-hamas-attack-israel-unfolded-2023-10-07/

[Rev. O.T. Medal]

Aunt T, you say, "Of course, that does not excuse those who targeted innocent civilians. Those who did so are war criminals, and should be tracked down and punished as such. But we should not tar all Gazan fighters for the crimes of a few. Those who killed only the IDF thugs imprisoning their people ought to be seen as heroes."

Your attempt to find Hamas heroes is morally disgusting and intellectually bankrupt. The Oct. 6 assault on Israel was a single, unified operation. The point of having some "Gazan fighters" attack military bases or police stations was to pin down potential defenders, maximize confusion, and give the murder-rape-kidnap squads extra time in which to slaughter, maim, and abuse Israeli civilians. Everyone involved in any way in planning, supporting, or carrying out any aspect of the Oct. 6 attacks is a war criminal.

All of Hamas is a terrorist death cult devoted to murdering Jews. It must be crushed.

[Aunt Teefah]

The American soldiers who slaughtered innocents at My Lai were part of a unified operation in Vietnam. US soldiers intentionally killed scores of civilians in Iraq. Do you believe that every person fighting for the US in those wars was a war criminal? If not, then sit this one out.

Americans and Israelis are always afforded the benefit of being judged for their own actions. They can have heroes among them, even when others are bad actors. Yet, for some reason, Palestinians are never given the benefit of differentiation, and instead are all blamed collectively. Wonder why that is . . .

"The point of having some “Gazan fighters” attack military bases or police stations was to pin down potential defenders, maximize confusion, and give the murder-rape-kidnap squads extra time in which to slaughter, maim, and abuse Israeli civilians."

Do you have a basis to support this claim? Because it sounds an awful lot like rank speculation from someone with no clue as to what he's talking about.

[Rev. O.T. Medal]

The Oct. 6 attacks were meticulously planned. It is nonsensical to pretend that "heroic" Hamasnics attacked military targets while "bad actors" randomly and independently murdered civilians. It was one night and one operation, with a single goal -- to slaughter, terrorize, and humiliate Jews.

I am not "collectively" blaming "Palestinians." My post said nothing about "Palestinians." I spoke only of Hamas. Accusing me of maligning Palestinians generally is a dodge -- as is your foray into whataboutism.

The issue is what Hamas did on Oct. 6. To celebrate any part of a night that resulted in the rape, murder, and kidnapping of of 100s of deliberately targeted civilians is incomprehensible.

[Michael P]

It's perfectly comprehensible. Antifa loves the right (left) kind of fascism.

[Aunt Teefah]

“The issue is what Hamas did on Oct. 6.”

Obviously you’d like that to be the case. It would allow you to elide Israel’s creation of the conditions that could give rise to something like Hamas. But that’s not how this works. Israeli-Palestinian relations did not begin six days ago.

[Michael P]

Palestinians have agency, you know.

And tu quoque/whataboutism would be a fallacy even if you finished going through the motions instead of just flailing your arms in an attempt to hand-wave at past actions.

[Brett Bellmore]

You're doing more than a little eliding yourself, and everybody knows it.

Years ago, as part of what was supposed to be a peace process, Israel withdrew from Gaza, left it under Palestinian control. The Palestinians then rioted, destroyed valuable infrastructure the Israelis had left behind, and began an unending series of attacks on Israel, using Gaza as a staging area.

If they hadn't done that, Israel would have had neither motive nor need to keep responding to those attacks. It's not like they're cheap, after all.

You want to blame Israel for provoking the Palestinians by not ignoring murderous attacks by the Palestinians. Sorry, not gonna persuade anybody who didn't start out an anti-Semite.

[EscherEnigma]

Do they have the right to use armed resistance against a tyrannical music festival?

Current conservative thought is that you have the right to use armed resistance against a drag show, so I'm not sure this is going to go the way you expect.

[M L]

Rifts on the right.

https://twitter.com/RichardStrocher/status/1712289940753801229?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

"Ben Shapiro throws a fit after Tucker Carlson suggests Americans should be more concerned with the 100,000 annual OD deaths in the U.S. than the 500 foreigners who died 7,000 miles away"

My take - I agree with Shapiro that the two situations aren't the same at all. But maybe agree with Carlson that the former topic is still a bigger problem specifically for Americans?

[Frank Drackman]

Generally people don't get injected with Fentanyl involuntarily. (OK, I give it to patients all the time for surgery (try getting a Bypass without it) but they signed the consent form.

Frank

[M L]

IRS says Microsoft owes an additional $29 billion in back taxes

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/11/irs-says-microsoft-owes-an-additional-29-billion-in-back-taxes.html

Seems like there might be some room for disagreement in the tax code . . . .

[Longtobefree]

How many IRS computers run windows?
What if they all fail at the same time, by pure coincidence?

[Commenter_XY]

Senator Robert 'Sticky Fingers' Menendez just hit with FARA charges by SDNY; acted as an agent for Egypt. No surprise there, for damned sure he is not acting for the interest of the People's Republic of NJ. What a corrupt POS.

[Frank Drackman]

I'll hold out judgement, until umm, this thing we call a "Trial"
So he's got some cash?, a few Kilos of Gold?? (prudent actually, (the Gold, not the cash) When did having cash and gold become ill-legal??
OK, I get that he's a creep (more sickened by his (alleged) Pedophilia) but I trust the DOJ about as much as I trust Rob Man-Friend

Frank

[Martinned]

Since I have been accused of supporting Hamas because I observed that the evidence about babies being beheaded was not there, it is probably wise if I point out that the evidence is now clear: https://twitter.com/Jerusalem_Post/status/1712460425529372821

[Brett Bellmore]

Still pretending it wasn't clear at the time you got the grief over it?

[SimonP]

Still pretending that jumping to conclusions without reasoning or evidence counts as "reasonable"?

[Bob from Ohio]

Shamed out of being a Baby Murder Denier.

[SimonP]

There's really no shame in withholding judgment pending further facts and evidence, changing one's views in light of those facts and evidence as they become available, and publicizing that change in views.

If Martin were to follow your example, he'd obfuscate and equivocate, avoid responding, strawman others' positions, etc., etc., etc.

[Bob from Ohio]

There was already plenty of evidence at the time.

[SimonP]

Citing a single source, filtered through the right-wing kaleidoscope of horrors and femboy porn that you call your everyday media diet, doesn’t count as “plenty of evidence.”

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

I observed that the evidence about babies being beheaded was not there

You “observed” no such thing. You alleged it (even though evidence was there) based on a single news source (Sky News) saying they had requested some from the IDF and had not yet received it.

[Nige]

I'm not sure the people accusing him of approving of an atrocity because he was waiting for confirmation that it occurred are actually prioritising evidence over performance.

[Zarniwoop]

I listened to an (extremely tough to hear) interview with an IDF special forces squad leader this morning who was asked about the beheading allegation, and if his direct observations of dead kids was sufficient to tell if children were beheaded before being burned. He couldn't tell. That uncertainty was, and still is, out there in individual cases.

I think it's good that Martinned can be skeptical, ask for evidence, and then acknowledge evidence once it's confirmed. Beating up on someone for "trust but verify" is pure silliness. Brett, Bob, WYO2, don't you have better things to do with your life?

[Michael P]

Zarniwoop, did that squad leader describe his training in forensic investigation of arson? How long he had to investigate the scene? Or are you putting undue emphasis on one person's inability to tell whether the sequence was "decapitate then burn" versus "burn then decapitate"? (I would compare that undue emphasis to dying on the hill of "IDF has not given pictures to Sky News, therefore there is no evidence".)

Even if all those answers go your way, what is the significance? That "in individual cases" Hamas might have burned a child before their neck was severed, rather than the other way around? (I guess we are then left to speculate about whether the child was dead before being respectively burned or decapitated, rather than that being the way that a Hamas member murdered the child.) Is that supposed to be any better?

Zarniwoop, don't YOU have better things to do with you life than minimizing the barbaric behavior of Hamas?

[Zarniwoop]

Yawn, I hope you enjoy arguing with strawmen.

[Nige]

How come you didn't cross-examine the atrocity story like this when it first began to filter out instead of denouncing Martinned like a heretic for wanting more confirmation?

[Brett Bellmore]

Possibly because it's not as though it was out of character for Hamas. "Hamas decapitates babies" is a real dog bites man story, after all.

[Nige]

Your disposition to believe the worst is not a particularly useful guide to whether something is true or not. Creating a kind of purity test whereby you must believe something occured before it has been confirmed to have occurred or you support the thing or are forever branded a denier even after it has been confirmed, or, even more incoherently, both, on the other hand, is not out of character for you lot.

[Zarniwoop]

And one thing I hope we can all agree on: may their memory be a blessing.

[Armchair]

Perhaps you should consider such arguments not very wise, and may be akin to arguing the Jews didn't feel any pain when they were killed in the gas chambers.

[Brett Bellmore]

House investigators cast doubt on Biden’s classified document timeline

"House investigators say President Biden began dispatching staff to retrieve boxes of documents months before his administration disclosed to the National Archives the discovery of improperly held classified documents, starting the same day that the Justice Department subpoenaed former President Donald Trump over his stash of classified materials.

The timeline and actions, lawmakers say, suggest that Mr. Biden’s team may have been aware he was in possession of classified documents long before Nov. 2, 2022, when Mr. Biden’s lawyer said they discovered the material and summoned the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to pick them up.

Mr. Biden did not disclose to the public that he was in possession of classified material until January 2023, when he said he was surprised about the discovery of the documents. More classified material was discovered later on at his Wilmington, Delaware home, some of it dating back to his time as a senator."

"Among the staff House investigators want to interview is Dana Remus, former White House Counsel and assistant to the president, who reached out to one of Mr. Biden’s former assistants about picking up material from the Penn Biden Center.

Ms. Remus contacted former Biden assistant Kathy Chung on May 11, 2022, the same day the Justice Department subpoenaed former President Donald Trump for classified documents he was holding at his Palm Beach estate. Ms. Remus reached out to Ms. Chung through Ms. Chung’s personal email account and personal phone, skirting public records scrutiny, seeking to obtain material from the Penn Biden Center. Ms. Chung helped to coordinate the retrieval."

More and more I think failure by government employees to use anything but archived government email for anything even vaguely work related should be made a strict liability offense, given how much we've seen it used in the last few years to avoid leaving records of dubious goings on.

[SimonP]

Oh, come now. If we actually had the emails in question, you wouldn't be able to spin your fairy tales over what the record doesn't show.

Anyway, look at how the puppet jumps, when the GOP pulls his strings! You're a good little stooge, yes you are!

[Michael P]

Robert Peters and Robin Ware think your proposal is a big effing danger to government personnel.

[Brett Bellmore]

How exactly? It endangers their ability to circumvent the law and do things secretly?

[Michael P]

Yes. I was making a joke about the former vice president's use of pseudonymous (and in at least one case, also non-government) email accounts.

[David Nieporent]

Ms. Remus contacted former Biden assistant Kathy Chung on May 11, 2022, the same day the Justice Department subpoenaed former President Donald Trump for classified documents he was holding at his Palm Beach estate. Ms. Remus reached out to Ms. Chung through Ms. Chung’s personal email account and personal phone, skirting public records scrutiny,

Um, if she's his former assistant, then how else could they reach out to her other than through her personal contact info? (And what does "skirting public records scrutiny" even mean for phone calls?)

Also, Chung already testified to Comer's retaliatory Congressional investigation, and didn’t give them anything, which is why they've not released her testimony.

[BrotherMovesOn]

Ouch.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You are a delusional, disaffected, partisan bigot, Brett Bellmore. Thank you for choosing to be a conservative.

[Suudy]

Media and VC silence on the Duncan v. Bonta shenanigans in the 9th circuit. Seems the court is playing fast and loose with its own rules. The dissents are quite critical.

"But I have a more fundamental concern with the majority’s decision to proceed with this new appeal en banc in the first instance. No other circuit court would allow a prior en banc panel to hear a comeback case without an intervening majority vote of the active judges." - Nelson

"In an unusual move, our en banc panel retained the emergency stay motion as a comeback case in the first instance—bypassing our traditional three-judge consideration of motions. Indeed, it’s perhaps the first time our court has ever done so. The majority then granted an administrative stay, with four judges dissenting. Now a majority of the en banc court grants the stay pending appeal—with littleanalysis or explanation of Bruen’s requirements—saving California’s ban on large-capacity magazines yet again." - Bumatay

[Idihax]

With judicial bad faith and no consequences for it, anything is possible.

SCOTUS is ultimately responsible, as they're letting the states get away with it. Why they bother making rulings they don't have any intention of implementing, I have no idea.

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/news/2023/10/10/scotus-rejects-request-to-temporarily-halt-new-gun-control-law

[Idihax]

Another example:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-11/9th-circuit-stays-ruling-overturning-california-ban-on-high-capacity-ammunition-magazines

They are openly thumbing their nose at Bruen. There's no law that they would say doesn't fit the historical framework of regulation.

[Suudy]

Did anyone really think Sotomayor would intervene?

[Idihax]

No. But the whole court denied it too.

[Idihax]

This is why I say all Democrats should be gassed.

[Frank Drackman]

Peter Quinn from "Homeland" had the Gaza (and Syria/Iraq/Iran) "Final Solution" in 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct3BsyF64gM&t=62s

Frank

[Bored Lawyer]

I don't have the patience to answer the fellow travelers in detail. Others here are doing a decent job.

But let me recount an anecdote a cousin of mine, now deceased, told me. He was a professor of history (IIRC Spanish history). In the 1950s, his college arranged for him to go to Germany to give lectures. While there, some Germans complained to him about the severe bombings the Allies inflicted on Germany during WWII. His response was, next time, don't start a war.

In 2005, Israel withdrew every last Jew from the Gaza strip. You can apply the term Judenrein to it. The locals could have elected a peaceful government. It did not have to be a pro-Israel government, just one whose primary interest was the well-being of its citizens. The world community gave them plenty of resources to turn themselves into a prosperous country. (Spare me the blockade argument, it was an arms blockade. Nothing in that prevent peaceful commerce.)

Instead, they elected the Arab equivalent of the Nazi party, which since then has invested every resource into war and terror, aimed at destroying Israel, and meanwhile fomenting terror against innocent civilians.

So, like my cousin in the last century, I have no sympathy for them.

[SimonP]

Yeah? I'm sure you tell all your friends and professional colleagues about how you feel about it, you're so proud of your shitty opinion, huh?

[Bored Lawyer]

And you're proud of supporting the 21st century's Nazi party. Don't worry, after they "Gas the Jews" they'll come for you.

[SimonP]

I have never said a single word in support of Hamas or its actions.

And, don't you worry, the American Taliban will come for me long before Hamas does. Plenty of them here in the comments already sharpening their knives.

[Nige]

Justifications and calls for genocide and mass slaughter are only coming from one side in these comment.

[EscherEnigma]

Been gone a while. Is Volokh still pretending he isn't on the side of the book-banners?

[SimonP]

Eugene writes only infrequently about the book bans and drag bans and "don't say gay" laws and what their validity under the First Amendment might be, or might not be. He's much more focused on guns and being mean to trans people, these days.

[EscherEnigma]

Funny. So as the evidence mounts that the critics were right, he just stops talking about it.

[SimonP]

No, I think he's trying not to create a record that would harm him if, say, he wanted to work for a DeSantis or an Abbott or another thought-leader in the realm of restricting the speech and freedom of LGBT people.

Now that he's finally free of having to abide by UCLA's decency norms, when it comes to using trans students' chosen names and pronouns, I don't expect things to improve.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

He will continue to do what disaffected right-wing bigots and faux libertarian Federalist Society members do.

When his paychecks start to be signed by fellow wingnuts, though, he may be truer to his inner clinger. I expect the hypocritical, partisan censorship to increase.

[Mr. Bumble]

Maybe because it the cause du jour and has resulted in many legal actions?

[SimonP]

There are many, many "causes du jour," including some on topics that Eugene actually knows something about. He chooses to post on trans issues because he has a special contempt for transgendered people and the emerging norms on how to treat them.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Emerging norms"; That's an interesting way to phrase it.

How about "relentlessly imposed norms"? Seems to fit the facts better.

[Nige]

They said that about mixed marriages and such, too.

[SimonP]

No one's "imposing" any particular norm on anyone, including in particular, you.

No, what you are describing as "imposition" is in fact just concerted, social pressure - the same as any other norm of behavior. You can respond to it, or you can choose not to care about it - the same as any norm of behavior. The reason that you resent it is that you don't like how your refusal to go along is regarded, by those who follow the norm.

In other words, you're the racist who resents that he "can't" say "nigger." In fact, you can. But you cannot do so without receiving some measure of disapprobation. Thus, you channel your resentment by accusing society at large of "imposing" a rule on you.

Nah, brah. No one gives a shit about your shitty beliefs or your shitty feelings. No one's stopping you from being the shitty person you truly identify as. You just want the ability to come out as the shitty person you truly feel that you are, and have that be received and accepted without judgment.

[Brett Bellmore]

"In other words, you’re the racist who resents that he “can’t” say “nigger.” "

LOL! This would come as a great surprise to my neighbors, about half of whom are black. Apparently today's definition of "racism" is "opposes racial discrimination".

[Idihax]

I have no interest in being means to trans. I'd rather just put them in concentration camps, where they can't bother the rest of us.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You are the Volokh Conspiracy’s target audience, although the professors with mainstream employers would prefer a bit more discretion.

[Idihax]

When you go to the West Village for your trysts, do you use lube?

[Brett Bellmore]

"3 people will watch your bullshit video" Give or take 2M, anyway.

Wow, that's a lot of smug.

[Absaroka]

6.6M at present

[SimonP]

6.6M Twitter "views" translates to, what? Maybe 500k YouTube views? 50k? What's the exchange rate?

[Brett Bellmore]

Do you disagree that was a lot of smug?

[SimonP]

I don't, in fact, search out videos that will just annoy or outrage me. There are nutty, smug people everywhere. I don't need their opinions in my head. I give assholes like you enough free real estate as it is.

[Michael P]

A superceding indictment has been filed in the case of Sen. Robert Menendez, charging him with conspiring with others to act as unregistered foreign agents.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24028566-20231012-rm-et-al-s1-indictmentfinal-for-gj-signed

[David Welker]

We need to have better language.

The New York Governor today talked about "zero tolerance for hate."

But let's face it, the phrase "zero tolerance" and the word "hate" are highly similar, both expressing strong emotions of strong dislike.

There are at least two problems with being so imprecise with language: (1) is that it opens the door for a sort of hypocrisy, where some sorts of "strong dislike" are spoken of as though they are allowed (zero tolerance), but other forms of "strong dislike" are not allowed (hate). (2) it fails to address the underlying problem or "root cause" of problems... "hate" or "strong dislike" is an emotional state... and it isn't necessarily wrong per se. If a person felt "hate" after observing a terrorist attack on a family member, that wouldn't be some sort of moral flaw, but instead an expected human emotion. I also fully expect that some residents in Gaza are going to experience "hate" towards members of the Israeli Defense Force to the extent that their actions cause civilian casualties of family members.

Ultimately, the problem is NOT the underlying emotion itself. It is not inherently wrong or a moral problem to feel "strong dislike" or "hate" toward someone or something that one perceives as a threat or who one perceives as having committing a serious wrong-doing.

Of course, it might be correctly observed that such emotions can end up consuming someone and cause them to become less reasonable.

While sometimes the problem is the emotion of "strong dislike" itself (an unreasonably unwillingness to let go of such emotion can turn into a problem in and of itself), the bigger issue might be the threat that is causing the emotion.

Talking about how one will not "tolerate" hate is prejudiced, as it presumes that the problem is the emotion rather than the cause of the emotion. Before one can determine whether a strong emotion or its cause is the problem, one must first listen and investigate the issue. Second, talking about how you won't "tolerate" something is actually an expression of strong dislike. It is akin to saying, in different language, that one hates hate. And the message that is sent is one of superiority, because ones own intolerance is acceptable, but the intolerance of others is not.

Overall, I think we should abandon the phrases "hate speech" and "hate crime" because of these underlying issues of hypocrisy, superiority, prejudice, and logical incoherence. Instead, we should be looking deeper at underlying root causes of problems.

I also think we see a lot of hypocrisy on this issue from the left. As in, you have Hilary Clinton talking about "baskets of deplorables" (a statement of strong dislike akin to hate) or the need for "formal deprogramming" of "cult members" who support Trump (another statement of strong dislike akin to hate). But if you were to ask Clinton what justifies her own strong dislike or hatred of these targets, she would probably point to the alleged prejudices of the groups she targets.

But Clinton herself is engaging in prejudice; she certainly has not carefully talked to people on an individual level to understand what issues are motivating them. It also becomes self-indulgent; it is only Clinton's own prejudice that should be tolerated.

One defense people might make of Clinton in these sorts of circumstances is that she is "just joking" but we often see many instances where "humor is not a defense" crowd.

Overall, the problem of hatred is that it can cause people to become unreasoning. The idea of responding to this in an unreasoning way (with zero tolerance for hate) may be tempting in a "let's fight fire with fire" sort of way, but that it ultimately counterproductive as it will ultimately descend into tribalism and then the issue will really become not a crusade against hate per se, but a question of whose hate is accepted and whose hate is not.

The proper way to respond to hate is with reasoning. Listening to people allows them to vent whatever steam they have built up and can lead more effectively to the emotional transformation that would be good not only for a hateful person, but for society more broadly.

Reason and rationality, unlike hate, is beautiful. The way to fight hate, which is ugly, is not with yet more hate, but with beauty.

[Idihax]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/12/tech/montana-tiktok-ban-judge-preliminary-injunction-hearing/index.html

Does this Clinton judge find it "paternalistic" when a state tells a bakery he has to make a cake for two butt pirates?

[not guilty]

Steve Scalise has reportedly withdrawn his bid to become Speaker of the House.

Who will be next? Perhaps Dennis Hastert should try a comeback. He is the last Republican to successfully lead his party's conference.

[Moderation4ever]

At what point do Americans admit that the Republicans are no longer capable of being a governing party. They can be an opposition party, but they no longer have the skill set to govern. The party's leading presidential candidate can't govern, we saw this during his administration. They cannot govern the one house of Congress they control. Governing is harder than people can image and it takes skills that are getting pretty thin in the Republican party.

[Brett Bellmore]

The definition of "governing" is not, "pursuing the same policies Democrats would in office." Trump's administration absolutely demonstrated a capacity to govern, even handicapped as it was by lawfare. They were just pursuing different policies than Biden's.

And quite successfully for the most part, as demonstrated by illegal immigration numbers, the Abraham accords, Russia waiting until Biden took office to invade Ukraine...

[Nige]

Incredibly bad governance is governance if incredibly bad governance is what you want, which Republicans increasingly do.

Russia knew Trump was going to lose?

[Brett Bellmore]

Both parties think the other party's idea of appropriate policy is incredibly bad. That doesn't mean you're not governing unless you do what the party out of power wants to do.

[Nige]

No, Republicans have rejected good basic governance - you say it yourself over and over again, they are simply incapable of enacting all but a limited range of policies, all crude and counter-productive and generally geared towards benefitting the rich and powerful. You voted for Trump even though you knew he was an incompetent, you will vote for him again, because his incompetence is offset by the chaos he causes and the partisan capture of the Supreme Court. That's not governance, that's sabotage and authoritarianism.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Both parties think the other party’s idea of appropriate policy is incredibly bad.

The tiebreaker is that one party is the party of racists, gay-bashers, misogynists, antisemites, white nationalists, Islamophobes, xenophobes, white supremacists, Christian dominionists, and assorted other bigots.

See: arc of American moral progress; culture war results.

[Moderation4ever]

I define governing as pursuing a set of objectives to meet the countries needs. Those needs don't have to be the same as your opposition but they need to be more than chaos. Chaos was the defining characteristic of the Trump administration in most cases that did not matter. Much of the country can run by itself. But when something happens, hurricanes or pandemics you need a leader.

[Brett Bellmore]

Look, you're just, and rather transparently, using "chaos" as a synonym for "I don't like the policy". Trump was NOT doing things randomly, he was rationally pursuing policy goal you disapprove of.

Random would have been, for instance, building the wall in a Kansas corn field, instead of on the border.

[Moderation4ever]

No, I am using chaos correctly. Chaos is not random it is without direction or form creating disorder and confusion. It is saying one thing in the morning and another at night, or one message to one group and another to a different group. We are a democratic government that relies on maintaining conventions, chaos agents use them sometime and not another.

In the end people want government, but they want it to be in the background and not in their face. BIg government is not appreciated, but a chaos exhausts people.

[Nige]

'Trump was NOT doing things randomly,'

Doing things randomly is a kind of strategy, so no, he was just blundering about following his id.

[Martinned]

You don't have to agree with everything she says - I don't think I do - but this is an interesting reflection on both the law and morality of the Israel/Hamas war: https://www.ejiltalk.org/our-shared-horror/

[Martinned]

For people who care about such things, today the President of the European Commission has made an official visit to Kfar Azza.

https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1712823501676020140

[Nameless But Highly Opinionated]

It's Friday! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

[Magister]

Friday the 13th, but that's not going to spoil my weekend at Crystal Lake.

[SimonP]

The last time Idihax "had sex," it involved an awkward tip to an acne-ridden Korean woman giving him a massage, along with some embarrassed mumbling about getting a "happy ending." She didn't oblige, but the shame and humiliation he felt when she ran out of the room to tell her supervisor was enough to cause him to ejaculate on the spot.

[Idihax]

No. My wife and I don't do deviant things like that

[Frank Drackman]

Hard enough to get Mrs. Drackman to suck my dick when it doesn’t taste like shit.

[David Welker]

Queen:

“Zero tolerance is about norm formation”

Yes, you will tell people what norms to adopt, or else. I suppose that is one way to form norms. One that is totally contrary to reason. This is kind of like the “beat your kids” school of norm formation. “Because I said so!”

“Reason doesn’t do much for that. As Hume noted long ago Reason doesn’t motivate anyone to anything.”

I disagree. Reason allows us to imperfectly see beyond our own narrow perspective. And in that way, it does motivate.

… And saying “we shouldn’t tolerate intolerance” is no more illogical for those who want less intolerance than saying “we will aggressively respond with force to aggression” is illogical for those who want less aggression. …

It isn’t illogical, but it does imply superiority. The first view implies that you know the precise level of intolerance that should exist in the world (less) and it implies that your own intolerance isn’t itself a problem. And it also implies that the problem with intolerance is the intolerance rather than the cause of the intolerance. If a woman stabs a man, that is very intolerant. But if we realize that the only reason she stabbed him was to prevent a rape, then we recognize that the intolerance was justified. Before we can judge (and I am not saying we shouldn’t judge), we must listen and investigate. Telling yourself a story where the problem is HER intolerance because ALL intolerance is bad is simplistic and ultimately stupid.

We should expect more from public servants than simplicity and stupidity. In fact, I don’t think it is wrong for the governor to be intolerant in all instances, but I think it is simplistic and dumb for her to be talk about being intolerant of “hate.”

There are two types of intolerance. Bad intolerance (for example, raw aggression against someone who is different BECAUSE they are different even though the difference is not harmful) and good intolerance (stabbing someone to prevent a rape). Saying we want to decrease all intolerance isn’t coherent. If a person came to tolerate rape, I would want an increase in intolerance in that instance.

Another way to put it, stupid black and white thinking is stupid.

“Hate” bad and “love” good might sound like a good slogan superficially, but if someone loved COVID-19 so much that they had to release it and share it with everyone, we would need less “love” (of COVID-19) and more “hate” (of COVID-19) in that context.

Like I said, we need different language. Public servants should not talk down to people or use language that, if taken seriously, implies their idiocy.

[Frank Drackman]

Quite the fantasy you've constructed for yourself. Do you go online and pretend to be an underage boy to "Out the Pedofiles"???
Speaking of "Happy Endings" turns out the LGTBQT^-MOUSE Progressive Activist Josh Kruger, killed in Filthy-delphia last week, had it coming (in more ways than one) to him
https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/10/12/josh-kruger-murderer-robert-davis-relationship-philadelphia/
The "Money Shot"
"The man accused of gunning down a Philadelphia journalist in his home earlier this month had a long-standing sexual relationship with the victim starting when the suspect was an underage teen, according to the suspect’s family."

Frank "Didn't see that cumming, oh, actually I did"

[SimonP]

Quite the fantasy you’ve constructed for yourself. Do you go online and pretend to be an underage boy to “Out the Pedofiles”???

What, are you trying to suss out whether "Billy" might not be who he says he is?

[apedad]

“Quite the fantasy you’ve constructed for yourself.”

Say Frank, maybe read a book about Self-Awareness.