Monday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[not guilty]

CNN has replayed a clip of an interview that Donald Trump's designee for Attorney General, Pam (bottle) Blondie, gave to FOX News in 2023 in regard to the prosecutions of Trump. She declared, beginning at 1:06 of the CNN clip, “The prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDZrFy6FS-4 She quite notably did not mention any statute(s) that she claims that the prosecutors or investigators had violated.

Later in the CNN clip, Blondie repeated some of the malarkey regarding the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania that contributed to Rudy Giuliani getting disbarred.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"She quite notably did not mention any statute(s) that she claims that the prosecutors or investigators had violated."

If they haven't violated any statutes, they have nothing to worry about. The investigations will turn up nothing.

[Stephen Lathrop]

TwelveInch — If Bondi cannot name any statutes presumptively violated, on what basis would you justify an investigation? Show me the man, and I will show you the crime? Is that where your MAGA loyalty takes you now?

Do you understand that Jack Smith pursued investigations of charges handed down by federal grand juries? What alleged violations of federal law do you propose Bondi should present to a grand jury? If she does do that, and the grand jury refuses to indict, should that end the investigation?

[Krayt]

Same thing they used to investigate Trump in numerous initiatives? To git ‘im.

This is the world you built. Now you have to lie in it. It shouldn’t be done by either side, of course, but endless memes provide cover for going after a political opponent.

This is the curse of human history.

Again, your world, that you built. Shocked! Shocked, you are!

But but but!

But you went after him using the investigative power of government, deliberately, over and over and over for i = 1 to three or four dozen “and over”.

[not guilty]

"This is the world you built. Now you have to lie in it."

No, we don't have to lie in it. Unlike the Trump cult, I am quite comfortable telling the truth.

[Krayt]

Yes they lied, big time. But so did you, going after an opponent in initiative after initiative. I've said it before and will do so again and again. Jan. 6 was not the worst threat to democracy the past 8 years. You were, and are, with multiple head over heels efforts to use the investigative and prosecutorial power of government against an opponent to hurt him.

This is a profound level of lying. I don't want his team returning tit for tat. I want your back broken from the sheer weight of embarrassment over that effort.

[Krayt]

I’ve elucidated proofs time and again.

1. The sheer number of initiatives, and creative at that in some cases.
2. Congressional hearings for the purpose of leaking tax info, which was done.
3. Making sure states prosecute “just in case he pardons himself”. This is mathematical proof of ,”git ‘im!”
4. Sending info from Congressional hearings down to the states, also “just in case”. Also proof of git im.
5. Finally, with many such inititiatives, all lied with lying cover stories of honesty of investigation, ths impeachments, which, it was pointed out here, have the honor of being used openly against a political opponent as it’s a political process. I even tried to suggest adhering to the spirit of the 4th and 5th Amendments, and was shot down, with glee at getting to go after him directly because he irritates. When you don’t have to lie a cover story on why, you don’t, happily.

[not guilty]

"Yes they lied, big time. But so did you, going after an opponent in initiative after initiative. I’ve said it before and will do so again and again."

Krayt, a lie is a statement of a present or past fact, known to be false, made with intent to deceive. When and how do you claim that I have done that? Please be specific.

[David Nieporent]

I’ve said it before and will do so again and again. Jan. 6 was not the worst threat to democracy the past 8 years.

Then you were wrong before and will be wrong again and again.

[Riva]

Jan. 6 was not the worst threat to democracy in the past 8 years because Jan. 6 was not a threat to democracy at all, at least if we’re talking about the legitimate protesters.

[Sarcastr0]

at least if we’re talking about the legitimate protesters
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

[Stephen Lathrop]

No, Krayt.

The folks who got Trump indicted were not Democrats. They were erstwhile Trump supporters and political allies—turncoats ensnared in Trump-supporting criminality, and caught at it. Or they were professionally non-partisan military. And most damaging of all to Trump, former Trump staffers, almost all Republicans.

Get back to us when you find Democratic Party members who deliver credible evidence of criminal activity by Jack Smith.

Of course everyone here understands the sense of urgency Trump acolytes feel, to make up something to suggest equivalence between Trump and normalcy. Apparently, that calls for fabrications, transparent ones.

Your advocacy is a disgrace. Liz Cheney is a far better American than you are. If you style yourself a conservative, take her as your model.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

If Smith is like the Meuller team before him, they will "accidentally" wipe all their devices and shred evidence.

Like the J6 committee too. I suspect over the next six months we're going to see a whole bunch of "oopsies, I didn't mean to delete that"'s.

[David Nieporent]

MAGA manage to simultaneously believe that Mueller exonerated Trump and that Mueller destroyed the evidence he found. But if he didn't find any evidence, what would there be to destroy?

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

They destroyed evidence of their own illegal wrongdoings, you idiot.

I guess some bureaucrat doing something untoward is so foreign to you, you couldn't even grok the concept when it was blazingly obvious from the statement.

I couldn't imagine being so blindly obedient to and worshipful of authority like that. What a shitty, dog-like, life you must live.

[Magister]

I couldn’t imagine being so blindly obedient to and worshipful of authority like that.

LOL. Guy who lives in a pillbox cannot imagine living in a pillbox.

[David Nieporent]

They destroyed evidence of their own illegal wrongdoings, you idiot.

What illegal wrongdoings?

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

They destroyed their phones.

Can you read English?

[David Nieporent]

Having phones is illegal wrongdoing?

[Brett Bellmore]

OK, you're not stupid, you know what it means when somebody, realizing they're going to be investigated, takes a hammer to their hard drive and bricks their phone. Spoliation doesn't stop being spoliation just because it's your political allies doing it.

[David Nieporent]

OK, you’re not stupid, you know what it means when somebody, realizing they’re going to be investigated, takes a hammer to their hard drive and bricks their phone.

Why would people on Mueller's team "realize they were going to be investigated"? Do you think it's normal for the target of a government investigation to retaliatorily investigate the investigators? (Especially if he believes the investigators totally exonerated him!?!?)

[Brett Bellmore]

David, phones being bricked and hard drives meeting hammers has become a routine part of bureaucratic response to exposure of misdeeds. Are we supposed to simply ignore this spoliation of evidence?

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

We are supposed to be like the Democrat serf classes and accept what their Lords and Ladies say as true.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Are we supposed to simply ignore this spoliation of evidence?

No, but you are supposed to establish that it’s happening.

[Riva]

You mean the thug Smith’s participation in a conspiracy to violate rights with his malicious and frivolous prosecutions against the Democrats’ main political opponent isn’t enough of a crime for you?

[David Nieporent]

Bot can still only repeat talking points rather than actually respond to an argument, which is why it can only say "violate rights" without being able to identify any right that was violated.

[TwelveInchPianist]

“If Bondi cannot name any statutes presumptively violated, on what basis would you justify an investigation?”

When Leticia James was running for office, she said, “I will be shining a bright light into every dark corner of [Trump’s] real estate dealings”. She didn’t name any statutes. But when it came time to bring her case, she was able to allege violations of the law. I don’t recall you guys having any issues then.

I can’t imagine Bondi will bring any cases without being able to make similar allegations.

“What alleged violations of federal law do you propose Bondi should present to a grand jury?”

Huh? I haven’t proposed anything. Presumably, if she indicts someone, she will name statutes that she believes were violated.

If she indicts someone without naming any statutes, then you guys will have something to complain about.

[Magister]

Lots of statutes named when Trump and his numerous lackeys were indicted, and yet you still found something to complain about, even after convictions and guilty pleas.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Do you understand that Jack Smith pursued investigations of charges handed down by federal grand juries?

Well no: he investigated first, considered the evidence that the investigation uncovered to determine what charges fit, and then presented that evidence to the grand jury and asked them to indict on those charges.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Noscitur, nonsense. Trump himself first presented stark, publicly unmistakable evidence of violent, criminal disloyalty to the United States, broadcast live on television. That became fodder for a partisan-inspired Congressional investigation, which turned up copious evidence against Trump, but that evidence was supplied mainly by erstwhile Trump loyalists, aides, and acolytes. Along the way, news media dug out stories, proved by evidence presented immediately, of frauds against the public, such as Trump's fake electors scheme. Hesitant Attorney General Garland, and Jack Smith arrived woefully late in the process.

[Noscitur a sociis]

With respect to the Mar a Lago case, that characterization is of course completely wrong.

With respect to the January 6 case: do you really think that Jack Smith walked into the grand jury room, said “hey, you guys have seen this crazy stuff in the news, what laws do you think Trump broke?” If so, we’ll go ahead and add “criminal investigations and prosecutorial decision-making” to the list of stuff you’re confidently wrong about.

[tylertusta]

Nitpick: Smith probably didn't walk in to an existing GJ investigation, but it's theoretically possible that one was already in the works.

[not guilty]

Jack Smith was appointed in November of 2022. The grand jury was investigating long before that. Indeed, Donald Trump had already stiffed the DOJ on a grand jury subpoena that had been issued the previous spring.

[tylertusta]

Thank you for the correction.

It is technically possible for the grand jury in DC to have been already investigating the J6/documents case before the DOJ/US Attorney's office could ask for a grand jury. But it is more likely that the DOJ/USA kicked it off.

[Bob from Ohio]

"considered the evidence that the investigation uncovered"

LOL He was hired to bring the charges, he didn't "consider" anything.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Do you understand that Jack Smith pursued investigations of charges handed down by federal grand juries? What alleged violations of federal law do you propose Bondi should present to a grand jury?"

Do you not understand the logical fallacies here?
Hint: How did the grand juries come to hand down the charges?

[Noscitur a sociis]

I see where you’re going, but she did say “will be prosecuted”, not just investigated.

[TwelveInchPianist]

From what I saw, she said, "The prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones." I presume "bad ones" means prosecutors who violated the law. Am I missing something?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Yeah, you are missing the import of, "will be," coupled with lack of evidence that there were bad prosecutions.

And you ignore ceaseless public announcements by Trump that he intended to retaliate against anyone who attempted to enforce the law against him. Not to mention the boost Trump got thanks to a corruptly partisan Supreme Court. I think you left that out too.

Or how about the storms of death threats Trump inspired against judicial personnel, investigation witnesses, and ordinary election officials—almost all of those threats apparently destined to go uninvestigated, and of course unpunished.

Maybe the most chilling thing of all that you miss—something too little commented on by everyone—was Mike Pence's response when during the MAGA attack a Secret Service supervisor tried to talk Pence into getting into a car to take him away from the Capitol.

With his life explicitly under threat as a result of goads tweeted by Trump to enrage the mob, Pence declined to get into the car. He said in effect that he did not trust the Secret Service. Pence—the person most pressured by Trump to conspire in a coup—had more first-hand insight than anyone else to enable accurate insight into the extent of Trump's threat.

Of course, you are no more in the dark about the totality of what Pence knew than the rest of us—access to that information having been systematically suppressed by the Supreme Court to aid Trump politically.

None of that even makes you cautious? You consider everything the nation has seen, and conclude Trump is a blameless victim of partisan attack? What's wrong with you?

[hobie]

Give it up, Lathrop. In MAGA world, them top secret docs mailed themselves to Florida, hid themselves in the bathroom when authorities called, then disclosed themselves to guests in Bedminster

[Frank Drackman]

What a Hayseed!

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Just think if they had hid them in Bidens garage everything would have been above board and totally legal!

[Riva]

In MAGA world, were classified documents stored for years in a garage next to Corvette? And various places in China Town? In MAGA world, do they recruit intelligence operatives to write lies claiming the laptop of the big guy’s crackhead bagman son has the hallmarks of Russian disinformation? Does MAGA world hire law firm cutouts to spread Russian collusion lies against their political opponents?

[David Nieporent]

Bot's malfunctioning again, just stuck in a loop repeating mostly lies rather than responding to the actual post.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Yeah, you are missing the import of, “will be,” coupled with lack of evidence that there were bad prosecutions."

If there are no bad prosecutors, then there will be no successful prosecutions. I'm not sure why this is difficult to understand. No one will be convicted without an indictment by a grand jury and a conviction by a jury of their peers.

"And you ignore ceaseless public announcements by Trump that he intended to retaliate against anyone who attempted to enforce the law against him."

Anyone prosecuted by the Trump administration will have the same defense of selective prosecution available that Trump had, and that any other defendant has.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Anyone prosecuted by the Trump administration will have the same defense of selective prosecution available that Trump had, and that any other defendant has.

TwelveInch — Once again, not right, and no equivalence. Trump got immunized by his corruptly partisan Supreme Court majority. No one else gets to rely on that.

You, of course, were all in favor of that when it happened. Like MAGAs everywhere, and normal people too, you expected Trump to be convicted if he got tried. You knew he was guilty. So you wanted Supreme Court delay, to be sure any trials got postponed until after the election. The sweeping immunity which no one saw coming was just a rotten cherry on top of a corrupt cake you avidly gulped down.

What drives you to repeat arguments everyone can see you do not even believe? Are you some already-convicted J6 criminal on the lookout for a blanket pardon? A Russian troll trying to cause discord? Or a MAGA bot programmed to act like a tool, or a fool?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Once again, not right, and no equivalence. Trump got immunized by his corruptly partisan Supreme Court majority."

How does that conflict with what I said?

[Dr. Ed 2]

"The bad ones" is a restriction on the category of "prosecutors" -- it's sloppy usage but she's only threatening to prosecute the "bad" ones.

[Commenter_XY]

Simple answer: Turnabout is fair play. The process will be the punishment.

For the objectors, I simply remind you of what Pres Obama once said: Elections have consequences.

Now the shoe is on the other foot.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Commenter_XY — Turnabout is turnabout. Whether it is fair play depends on a show of equivalence in the cases.

There has been no equivalence. Trump opponents would not support Trump-style criminality in a candidate of their own. They are, by and large, institutionalists, not nihilists, like MAGAs clamoring for vengeance. In your case, clamoring in terms which shockingly announce your own corrupt character.

Absent your pseudonym, would you publish what you just wrote above? If so, do it; give us your true identity.

If reflection says otherwise, then reflect a bit more. Ask yourself what that tells you about your own opinion of your own advocacy.

[Commenter_XY]

Cry harder.

[bernard11]

What scum you've turned out to be.

[Commenter_XY]

bernard11, I am merely telling you what is going to happen. And explaining the very understandable human motivations behind it. Don't say I didn't warn you this would happen, because I did.

Take Senator Fetterman's good advice: Pace yourself. Pres Trump hasn't even been sworn in yet. It will be a long four(?) years.

The shoe is on the other foot bernard11. Does it hurt? Think about that.

[Sarcastr0]

Commenter: "Cry harder"
Also Commenter (right above): "I am merely telling you what is going to happen"

Why are you telling obvious lies about what you're saying?

[John F. Carr]

The investigators should be careful working in blue states. The DC Bar claimed jurisdiction to investigate Jeffrey Clarke's work inside the Justice Department. There are not enough MAGA votes in Congress to strip state bar jurisdiction by statute.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Didn't that issue get resolved when the state brought criminal charges against the FBI sniper at Ruby Ridge?

[John F. Carr]

Horiuchi got off like Trump got off – he waited for a change in administration and the case was not resolved on the merits. If memory serves the Ninth Circuit later withdrew its opinion in the case leaving no precedent.

Bar discipline is not one of the categories of cases that can be removed to federal court. The U.S. Supreme Court might have a say after the state courts have reviewed the recommendations of the bar discipline committee.

[Brett Bellmore]

As I recall, what happened is that Horiuchi's case got removed to federal court and dismissed, ("For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:") then a new prosecutor in Idaho didn't bother trying again, in the expectation that the same thing would simply happen again.

[Noscitur a sociis]

This isn’t an NFL game where penalties offset. If the prosecutions against Trump were wrong, it’s just as wrong for him to baselessly prosecute people in response. And if they weren’t, then obviously it’s wrong to prosecute anyone for them.

(There is a third possibility of course: that the Trump prosecution were wrong, but that his prospective victims did something that justifies prosecution themselves. But curiously enough, no one seems interested in even trying to make that case.)

[Commenter_XY]

You are so right = This isn’t an NFL game where penalties offset.

Did you think I was joking? Nas, the shoe is on the other foot now. That is no joke. The term retribution applies (you can call it whatever you like). There will be charges (and indictments) brought against a number of people inside DC. It is coming; depend on it. Do the charges really matter? Did they before? This is Washington DC, LMAO. Once the person of interest is identified, the charges will follow. That is how DC works, in reality.

The point is, Nas, the process will be long, drawn out, and expensive. There will be some number of people who will see prison time; others will plea bargain to stave off bankruptcy. The process will be the punishment.

Should it change? Yes. Will it change? Yes, if the DC administrative state is shaken, not stirred (meaning, right-sized).

[myself]

Long story short.

Trump & Co largely escaped conviction for real serious crimes.

Now you're getting all excited about the chance to prosecute Dems for a bunch of made up crimes, and even if you can't find a Judge Cannon to twist the law and convict them you can hopefully bankrupt them.

[Commenter_XY]

Two members of 45's admin spent 4 months in prison each, contempt of Congress. Prison time is serious. Others have been financially devastated defending themselves in court. That is reality.

Made up crimes? What made up crimes? Were the prosecutions of Pres Trump '45' (and various associates) made up crimes? Nope. Prosecutors made their decisions to prosecute. They all cited a relevant statute of the law, and moved forward. For a variety of legal reasons, some of those prosecutions have been dismissed. Others are under appeal. Will the appeals be successful? I don't know. It has been a long, drawn out process.

I expect exactly the same behavior, but turned 180 degrees. Any charges or indictments (and there will be) brought will cite a relevant legal statute. It will be perfectly legal, just like it was for the last 8-9 years. And the defendant(s) can hire legal counsel, at high cost (it is DC after all), and defend themselves in court.

This is Washington DC. These people do not turn the other cheek, as a rule. Do you disagree that that is how DC actually behaves?

It is ironic when an old saying becomes so timely and relevant: The shoe is on the other foot.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

How long have you been a member of your local Judenräte, C_XY? Did you get a special ID in exchange for your soul?

[Commenter_XY]

Cry harder, Jason. I can't hear you. 🙂

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Clearly you can hear me just fine, and other people are also now taking note of precisely how awful you are.

Bravo, little fascist!

[Dr. Ed 2]

Jason, that is uncalled for.

[bernard11]

No it's not.

XY has gone all-in on Trump, no matter what he does. Facts don't matter. The law doesn't matter. Nothing matters except revenge for imagined offenses against the Great One.

[Commenter_XY]

What all-in? Telling you what will happen and why, and reminding you that the shoe is on the other foot...this is considered all-in? 🙂

[Sarcastr0]

You're gloating, not predicting.

Gloating that there's going to be a lot of abuse of power soon.

And the only ones around to defend you are posters like Ed.

Way to go, asshole.

[Commenter_XY]

What abuse of power? Name one. Pres Trump has not even been sworn in. Telling you what is going happen, and the very understandable human motivations behind it, isn’t gloating. It is telling you the new reality you will simply have to adjust to. It is not like you have a choice in the matter. You don’t. LMK when you get an invite to Mar-a-Lago, lol.

The DC-based bureaucracy will be reduced. That is going to happen. A majority of the electorate voted for that. The border will be closed, and the wall will get built. A majority of the electorate voted for that. Illegal aliens will be deported as quickly as possible, hopefully by the millions. A majority of the electorate voted for that. The 2017 TCJA will be extended, possibly made permanent. A majority of the electorate voted for that. There are some people who are going to be charged and indicted for their actions of the last 8-9 years. A few will see the inside of a prison cell. Guess what? A majority of the country voted for that too.

Really, you should pace yourself. It is going to be a long four(?) years for you. Your voice will get hoarse from all the caterwauling.

Not that you would want this to happen, but there is a non-zero chance that Pres Trump never takes the oath of office. There are plenty of cheerleaders out there, waiting for a third assassination attempt.

What bothers you the most is I told you…better be careful, because one day, the shoe will be on the other foot, and you won’t like it. You know that that is true. 🙂

I thought you muted me, lol.

[David Nieporent]

A majority of the electorate voted for that.

Nobody voted for that, and certainly not a majority; Trump got less than 50% of the vote.

[Mr. Bumble]

Picky, picky, picky.
He got a plurality which is sufficient.
Maybe if they ever finish counting votes he will indeed have won a majority.
According to RCP Trump stands at 49.9% with several states still counting.

[David Nieporent]

A plurality can be sufficient to win, but isn't even necessary under our system, as we saw in 2016. But a plurality is certainly not sufficient to claim that "a majority voted for it."

[Commenter_XY]

Shit, are they still counting, lol? 19 days?

[Sarcastr0]

What abuse of power? Name one.
You're gloating as you support persecution of Trump's enemies.

That's abuse of power. The thing you're happy about and telling people to 'cry more' about.

Do you have a split personality or something?

[Commenter_XY]

Sarcastr0....What, you suffer from Battered Commenter Syndrome? 🙂
LMFAO. Get over yourself.

[Sarcastr0]

You’re making bad posts, and I’m pointing out that they’re bad.

Simple as.

[Bwaaah]

Sarc explains the meaning of "abuse of power." As a result, the meaning dissolves before our eyes. His voice is self-imploding.

C_XY at least has the patience to make fun. Good on ya! HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

[TwelveInchPianist]

"You’re gloating as you support persecution of Trump’s enemies.

That’s abuse of power."

What are you talking about? If Trump's enemies committed crimes, they deserve to be prosecuted just like anybody else.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Cry harder.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

A classic film channel has a Blondie movie every Saturday morning. For fans of Blondie and Bumstead.

She's a problematic pick. I'd skip the shot at her hair though.

[Mr. Bumble]

From your prospective who isn't a "problematic" pick?

[Michael P]

Any Joe Biden appointee, including Kamala Harris.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Someone who has less history of being a Trump flunky while getting into ethical hot water in the process. Support of election denialism and other problematic positions doesn't help the ledger.

I grant the median Trump pick will be problematic & relatively speaking she is less of a concern than some other picks like RFK & Gabbard. She is an improvement over Gaetz in many ways.

[not guilty]

Pam Blondie chose not to join a multistate action against Donald Trump's so-called University after a Trump affiliated entity contributed $25,000 to her. That doesn't pass the smell test.

[Dr. Ed 2]

If I were a Florida Taxpayer, I'd say "great" -- let the other states bear the costs of litigation and if there is a decision that it was fraud, then we can just cite it.

It's like jumping into the middle of a medical emergency when those present have it under control -- you're going to be more of a hindrance.

[Frank Drackman]

I love Blondie, the deep tracks, "X-Offender", "Union City", "45/47" should name her as "Secretary of MILF"

[Bob from Ohio]

"I’d skip the shot at her hair though."

He doesn't care much for female lawyers. He mentioned a possible boob job multiple times for one of Trump's lawyers, like that matters a lick.

Racist and sexist. He's a twofer.

[not guilty]

No, Bob, I mentioned that one of Mike Roman's lawyers in Georgia was noticeably bustier than in an earlier photograph. She does not and did not represent Trump.

Fake tits and peroxide hair are indicators of deception. I suspect that female jurors pick up on cues like that.

[tylertusta]

It's refreshing to see someone embrace their worst personality traits like this.

[Mr. Bumble]

Extreme TDS brings much to the surface.

[Bob from Ohio]

Oh, she only represented one of Trump's former employees. Well that makes your sexism ok then.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"I mentioned that one of Mike Roman’s lawyers in Georgia was noticeably bustier than in an earlier photograph."

Are you bustier than you were when you were younger?

[not guilty]

If I recall correctly, the earlier photo of Ashleigh Merchant was from 2016. https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-georgia-atlanta-election-fraud-trial-ashleigh-merchant-fani-willis-2020-election-1875395 Compare the photo on her law firm website. https://www.criminaldefenseattorneysmarietta.com/attorney-profiles/ashleigh-b-merchant/

I haven't checked, but my chest measurement in 2016 and now are probably the same. (I may have added some belly fat since then.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

What woman over the age of 40 doesn't dye her hair?

Bondi is 59 years old, her natural color is grey.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Fake tits and peroxide hair are indicators of deception.

This certainly isn’t the dumbest thing I’ve ever read, but I doubt I’m going to read anything dumber in this thread.

Plain courtesy, folks!

[It's only a paper moon, Nominalists]

You are everybody's idea of a bad lawyer. You assume she meant that prosecutors and investigators will be attacked violation or no violation, the old argument from silence. Typical lawyer.

[CountmontyC]

If you didn't want lawfare you shouldn't have supported lawfare.

There are two ways to end this.
1) All of those involved and supported it admit that lawfare was wrong and apologize for it with all government officials involved also resigning their positions.
2) The other side now gets to use lawfare.

[Sarcastr0]

'I'm a hypocrite so everything I decide you did that's bad I'll do as well' remains a bad argument no matter how you slice it.

[Bwaaah]

"I'm a hypocrite," is not the argument. The argument is, "I'm going to use the law to punish my enemies with the same shamelessness as you."

Continue with your advocacy. It's looking more and more compelling every day, LOSER.

[Sarcastr0]

That is hypocrisy - doing the very thing you condemn.

The rest of it is just you being petty.

[Commenter_XY]

Bwaaah...How do you say "Not enough tears to enjoy, cry harder"?

[Noscitur a sociis]

The argument is, “I’m going to use the law to punish my enemies with the same shamelessness as you.”

Is this supposed to be a defense?

[tylertusta]

If I had a dollar for every occasion where Democrats vowed to do something bad because they say that Republicans did it first, I'd be a rich man.

[Sarcastr0]

Haha - I agree with you there! Dems are hypocrites all the time!

And it's bad when they do it as well!

But here y'all are doing it and are basically boasting about it. That's next level, and that's worse, since it's basically discarding even the patina of principle for pure will to power.

[tylertusta]

If I had a dollar for every time Sarcastr0 lumped me in with others undeservedly, I'd be even richer.

[Sarcastr0]

Dude, in the comment I replied to you were using Democratic hypocrisy to push back on my condemnation of open Republican hypocrisy.

I'm not lumping you in with anyone. It's you; you're the one excusing Republican hypocrisy.

[tylertusta]

Man, for someone who has gone to law school, I’m disappointed that you missed this.

You said:

“But here y’all are doing it and are basically boasting about it”

No, I’m not, and I am not.

I’m not lumping you in with anyone.

That’s another dollar. Today is gonna be a busy day for my piggy bank, Peanut.

[Sarcastr0]

OK, chief, you're not a MAGA open hypocrite. You're just defending them when I point out their hypocrisy.

You defend them by pointing left. Which is exactly how MAGA justifies their hypocrisy.

If you don't want to be lumped in, quit lumping.

[tylertusta]

I replied to this down here.

[Noscitur a sociis]

So doing the right thing isn’t an option?

[Brett Bellmore]

Just one side doing the right thing isn't a realistic option, as attractive as it might be to the side doing the wrong thing.

[Sarcastr0]

Just openly discarding moral principles.

What would happen if Trump just didn’t abuse the law to persecute people he didn’t like?

I guess the evil evil Dems in your head would keep being as evil as they’ve been in your head since at least Travelgate.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

>Just openly discarding moral principles.

lmao

Game Theory informs us Tit for Tat is the best way to humans to cooperate.

Tit for fucking Tat. Let's hope and pray together you fuckers get a whole world of Tat over the next few years.

[not guilty]

Whenever I read the phrase, "tit for tat," I invariably recall Dennis Miller's three questions:

What is tat?
Where can I get it?
How can I exchange it for the other?

[Bob from Ohio]

" It is an alteration of tip for tap "blow for blow",[1] first recorded in 1558.[2]" wikipedia

So "tat" means "blow"

[Sarcastr0]

Game Theory informs us Tit for Tat is the best way to humans to cooperate

It does not. First, game theory doesn't have a lot to do with actual human behavior. Humans do not live in the reductive land of that kind of game.
Heck, game theory has moved well beyond that kind of reductive game.

Second, you are massively overgeneralizing the upshot of a particular computer simulation of the prisoner's dilemma.

[Bwaaah]

Sarc: "Game theory doesn’t have a lot to do with actual human behavior."

[Sarcastr0]

Game theory is applied math. It is not psychology, or behavioral economics, or socilogy, or anything that has actual humans in the loop.

The acting thing in game theory is an 'agent.' Which has simple metrics for victory it seeks to the exclusion of all else. Its information access is also generally artificially simplified to make the mathematical principles stand out.

It's not about how humans work.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Go read the Prisoners Dilemma you ignorant boob.

Game Theory is a field of math and economics.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Game theory is applied math. It is not psychology, or behavioral economics, or socilogy, or anything that has actual humans in the loop."

I guess it's never applied by psychologists, behavioral economists, sociologists, businesspeople, or anybody else that deals with actual humans.

[Sarcastr0]

So when I said 'Game theory is applied math' why did you think it would correct me to say 'game theory is a field of math?'

In my opinion (and some claim otherwise), game theory is not a field of economics at all. It feeds some parts of economics, but it is itself not an economic modeling discipline.

And, of course, the part of economics it is related to is the 'homo economicus' part of economics, which is still not about humans.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Lol. 'homo economicus', and 'agents' are models of humans, but sure, game theory isn't about human behavior.

It sounds like Sarcastro is arguing that we should ignore incentives because people's actions don't always align with their incentives.

[Sarcastr0]

Here is my thesis TiP: Game theory does not determine human behavior and 'game theory told me to do it' should not be used to excuse bad behavior.

Do you or do you not agree?

[TwelveInchPianist]

So your thesis is a strawman?

Nobody claimed that game theory determines human behavior, the claim was that game theory can be used to predict human behavior, specifically that 'tit-for-tat' would increase cooperation.

As for justifying bad behavior, who are you claiming is engaging in bad behavior? The Dems? Bondi?

[Sarcastr0]

Unless you have that Jesus guy and Brett blocked, it sure isn't a strawman.

[TwelveInchPianist]

You were claiming that game theory doesn't determine human behavior.

They were claiming that game theory can predict human behavior.

[Sarcastr0]

First you say strawman, now you say I'm changing the goalposts.

Make up your mind.

it's not a strawman because Brett and AntisemeticJesusGuy absolutely claim game theory as their moral shield to rationalize bad behavior.

And I haven't changed my goalposts - you can't use game theory as a moral shield to rationalize bad behavior because game theory doesn’t have a lot to do with actual human behavior.

Game theory is not the study of how humans actually react to incentive systems. It is (in relevant part) the study of how an optimal agent should reaction to incentive schemes, when competing against other optimal agents.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Meanwhile, no less than 15 game theorists have on the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Don't worry though, that's not an "economics with people" award, that's an "economics, just the math part" award.

lmao dunce

[TwelveInchPianist]

"First you say strawman, now you say I’m changing the goalposts.

Make up your mind"

Huh? I didn't say you were changing the goalpoasts.

"it’s not a strawman because Brett and AntisemeticJesusGuy absolutely claim game theory as their moral shield to rationalize bad behavior."

No, they used game theory to predict the outcome of investing the prosecutors, and theorized that the outcome justified and action.

And what bad behavior? You don't seem to think it's bad behavior.

[Sarcastr0]

No one asked them about outcomes; they were asked about what the right thing to do is.

They both chose against rule of law.
They both cited game theory as their excuse.

That’s not what game theory is for, and also misunderstands what the iterated prisoners dilemma can tell us about the real world.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"No one asked them about outcomes; they were asked about what the right thing to do is.

Jesus said, "Game Theory informs us Tit for Tat is the best way to humans to cooperate." That's predicting an outcome.

"They both chose against rule of law."

How so? Who's breaking the law?

"They both cited game theory as their excuse."

Can you quote where anyone said game theory was an excuse?

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Weird how Sacastr0’s “tat” is “against the rule of law”.

That implies he knows that the “tit” the “tat” is for is also “against the rule of law”.

[Sarcastr0]

JesusAntisemiteGuy:

">Just openly discarding moral principles.

lmao

Game Theory informs us Tit for Tat is the best way to humans to cooperate."

Brett: "Just one side doing the right thing isn’t a realistic option, as attractive as it might be to the side doing the wrong thing.
...
Democrats are resistant to tit for tat reasoning because they don’t conceive of politics as a continuing game. They conceive of politics as a finite game which they will eventually win, after which the opposition will not be able to retaliate."

2 guys leaning on game theory to explain away that they've discarded moral principles.

And then there's you, playing dumb about it just to sealion.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Again, what moral principles do you see being discarded here?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"2 guys leaning on game theory to explain away that they’ve discarded moral principles."

As I said, they're leaning on game theory to explain why they think their actions (whether you think they constitute discarding moral principles or not) will produce a particular outcome.

[Sarcastr0]

Saying that their response to my comment: "Just openly discarding moral principles" is 'but this gets me the outcome I wanted' is not a great argument in their defense.

[Brett Bellmore]

There is a problem here, though.

Tit for tat is the best strategy in REPEATED games. It is NOT the best strategy when the game allows you to directly win in a short and finite series of moves, because the first player to deploys tat wins, you never get the opportunity to return tit.

Democrats are resistant to tit for tat reasoning because they don't conceive of politics as a continuing game. They conceive of politics as a finite game which they will eventually win, after which the opposition will not be able to retaliate.

That this keeps not happening never seems to influence their thinking.

[Sarcastr0]

But you're just making this up.

This is an example of the demonization so you can justify being immoral I was talking about.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

You're like the Chuck Schumer of this board. "Hey guys, about that no filibuster thing, can you guys just be principled and keep it while we're out of power?? Pretty please? Where are your principles!"

[Sarcastr0]

Quit shitposting.

Trump was charged with actual crimes.

You don’t bother naming a crime.

It’s not inconsistent to support the first and decry the second.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

I'll name the same crimes Letitia James did when she ran on "getting Trump".

Here goes:

[TwelveInchPianist]

"You don’t bother naming a crime."

Be patient, Sarcastro. Bondi will name crimes in due course. Will you be happy then?

[Sarcastr0]

Then doesn't matter, TiP.

Noting how little you care about there being a crime is already pretty fucked up of you.

Neither you nor your antisemetic buddy are serious posters, but you do reveal your priorities.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Noting how little you care about there being a crime is already pretty fucked up of you."

What the hell are you talking about? I said that if there's no crime, Bondi won't be able to get an indictment and a conviction.

[CountmontyC]

So when the DOJ brings charges against Joe Biden for mishandling classified documents you will support those charges being brought? Because mishandling classified documents is a crime.

[Sarcastr0]

That will depend on the facts and law that are established.

I'm not some Biden cultist, if he did crimes then so be it.

[TwelveInchPianist]

You were quick to dismiss Hur's observations about Biden's mental state to be partisan hackery. That's pretty cultist-like.

[CountmontyC]

The facts are that Biden neither as a senator nor as the VPOTUS had no declassification authority and his taking classified documents was a felony crime. Furthermore it was additionally a criminal act that he did not properly secure those documents.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, that's because it was indeed partisan hackery.

[TwelveInchPianist]

More of that partisan hackery that turns out to be accurate?

[Sarcastr0]

No, it was an attack via a right-wing narrative. One they’ve been pushing for ages, even while Biden was doing well in debates and intense legislative negotiations and the SOTU.

We're also quite far afield from my saying that if Biden's charged with a crime, I'm not going to a priori say he's innocent.

You cannot say the same about your guy.
Quit trying to drag me down to your level, you tool.

[David Nieporent]

The facts are that Biden neither as a senator nor as the VPOTUS had no declassification authority

That is not, in fact, a fact. Biden as VPOTUS had declassification authority.

[CountmontyC]

The VPOTUS does not have any declassification authority not granted by the POTUS. The POTUS has ultimate declassification authority
Btw don't forget that many of those papers were from his Senate days and he certainly did not have declassification authority then.

[CountmontyC]

Finally, due to the discovery of classified records at Biden’s home and personal residence from his time as vice president, and similar revelations involving Mike Pence, there has also been discussion about vice presidential declassification authority. The vice president does have declassification authority, but it is quite limited. Under Executive Order 13526, the vice president has original classification authority, which means they may also declassify information that they or their predecessor originally classified. However, as a practical matter, the vice president – like the president – originally classifies little, if any, information, rendering this declassification authority mostly moot. The only argument that the vice president has declassification authority beyond this would rest on distinct declassification authority provided for certain “supervisory officials.” But as a general matter, the vice president is not considered a supervisory official of other executive branch officials, so this broader declassification authority does not apply to the vice president.

https://www.justsecurity.org/86777/dispelling-myths-how-classification-and-declassification-actually-work/

[bernard11]

You're totally full of shit.

Tit for tat is the best strategy in some repeated games. It is not the key to the kingdom, despite what all you ill-informed morons think.

It is not remotely clear how it applies to political conflicts. All your demonizing of Democrats is not only foolish, but usupported by your strange ideas.

[Bob from Ohio]

"What would happen if Trump just didn’t abuse the law to persecute people he didn’t like?"

Dems would just keep doing it. You might be a cuck, but not everyone is.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Yeah, I’m going to have to go ahead and disagree with you there.

Doing the right thing isn always an option. When the other side does the wrong thing, that means we should be aggressive in our response. But not the the point of sinking to their level.

[Lennyk78]

Jesus can turn the other cheek. We don't have to.

[Brett Bellmore]

You run out of cheeks eventually. It's not like we're dealing with a one off event, lawfare against Trump has been a continuing strategy.

[David Nieporent]

I mean, you do in fact have to, if you believe in the fictional character. In the SotM, Jesus wasn't merely describing his own personal conduct; he was instructing his followers what to do.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Turn the other cheek was instructing his followers, the Chosen, in non-violent resistance.

Not to sit there and take abuse.

[Bob from Ohio]

"fictional character"

Unnecessary insult libertarian challenge. Impossible.

Lenny, you have to do what a non-believer says.

[not guilty]

When Jesus said to turn the other cheek, I'm sure he meant while facing forward.

[Brett Bellmore]

That depends entirely on the context.

In this case, it's not that one side did a wrong thing once. It's that one side has engaged for years now in a deliberate strategy of doing the wrong thing.

This demands that either Democrats publicly repudiate lawfare, or that they be subject to it themselves. Our politics can't be stable so long as one party is playing by one set of rules, and the other by a different set.

[Sarcastr0]

When you've decided the other side are demons, there are no depths of evil against them that you cannot rationalize.

[Brett Bellmore]

We're not talking demons here, just an ordinary human level of evil.

[Sarcastr0]

The camps, the Great Replacement, the Long March through every single institution, the lying and bad faith.

No, you're not describing humans.

And even if you are, if your plan is 'sink as low as they do or else it's disarmament' you're justifying all of the above from your own side.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Bullshit. They are conclusions drawn from observation of behavior, outcomes, stated goals, and other actual happenings.

[CountmontyC]

Would you consider the Democrats calling Trump Hitler, a fascist and a threat to democracy demonizing?

And if so wasn't the lawfare used against him because they rationalized that evil because of their demonization?

Finally what should happen to those who sunk to the depths of evil and used lawfare like they did?

[Sarcastr0]

Trump should stop talking about blood and soil and calling people vermin if we wants to quit with those comparisons.

But no, I think his criminal problems are because it sure looks like he did crimes, not because liberals discarded legal principles to go after him.

One distinction you should notice is that the liberals say Trump did crimes, whereas the right says Trump should go after people who say Trump did crimes.

[CountmontyC]

So you have decided that Trump is a demon and deserved what his political opponents did to him?

[bernard11]

No. I've decided he's a criminal, and deserves to be treated like other criminals.

The whole "lawfare" idea is stupid and dishonest, and only serves to provide the Trump cult a way not to have to deal with the specifics of his criminality.

[windycityattorney]

Memory hole much? Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen gave testimony under oath that Trump routinely committed financial crimes in the same manner found by the New York A.G....wildly inflating net worth to get better terms on loans and insurance and deflating worth/value come tax time. Multiple people in the Trump Org were convicted of various tax frauds. His charities were shut down for fraud, his University shut down for fraud etc...

Dude is a walking fraud machine and has been for the greater part of his adult life and he is almost 80. When your personal attorney says you committed a bunch of crimes under oath; somebody is likely to take that serious and look and when the info is confirmed, file charges. Its not a surprise or a shock.

You don't commit a lifetime of fraud and run for president and shine the world's biggest spotlight on you and your business dealings then bitch and complain when the spotlight shows all your glaring flaws. "Their picking on me." Cry me a river.

[CountmontyC]

So 70+ years with no criminal charges against him and only when he decides to run for POTUS
do his political opponents start investigating and charging him with crimes and we are supposed to believe that it isn't lawfare?

And your big witness was a guy who was facing serious felonies ( none related to Trump btw) and offered leniency to turn on his former employer?

Do you realize how pathetic you sound.

[CountmontyC]

Did you ever denounce the Democrats use of lawfare? What do you think should happen to the Democrats who engaged in lawfare?

[Sarcastr0]

This is begging the question.

[CountmontyC]

If lawfare is wrong and the Democrats engaged in lawfare what should happen to them?

It's a very simple question.

[Sarcastr0]

"Democrats engaged in lawfare" is begging the question.

Also, it's telling how you conflate wrong with criminal.

[not guilty]

"Lawfare" has become the epithet du jour. What statute(s), if any, do you claim that your (conveniently) unnamed Democrats who engaged in "lawfare", actually violated, CountmontyC? Please cite by number.

[CountmontyC]

Answer my question please. Do not evade.

[not guilty]

I am pleased to answer your question, CountmontyC. You ask "If lawfare is wrong and the Democrats engaged in lawfare what should happen to them?"

If Democrats violated federal statutes and if the Department of Justice has evidence sufficient to prove every element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt by admissible evidence, the offenders should be prosecuted.

The word "if" is doing some heavy lifting. As Cassandra said to Wayne Campbell, if a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass when he hopped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV9U23YXgiY

Now riddle me this. What statute(s), if any, do you claim that your (conveniently) unnamed Democrats who engaged in “lawfare”, actually violated, CountmontyC? Please cite by number.

[CountmontyC]

Title 18, U.S.C., Section 242 - Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law

[not guilty]

Which Democrats?

What federal right(s)?

What specific conduct?

What pre-existing legal authority gave fair warning that the conduct you kvetch about was criminal?

[Riva]

What rights? These lawfare pukes were scheming to jail President Trump for the rest of his natural life and you wonder what f’ing rights? WTF? You were a defense lawyer? Where? The USSR?

[David Nieporent]

Do you think a duly convicted criminal has a right not to go to jail?

[Riva]

About as duly as a Lavrentiy Beria prosecution. “Duly” and “lawfare” are mutually exclusive terms.

[not guilty]

"What rights? These lawfare pukes were scheming to jail President Trump for the rest of his natural life and you wonder what f’ing rights? WTF? You were a defense lawyer? Where? The USSR?"

Riva, I am not the one claiming that Democrats violated 18 U.S.C. §§ 241 or 242. You and CountmontyC are. Your claim -- your burden of proof.

Every criminal offense is made up of essential elements, each of which must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecution under §§ 241 or 242 each requires the federal rights at issue to be identified particularly. See, e.g., United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 264-268 (1997).

[Riva]

Conspiracies to violate civil rights with malicious and frivolous prosecutions across multiple jurisdictions. Judicial processes violating due process. Yeah, I know, you don't think targeting and jailing political opponents violates any rights. Give it up, Chutkan has a clerk already. And we can add gross misuse of federal and intelligence tools. But not just harassment and prosecutions, a lot of questions on J6, not the least of which is the investigation into the mysterious non-bomber. Criminal prosecutions will be amusing of course, but probably more important to expose and reform the rot at the DOJ and other federal agencies that has been metastasizing since Nixon.

[not guilty]

"Conspiracies to violate civil rights with malicious and frivolous prosecutions across multiple jurisdictions. Judicial processes violating due process. Yeah, I know, you don’t think targeting and jailing political opponents violates any rights."

Riva, I have provided ample authorities indicating that what you carp about is simply not actionable under 18 U.S.C. § 241. What I think doesn't matter; what the Supreme Court opines about matters hugely.

As I have pointed out elsewhere on this thread, if and to the extent you are claiming retaliatory criminal prosecution of Donald Trump in response to his exercise of his First Amendment right to run for office, the absence of probable cause for the prosecution is an essential element of any such claim of deprivation. SCOTUS has expressly so held in Hartman v. Moore, 547 U.S. 250, 252 (2006). That rule was more recently reaffirmed in Nieves v. Bartlett, 587 U.S. 391, 139 S.Ct. 1715, 1723 (2019) (“Hartman requires plaintiffs in retaliatory prosecution cases to show more than the subjective animus of an officer and a subsequent injury; plaintiffs must also prove as a threshold matter that the decision to press charges was objectively unreasonable because it was not supported by probable cause.”).

Do you have a shred of legal authority for your claim that Jack Smith or anyone associated with him has violated § 241? If so, put your cards on the table.

[Riva]

Because Harris lost, we get to remain a free country for a little longer so you can keep ignoring the lawfare abuses and point out whatever you want. You are of course factually and legally wrong. And, as I’ve pointed out, repeatedly, exposing and reforming the rot at the DOJ is just as important as any prosecutions. Prosecutions are icing on the cake.

[Brett Bellmore]

He can't denounce what he won't admit they're doing in the first place.

[Sarcastr0]

I sure do think there's plenty of legal bullshit the left pulls (see that children's climate lawsuit for instance).

I don't think that's at all evident in Trump's legal woes.

[Magister]

There's legal bullshit that some leftists pull; "they" in the accusations of lawfare is far more universal. You can find fringe supporters of the Democratic party advocating conspiracy theories, trashing the constitution and criminal behavior; and you can find the leaders of the Republican party doing the same regularly.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, that's a fair put.

Democrats believe in institutions, and will tend to act through them via their procedures and rules.

Republicans used to be, if anything, more institutionalist than Democrats.
But since Trump they don't believe in institutions, and think following procedures and rules is for wimps who don't believe hard enough.

[tylertusta]

"The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

This is why you shouldn't do these kinds of things to begin with. But the clapping seal chorus didn't think about that, did they?

[Sarcastr0]

That's literally a villain speech you're quoting; not someone you're supposed to emulate.

[tylertusta]

You still don't get it, do you?

[Sarcastr0]

Please, explain to me why you were quoting Shylock as someone you thought worth following.

[tylertusta]

If you don't want to make villains, don't do villainous things to people. Shylock wasn't created in the vacuum. His trajectory was because of the evils that were inflicted upon him by Antonio.

It's not whataboutism to point out Democrats' past actions here. It's cause and effect. It's a consequence. It's "what goes around, comes around." Karma. FAFO. Stupid games, stupid prizes. (I think you get the point).

A lot of folks- and I'm including you here, Peanut- cheered what was going on to Trump and people in his orbit. So, it's the height of chutzpah for you to try to take the high road now.

To answer to your comment up above, I'm not boasting about what folks on the right are saying they want to do. Nor am I happy that Dems may experience lawfare against them. I'm especially not happy about this since Democrats will return the favor in time, and they will "better the instruction" to all of our detriment.

What I am is cynical, and I have no patience for your high-and-mighty act.

[Commenter_XY]

He does not get it, tyler.

[bernard11]

Here's alleged non-Trumpie Bellmore again, claiming, again, that Trump did nothing wrong.

Come out of your trance.

[Commenter_XY]

Brett, you know what the problem is? The bill has become due, and they don't want to pay. Not only do they not want to pay, but they also squeal like stuck pigs at the slightest attempt to collect.

Regardless, they are still swine.

[bernard11]

That deserves nothing but a giant "Fuck You," XY.

If you'd come out of your bubble - how many hours of Fox do you watch every day, how often do you read lunatic RW sites - you might learn a thing or two.

[Commenter_XY]

bernard11, just breathe. It will pass....in about four(?) years. 😉

In MA, is it true all the lightpoles of a few towns have been draped in black to mourne the electoral results? I thought that that was completely apocryphal, but now I wonder...

[Sarcastr0]

Have you noted how many of the serious posters on here have noted you've changed, and now are a much worse person?

Does that give you pause at all?

It's a choice to openly discard principle and gloat about some BS you read about miserable people you've never met in Massachusetts.

[Commenter_XY]

And you consider yourself competent to lecture others on principles.
ROTFLMFAO.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, I'm vastly more moral than you.
That's proven by, among many other items, you on this thread gleefully defending the coming revenge persecutions.

But I'm also hardly the only one who has called you out for being awful.
Lots of people have noted your turn towards MAGA toxicity. At some point, you'd think perhaps something's going on, eh?

[CountmontyC]

Define doing the right thing? And tell me why only one side should be required to do the right thing and the other side should be allowed to escape all accountability.

[David Nieporent]

Well, your first sentence makes sense in light of your second: you don't understand the concept of doing the right thing.

[CountmontyC]

I understand that if something is wrong it should be wrong for both sides.

I also understand that for the last 4 years that people on the left, including you, encouraged lawfare versus Trump. Not only failed to denounce it but encouraged it. Why? What has changed except it could now be used against your side?

[Sarcastr0]

It's always a tell when people say DMN is on the left.

[CountmontyC]

It's always a tell when rather than answer the questions you attack the person asking the questions.

Perhaps you could answer the question as to why lawfare, which you supported BTW, was acceptable for the last 4 but is now unacceptable. What has changed?

[Sarcastr0]

Begging the question is assuming your conclusion before making the argument to support it.

In this case, you assume something is lawfare and then say I'm inconsistent because I don't condemn it.

I take issue with your premise.

[Noscitur a sociis]

The wrong thing, as you appear to concede, is improperly charging people with federal crimes.

So the right thing would be not doing that.

[Bob from Ohio]

"So doing the right thing isn’t an option?"

Revenge is the right thing here.

[Commenter_XY]

Retribution is the better word, Bob. More fitting, I think.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Make no mistake, it's not revenge he's after. It's a reckonin'." Doc Holliday in Tombstone

[TwelveInchPianist]

"All of those involved and supported it admit that lawfare was wrong and apologize for it with all government officials involved also resigning their positions."

The problem with the lawfare argument is that its vague and not really falsifiable.

The prosecutions against Trump felt like lawfare to many people, but they have been upheld legally so far.

Similarly, Bondi's investigations and prosecutions of bad prosecutors, if any, will feel like lawfare to people like NG, but she and the judicial system will have to follow due process, overcome any available defenses of selective prosecution, etc.

[not guilty]

"Anyone prosecuted by the Trump administration will have the same defense of selective prosecution available that Trump had, and that any other defendant has."

Selective prosecution is not a defense on the merits to the criminal charge itself at all, as SCOTUS has recognized in United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 463 (1996). Has anyone not named Yick Wo successfully obtained final relief from a criminal conviction or indictment based on a claim of selective prosecution?

[TwelveInchPianist]

And it wasn't a defense for Trump either, as you pointed out many times. So what are you complaining about?

[Armchair]

Attorney General proclaims that bad people will be prosecuted.

News at 11.

NG horrified. OMG, bad people being prosecuted!

[tylertusta]

You see, they're his bad people. That makes it (D)ifferent.

[not guilty]

Armchair, what federal statute(s), if any, do you claim that those who prosecuted Donald Trump violated?

Suppose you were an Assistant United States Attorney drafting indictments for presentation to grand juries in regard to the prosecutions of Trump. Please answer each of these questions or, in the alternative, admit that you are unable to do so:

(1) What individuals would you charge?

(2) As to each such individual, what statute(s) would you allege that the accused has violated? (Please cite by number.)

As to each such violation, when did it occur?

As to each such violation, in what federal district did it occur?

As to each such violation, what facts evince the commission thereof?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Armchair, what federal statute(s), if any, do you claim that those who prosecuted Donald Trump violated?"

Seems a little premature prior to the investigation, no?

If they haven't violated any statutes, they have nothing to worry about.

[not guilty]

If the gravamen of what Ms. Blondie is kvetching about is federal prosecutors simply conducting prosecutions, how does that even bear investigating? As I wrote downthread:

“In our system, so long as the prosecutor has probable cause to believe that the accused committed an offense defined by statute, the decision whether or not to prosecute, and what charge to file or bring before a grand jury, generally rests entirely in his discretion.” Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 364 (1978) (footnote omitted). As a result, “[t]he presumption of regularity supports” their prosecutorial decisions and, “in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, courts presume that they have properly discharged their official duties.” United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 464 (1996), quoting United States v. Chemical Foundation, Inc., 272 U.S. 1, 14-15 (1926).

[TwelveInchPianist]

"If the gravamen of what Ms. Blondie is kvetching about is federal prosecutors simply conducting prosecutions, how does that even bear investigating?"

Who said that that is the gravamen of what she is kvetching about? Like Leticia James, I suppose she suspects that there might have been some laws broken.

[not guilty]

Well, her joining in the Pennsylvania bullshit that got Rudy Giuliani disbarred indicates her willingness to lie in service of Donald Trump.

[Magister]

If they haven’t violated any statutes, they have nothing to worry about.

Since Trump had something to worry about, he must have violated some statutes. Probably the ones he was convicted of violating, at least.

[not guilty]

Still waiting, Armchair. If you don't know, there should be no shame in admitting that.

[not guilty]

Still waiting, Armchair.

[Armchair]

Sigh....

Do you enjoy trolling like this? Some of us don't actually spend our entire day on this forum.

Do you enjoy trolling like this? Deliberately saying I've "claimed" something, when I've done nothing of the sort, just to frame the question as you'd like...

Do you enjoy trolling like this? Knowing very well, that many prosecutors and AGs promise to prosecute all sorts of crimes from all sorts of people in public statements, all the time, in general terms?

I have to assume the answer is yes....unless you somehow can convince us differently.

[Sarcastr0]

So you look forwards to prosecutions, but so far you can't identify a crime.

That's a pretty authoritarian way to be!

[TwelveInchPianist]

Sigh. Investigation first, charges second. That's how non-authoritarians do it.

[Sarcastr0]

Armchair is defending this: "The prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones."

I don't see anything about investigations.

I do see post after post defending abusing the law to persecute people Trump doesn't like.

You're not going to successfully paper over what MAGA is and what it wants.

[Armchair]

Indeed.

The issue is, the only way those who oppose such investigations can defend themselves is by deliberately misinterpreting statements. So, that's what they do.

[Sarcastr0]

Armchair, you can't even name a crime to be investigated.

Don't try and clothe yourself in due process at this late hour.

If you're going to make that lift, I'd ask what you think about Commenter and Bob's open 'this is righteous revenge' take. Due process is not part of their plan - they're skipping to the punishment and lib owning.

That seemed to be where you were coming from, but if not I'm happy to be corrected.

[not guilty]

Armchair, prosecuting someone for a crime, as Pam Blondie was promising in her Fox interview to do, should involve both investigation of facts and analysis of potentially applicable law before an indictment is found. Some relevant questions include: (1) what did the prospective defendant actually do; (2) what statute(s) create criminal offenses applicable to that conduct; (3) what are the essential elements of each such offense; (4) can each such element be proven beyond a reasonable doubt by admissible evidence; and (5) what defense(s) may apply.

A prosecutor who is unwilling to conduct such analysis should not present a matter to a grand jury. An internet commenter who is not willing to do so should not blather about prosecuting someone -- simply braying "I don't like him" doesn't feed the bulldog.

[John F. Carr]

She still strikes me as a better choice than Gaetz. She has relevant experience and ought to have a sense of when she can get away with ordering "off with his head!"

[santamonica811]

Um, yeah. But, man . . . you're setting the bar REALLY low here! 🙂

[Riva]

If you say so NG. Let’s see. There’s Smith’s unconstitutional appointment and an aggressively, shall we say, broad investigation with a DC grand jury followed by an indictment in…. Florida? Meetings with WH staff. An unprecedented raid on a former president’s residence on something that looks awfully like a general search warrant. The meritless DC prosecution that disregarded DOH guidelines. Fani’s “special counsel” billing for hours for his own WH meetings. Top DOJ official (number 3, don’t know exactly but up there) oddly deciding it was better to work for the fat slob Bragg on another meritless prosecution riddled with due process violations with a conflicted judge. Just the tip of an ugly lawfare iceberg. The whole affaire underlying the J6 “bomber” may not fit into the lawfare paradigm but it stinks like hell and bears some scrutiny, as well as other things J6. But as you say, the DOJ/FBI thugs have nothing to fear. That must be why they’re looking for defense counsel and crying.

[David Nieporent]

Bot’s malfunctioning again, just reciting random talking points without even pretending any of them are real or relevant.

[Riva]

Interesting that the same inane response is automatically generated every time you little trolls want to distract from a comment that hits too close to home. Almost like it’s machine generated. Kinda ironic, isn’t it crazy Dave?

[David Nieporent]

And there's the "IKYABWAI?" that we've all come to know and love from MAGA.

[Riva]

You misunderstand crazy Dave. I am commenting on the Biden administration/democrats lawfare corruption. You are a deranged troll parroting the same idiotic response over and over again to distract from a comment you don’t like but can’t honestly address because, well, you’re a pathetic deranged troll. I am in no way identifying with whatever thing you are.

[not guilty]

What statute(s) Riva? Please cite by number, with supporting facts.

"In our system, so long as the prosecutor has probable cause to believe that the accused committed an offense defined by statute, the decision whether or not to prosecute, and what charge to file or bring before a grand jury, generally rests entirely in his discretion." Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 364 (1978) (footnote omitted). As a result, "[t]he presumption of regularity supports" their prosecutorial decisions and, "in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, courts presume that they have properly discharged their official duties." United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 464 (1996), quoting United States v. Chemical Foundation, Inc., 272 U.S. 1, 14-15 (1926).

It's time to stop singing it and start bringing it, Riva.

[Riva]

You claimed the lawfare thugs had nothing to worry about from any investigations. I’ve noted just the tip of a big shit load of lawfare that you pretend doesn’t exist that should be investigated. 18 USC 241 may play a role but let’s see what the investigations conclude.

If you believe something doesn’t merit further review, let’s hear your explanation. It’s time to stop singing and start bringing it.

[not guilty]

I will be glad to do that, Riva. Criminal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 241 requires the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused held a specific intent to deprive a person of a right which has been made specific either by the express terms of the Constitution or laws of the United States or by decisions interpreting them. Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 104 (1945) (plurality opinion construing 18 U.S.C. § 242); United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 753-754 (1966) (Since the gravamen of the offense under § 241 is conspiracy, the requirement that the offender must act with a specific intent to interfere with the federal rights in question is satisfied.).

Section 241 creates no substantive rights, but prohibits interference with rights established by the Federal Constitution or laws and by decisions interpreting them. SCOTUS has authoritatively construed § 241 to prohibit only intentional interference with rights made specific either by the express terms of the Federal Constitution or laws or by decisions interpreting them. United States v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931, 941 (1988).

An indictment charging a federal prosecutor merely with prosecuting federal offenses pursuant to indictments found by duly empaneled federal grand juries would not survive a motion to dismiss.

[Riva]

You continue to ignore the lawfare abuses of the Biden administration targeting a political opponent for malicious prosecutions. I think there’s an intent to deprive civil rights there. Even if there weren’t any criminal liability, it’s a gross abuse of power that needs to be addressed. Looking forward to the investigations and dragging the lawfare thugs into the sunlight.

You’re not really bringing anything, are you?

[not guilty]

Do you seriously contend that there was no probable cause to indict Donald Trump in the District of Columbia and in Florida?

Perhaps you should change your nom de guerre to White Queen -- Lewis Carroll's character who boasted to Alice, "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

[Riva]

I contend the evidence to date demonstrates the weaponization of investigative and prosecutorial powers, and even intelligence tools, against the democrats' political opponents. George Orwell is more appropriate here than Lewis Carroll. DOJ thugs aren't lawyering up for nothing. They probably better start looking for non-extradition countries too.

[not guilty]

Once again, Riva. Do you seriously contend that there was no probable cause to indict Donald Trump in the District of Columbia and in Florida?

Yes or no? It won't break your keyboard to give a straight answer.

[Riva]

I seriously contend that the lawfare abuses of these little f’ers is what 18 USC 241, conspiracy against rights, was made for. If it doesn’t apply to these corrupt shits, it has no f’ing purpose.

[not guilty]

Once again, Riva. Do you seriously contend that there was no probable cause to indict Donald Trump in the District of Columbia and in Florida?

As I have explained upthread, criminal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 241 requires the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused held a specific intent to deprive a person of a right which has been made specific either by the express terms of the Constitution or laws of the United States or by decisions interpreting them. Section 241 creates no substantive rights, but prohibits interference with rights established by the Federal Constitution or laws and by decisions interpreting them. SCOTUS has authoritatively construed § 241 to prohibit only intentional interference with rights made specific either by the express terms of the Federal Constitution or laws or by decisions interpreting them. United States v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931, 941 (1988).

As to any claim that those prosecutors who proceeded against Donald Trump violated § 241, the existence of probable cause for initiating those prosecutions would be a defense. “In our system, so long as the prosecutor has probable cause to believe that the accused committed an offense defined by statute, the decision whether or not to prosecute, and what charge to file or bring before a grand jury, generally rests entirely in his discretion.” Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 364 (1978) (footnote omitted). As a result, “[t]he presumption of regularity supports” their prosecutorial decisions and, “in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, courts presume that they have properly discharged their official duties.” United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 464 (1996), quoting United States v. Chemical Foundation, Inc., 272 U.S. 1, 14-15 (1926).

If you can't run with the big dogs, Riva, stay on the porch.
To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go to court with the law you have, not the law you might want or wish to have at a later time.

[Riva]

You sound like a broken lawfare record. Once again, these thugs conspired and abused their offices and federal resources to harass, investigate, jail, fine a political opponent. Do you think being jailed for rest of your natural f’ing life for daring to run for office is enough of a deprivation of a right? There needs to be accountability and reform. Seeing some of these thugs on trial would, admittedly, be gratifying, but exposing and reforming this so you pukes never do this again is just as important.

And stop insulting dogs by comparing them to you lawfare supporting thug hacks.

[David Nieporent]

Notice how NG cites statutes and court decisions, while the bot just generates handwavy rants and raves about "abuse" and "harass"?

[not guilty]

Bleating "lawfare" is a cheap rhetorical device designed to avoid reasoned discussion of law and facts in all matters regarding Donald Trump.

Very few in the Trump cult are willing to discuss his actual conduct.

[Riva]

Uh huh. Odd how you don’t consider conspiring to use using federal powers to jail a political opponent for the rest of his natural life as a deprivation of rights. I don’t think you quite grasp the concept of a “right.” Not to mention your blindness to the pattern of abuses characterizing the Biden/DOJ lawfare. Maybe Colangelo can give you primer after he cops a deal? Or maybe Fani’s special counsel took some notes on that when he was at the WH? Or maybe the thug Smith remembers from all his visit?

[David Nieporent]

Uh huh. Odd how you don’t consider conspiring to use using federal powers to jail a political opponent for the rest of his natural life as a deprivation of rights.

I mean, all prosecutors try to put people in jail, and all federal prosecutors try to use federal powers to do so. I'm not sure who you think they could be "conspiring" with, but it obviously doesn't violate someone's rights to put him in jail, for a week, a month, or the rest of his natural life — a sentence you made up, of course — if he has been convicted of a crime after having been given due process.

[not guilty]

“Odd how you don’t consider conspiring to use using federal powers to jail a political opponent for the rest of his natural life as a deprivation of rights. I don’t think you quite grasp the concept of a ‘right.’”

Riva, as best I can discern what the Trump cult is kvetching about, it amounts to a claim of retaliatory criminal prosecution in response to Trump’s exercise of his First Amendment right to run for office. The absence of probable cause for the prosecution is an essential element of any such claim of deprivation, as SCOTUS expressly held in Hartman v. Moore, 547 U.S. 250, 252 (2006). That rule was reaffirmed in Nieves v. Bartlett, 587 U.S. 391, 139 S.Ct. 1715, 1723 (2019) (“Hartman requires plaintiffs in retaliatory prosecution cases to show more than the subjective animus of an officer and a subsequent injury; plaintiffs must also prove as a threshold matter that the decision to press charges was objectively unreasonable because it was not supported by probable cause.”).

Where probable cause exists, there simply is no federal constitutional right not to be criminally prosecuted, even if the prosecution is in retaliation for the accused’s exercise of First Amendment rights. An alleged conspiracy to prosecute under those circumstances is accordingly not actionable under 18 U.S.C. § 241.

Although I have challenged you repeatedly to say whether you claim that Trump was prosecuted without probable cause, you have adamantly refused to say that he was. That should conclude the discussion.

[Riva]

It suffices to respond that this country is most fortunate that the Garlands, Smiths, Colangelos and Not Guiltys of the world will not be the arbiters of what constitutes probable cause and due process going forward. And that now concludes this discussion.

[not guilty]

[duplicate comment deleted]

[Frank Drackman]

I'll be satisfied with seeing them crushed, driven before me, and hearing the lamentations of their women.

[AmosArch]

For the more legally erudite here what do you think will happen with the Trump cases/lawfare?

A: They will give up (yeah right)
B: Find a way to pause the cases and then start them up again after he finishes up his term..
C: Find a way to continue pursuing him while he is President
D: Drop them and then just come up with new charges against him after he finishes his term.
E: Some combination of the above
F: Other

[not guilty]

As Yogi Berra said, "Predictions are hard, especially about the future," but I'll take a stab at it. In descending order of confidence, I predict:

The New York Attorney General's civil suit will proceed unabated, per Clinton v. Jones, 521 U.S. 898 (1997).

The Fulton County, Georgia prosecution will sever Donald Trump for a separate trial from the other defendants, and proceedings against Trump will be stayed until he leaves office as president. That will leave fourteen defendants for jury trials after remand from the appellate court. Those defendants who did not appeal the nondisqualification order will be tried first because of speedy trial concerns.

The appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals will be dismissed on motion of the government.

The D.C. prosecution will be dismissed without prejudice on motion of the Special Counsel.

Justice Merchan will deny Trump's motion to dismiss and motion for new trial. He will pronounce sentence but stay execution of the sentence until Trump leaves office as President.

[Frank Drackman]

and all of the bullshit convictions will be overturned on appeal

[not guilty]

Frank, the convictions are in the Manhattan prosecution. What do you perceive as any viable issue on appeal?

[Brett Bellmore]

I think the viable issue is that the supposed paperwork misdemeanors, which had passed the statute of limitations, were promoted to still viable felonies on the basis of supposed federal crimes which,

1. The state didn't have authority to prosecute.
2. The federal government would not prosecute.
3. Existing precedent in the case of what Trump is accused of federally is not particularly favorable.

[David Nieporent]

Yes, and you've been told that all of this is wrong, and not just the conclusions, but the analysis. That is, it makes no legal difference whether the state had authority to prosecute, because the state wasn't prosecuting those. As I explained to you repeatedly, if one of Trump's associates possibly murdered someone in Paris and Trump forged business records with the intent of covering it up, that forgery would be a felony under NY law even though NY has no authority to prosecute crime in France. It would be felony under NY law even if France itself never prosecuted.

All that matters under NY penal law relating to such business record forgeries is what Trump's mental state was at the time he engaged in the forgeries.

[Brett Bellmore]

If you're trying somebody on the basis that they're concealing a crime, that the 'crime' they're supposedly concealing is actually criminal becomes an element of the prosecution which has to be proved.

The feds didn't inexplicably fail to prosecute a crime, they understandably refrained from prosecuting a non-crime.

[Sarcastr0]

becomes an element of the prosecution which has to be proved.

How many actual lawyers have to tell you this is not the law, even if you want it to be?

[David Nieporent]

If you’re trying somebody on the basis that they’re concealing a crime, that the ‘crime’ they’re supposedly concealing is actually criminal becomes an element of the prosecution which has to be proved.

No, it fucking doesn't. You are an engineer, not a lawyer.

The feds didn’t inexplicably fail to prosecute a crime, they understandably refrained from prosecuting a non-crime.

Michael Cohen was in fact prosecuted for it.

[Roger S]

Funny how the prosecutor did not explain to the jury that Trump was being prosecuted for Cohen's crimes.

[David Nieporent]

That's because he wasn't. He was being prosecuted solely for his own crime. The only crime Trump was charged with in the case was forging business records. (Many instances of that crime, of course.)

[Riva]

Really crazy Dave? Who knows what underlying multiple choice crime the jury choose to convict on given the instructions from the corrupt conflicted judge. The jury sure didn’t agree on any particular charge and neither the corrupt judge, the fat slob Bragg, nor his DOJ assistant Colangelo know either. And the defense sure as fuck has no idea.

[David Nieporent]

Sigh. They did not "choose to convict" on any "underlying crime," because he wasn't charged with any "underlying crime." He was charged only with forging business records, and he was convicted only of forging business records. The jury unanimously agreed on that charge.

[Josh R]

The jury was unanimous on the underlying crime, especially since there was only one such crime in their instructions: conspiracy to promote an election by unlawful means.

[Commenter_XY]

Josh R, I don't think this part is quite right = ...especially since there was only one such crime in their instructions: conspiracy to promote an election by unlawful means.

I believe there were three statutes cited by the prosecution, not just conspiracy to promote an election by unlawful means. Loki13 had an outstanding cite of an article that discussed the legal and logical structure of the prosecution's case, and the specific codes in NY state law. Wish I could find it. Maybe he sees this and remembers that article.

Isn't that one of the legal issues at the Court of Appeals?

[David Nieporent]

I believe there were three statutes cited by the prosecution, not just conspiracy to promote an election by unlawful means.

No; those were three "unlawful means" that were the manner in which the unlawful promoting the election may have taken place.

[Riva]

Sigh. What utter and complete bs. Yeah, the internet is awash in garbage to justify the obscenity of this lawfare crap. It’s like lawfare porn. This whole process was corrupt. From the fat slob who campaigned to get Trump, to an indictment that failed to specify the charges, to a corrupt conflicted judge (his daughter making millions from her Democrat clients), serious evidentiary issues and unconstitutional gag orders, and the jury instructions at issue here. A quote from Jonathan Turly to put this nonsense on the jury instructions to rest:
“Merchan allowed the jury to find that the secondary offense was any of the three vaguely defined options. Even on the jury form, they did not have to specify which of the crimes were found.”

[Riva]

And I forgot to mention Colangelo. The top Biden DOJ official (no. 3?) who decided to make the odd career choice to work under that fat slob manhattan DA. I wonder if he’ll be the first to turn? Probably be spoiled for choice. The cowardly lawfare thugs will fall over themselves trying to make deal. They have less integrity than the mob.

[Josh R]

XY, this is the article loki linked to. It was written prior to jury instructions.

Go to the figure at the bottom. There are three solid lines from 175.10 down to FECA, 17-152 and Tax Fraud. The jury instructions removed (ruled out) the two lines from 175.10 to FECA and Tax Fraud. The only predicate crime the jury could consider was 17-152, conspiracy to promote an election by unlawful means..

However, the dashed lines at the bottom (unlawful means used to commit 17-152) remained. The instructions also said the jury need not be unanimous on which dashed line at the bottom was used. That might be a basis for appeal.

[not guilty]

"I believe there were three statutes cited by the prosecution, not just conspiracy to promote an election by unlawful means."

No. The single object offense, per page 43 of the jury instructions, was a violation of New York Election Law section 17-152, which provides that any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of conspiracy to promote or prevent an election.

https://www.nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/press/PDFs/People%20v.%20DJT%20Jury%20Instructions%20and%20Charges%20FINAL%205-23-24.pdf

The judge further instructed the jury (p. 44) "In determining whether the defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, you may consider the following unlawful means: (1) violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act otherwise known as FECA; (2) the falsification of other business records; or (3) violation of tax laws." The judge gave further instructions (pp. 44-46) as to each of the tree unlawful means.

[Commenter_XY]

Josh R....THANK YOU for that article! You remembered! You picked up on the graph I remembered, too. Yes, that is the part where I thought it was going to Court of Appeals. It was ambiguous.

But as you say, it was written pre-instructions.

[Magister]

Michael Cohen was sentenced in 2018 to 36 months for the crime that Donald Trump was concealing.

[Brett Bellmore]

He was sentenced for, IIRC, offenses unrelated to Trump, and was given a reduced sentence in return for pleading that Trump was guilty of something. That's what actually happened, realistically.

[David Nieporent]

You don't RC.

[Brett Bellmore]

Cohen pleads guilty, implicates Trump in hush-money scheme

The tax evasion and bank fraud charges were unrelated to Trump, were easily proven, and could have put him in prison for the rest of his life. He got a comparative slap on the wrist for them in return for pleading guilty to a charge that implicated Trump, and which did not actually have to be proved because he simply pled guilty to it.

This has become a standard technique by now: Find somebody dirty who's adjacent to your actual target, get the goods on them for some crimes they may have committed, and then offer them a really good plea deal in return for pleading guilty to having conspired with your actual target to do something illegal, which you never have to prove in an adversary process because you bought a guilty plea from your patsy.

And now you have a court record you can use in going after your real target, without having to have actually proven any of it true.

[David Nieporent]

This has become a standard technique by now: Find somebody dirty who’s adjacent to your actual target, get the goods on them for some crimes they may have committed, and then offer them a really good plea deal in return for pleading guilty to having conspired with your actual target to do something illegal, which you never have to prove in an adversary process because you bought a guilty plea from your patsy.

It has not "become a standard technique." What the fuck would the point of that? Of course prosecutors often give lower level people in a conspiracy a deal to try to flip them against higher level people — that's not "by now," but "through all of the history of judicial systems" — but that's not what you're hallucinating. You're hallucinating giving lower level people a deal to implicate higher level people who they're not intending to prosecute, which doesn't happen.

Also, Cohen wasn't flipped and didn't get a reduced sentence, so that makes your whole conspiracy theory even dumber in this context.

And now you have a court record you can use in going after your real target, without having to have actually proven any of it true.

Nor is that how it works. You cannot use one person's guilty plea against another "without having to prove" the crime against the other.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Also, Cohen wasn’t flipped and didn’t get a reduced sentence,"

I literally linked to a news report of it happening!

Even 538 thought it was a bit dubious!

He didn't get as reduced a sentence as he'd have liked, but compared to what he could have gotten on those tax and bank fraud cases, it was a slap on the wrist.

[David Nieporent]

“Also, Cohen wasn’t flipped and didn’t get a reduced sentence,”

I literally linked to a news report of it happening!

JFC, Brett, learn to read. Nothing in that article says what you claim. Indeed, the one sentence on the topic is "Nothing made public so far indicates Cohen has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, but Avenatti said he is certain that is happening." And thus by definition it says nothing at all about a reduced sentence.

Even 538 thought it was a bit dubious!

The author of the 538 post in question (who btw is not a lawyer), thought that if Cohen agreed to testify against Trump in exchange for a deal, there would be reasons for skepticism, as in any criminal prosecution. But there wasn't any such deal.

[David Nieporent]

He didn’t get as reduced a sentence as he’d have liked, but compared to what he could have gotten on those tax and bank fraud cases, it was a slap on the wrist.

He did not get a reduced sentence or a slap on the wrist, and he got what one would expect someone like him — a first time, non-violent offender without any victims — to get. If your argument is solely based on the fact that he got less than the statutory maximum, you're just exposing your ignorance of the topic yet again. Nobody gets the statutory maximum; that's not how the sentencing guidelines work.

[Magister]

Cohen got a better sentence than he might have at trial in return for pleading guilty; that’s pretty much why people accept plea agreements. There’s no indication in that article that the sentence was because of implicating Trump, and Mueller did not prosecute Cohen. The subsequent link expresses concern over informant testimony in general, and Cohen’s credibility as a witness was thoroughly questioned in Trump’s trial.

[not guilty]

"If you’re trying somebody on the basis that they’re concealing a crime, that the ‘crime’ they’re supposedly concealing is actually criminal becomes an element of the prosecution which has to be proved."

No, Brett. The actual commission of a crime is not an element of the offense that Donald Trump was found guilty of. The accused's intent to defraud that included an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof will suffice. https://www.nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/press/PDFs/People%20v.%20DJT%20Jury%20Instructions%20and%20Charges%20FINAL%205-23-24.pdf

I realize that inchoate crimes are difficult for you to wrap your mind around, but give it a rest.

[Brett Bellmore]

But the act they supposedly are concealing has to actually BE a crime. If you're concealing something that's legal, the whole house of cards collapses.

That's the weak spot in the entire case: The reason that the feds didn't prosecute Trump for the supposed federal crime is that the conduct was not illegal in the first place.

[Sarcastr0]

Assumes facts not in evidence.

Heck, assumes facts Trump's defense team didn't think were in evidence!

[Joe_dallas]

Brett Bellmore 17 minutes ago
But the act they supposedly are concealing has to actually BE a crime. If you’re concealing something that’s legal, the whole house of cards collapses."

That is a valid point that is overlooked / ignored. One of the elements required to make it a felony is that it has to be in commission of another crime or intent to commit another crime. There was no evidence presented that demonstrated that there was another crime (though the four other crimes were mentioned) and he wasnt allowed to present evidence that the alleged actions were not crimes.

[Josh R]

But the act they supposedly are concealing has to actually BE a crime.

True. However, Trump wasn't accused of concealing any federal crime. He was accused of concealing NY 17-152, conspiracy to promote or prevent election by unlawful means.

To be sure,one of the three unlawful means in the jury instructions was federal campaign finance violations. However, the fact the federal government chose not prosecute does not imply there weren't violations of campaign finance laws.

[Brett Bellmore]

"He was accused of concealing NY 17-152, conspiracy to promote or prevent election by unlawful means."

"However, the fact the federal government chose not prosecute does not imply there weren’t violations of campaign finance laws."

Sure, in theory the federal government might have decided to just give Trump a pass on prosecuting him for a real and provable campaign finance violation.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the reason they didn't prosecute him is that there wasn't any campaign finance violation.

[Josh R]

In the real world, appellate judges would not hold this jury was excluded from concluding that there were FECA violations because federal prosecutors chose not to pursue the case.

[Nelson]

“ Meanwhile, back in the real world, the reason they didn’t prosecute him is that there wasn’t any campaign finance violation.”

In the real world there are a lot of reasons that someone who committed a crime wouldn’t be prosecuted for it. A lack of prosecution does not equate to a lack of crime.

[Joe_dallas]

Nelson 8 minutes ago
Flag Comment
Mute User
“ Meanwhile, back in the real world, the reason they didn’t prosecute him is that there wasn’t any campaign finance violation.”

"In the real world there are a lot of reasons that someone who committed a crime wouldn’t be prosecuted for it. A lack of prosecution does not equate to a lack of crime."

Nelson - As others have noted, in the real world there was a lack of an actual crime.

[Josh R]

Since there were three possible unlawful means presented to the jury to buttress New York's prohibiton against promoting an election by unlawful means, one or more of them may have felt there was an intent to conceal a federal campaign law violation.

[David Nieporent]

Nelson – As others have noted, in the real world there was a lack of an actual crime.

As more intelligent people who aren't bookkeepers from Texas who fancy themselves experts in everything have noted, in the real world there was so much an actual crime that Michael Cohen went to prison for committing it.

[Frank Drackman]

OK, David Never-potent (they have drugs for that) Viable grounds for dismissal are whatever some guy/gal in a Black Robe says they are.

[Bwaaah]

Grounds for dismissal only work like that in practice. In theory, the law works like DMN says.

[bernard11]

You mean it's not what Brett Bellmore says?

[Roger S]

So Trump was being prosecuted because some NY Democrat mindreaders somehow decided that Trump was intending to cover up something that was not a crime? Worse than I thought.

Besides all that, they were not business records, Trump did not record them, they were accurate, and they did not mislead anyone. And the statute of limitations was expired. And inadmissible evidence was presented, while blocking Trump from presenting evidence in his favor. If Trump is ever sentenced, the case will be reversed on appeal, and Trump exonerated.

[Kenneth Almquist]

To convict Trump of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree, one of the things that the prosecution had to prove was that Trump had an “intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” The prosecution argued that Trump intended to conceal a violation of New York Election Law §17-152.

§17-152 involves a conspiracy to “promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.” The prosecution argued that the unlawful means involved (1) violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act, (2) falsification of other business records, and (3) violation of New York city, New York state, and Federal tax laws.

With regards to your points:
1. A violation of Federal law is “unlawful” by definition.
2. Other people have already told you that the Federal Government did prosecute.
3. The article you link to is about the John Edwards case, which didn’t establish any legal precedents. The jury in that case acquitted on one count and deadlocked on the others, likely because the prosecution didn't do a good job of showing that the payments in that case wouldn’t have been made if Edwards hadn’t been running for President. In contrast, the testimony in the Manhattan case clearly establishes that Trump’s primary objective was to keep the Stormy Daniels story hidden until after the election. If he could have strung her along until election day and then not paid her, he would have.

[Frank Drackman]

Did Nick Satan tell the other teams his game plan?? (Funny how last year Alabama wins the SEC, makes the 4 team playoff, new coach with practically the same team can't even make a 12 team playoff.) How about the DA looks like a black Mr Potato Head?

[Noscitur a sociis]

The two federal prosecutions will be dismissed (in the Florida case, just not refiled) either before Trump takes office or immediately afterwards.

The two state cases will be stayed while Trump is in office. In both cases there are colorable if not overwhelming arguments (unrelated to Trump’s being the president) that could stall things further, though not any that would be likely to get the cases dismissed with prejudice. I could imagine the prosecutors deciding that it’s not worth it to keep going at this point, but it’s certainly possible they will.

As with the last go-around, would anticipate many lawsuits being filed against Trump, some frivolous, some colorable but silly, and some the result of his own inability to not do stupid things.

[hobie]

I imagine Kenny Chesbrough, who has already plead out in Atlanta and became a cooperating witness, will now clam up, and take his lumps for clamming up in exchange for the blanket federal pardon he's about to get. Noscitur, couldn't a pardon like that be construed as witness tampering?

[Michael P]

The President cannot pardon somebody for state crimes. Even when the state is Georgia or New York.

[hobie]

Yes, I know this. That is why I stated he will have to take his lumps (in GA state) for rescinding his cooperation agreement. As I would as well to avoid all the federal unpleasantries

[not guilty]

"I imagine Kenny Chesbrough, who has already plead out in Atlanta and became a cooperating witness, will now clam up, and take his lumps for clamming up in exchange for the blanket federal pardon he’s about to get. Noscitur, couldn’t a pardon like that be construed as witness tampering?"

That would likely result in placing the Georgia sentence into effect.

A federal pardon cannot protect him from that.

[Frank Drackman]

You're acting like Hobie-stank isn't a blithering idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

[Lennyk78]

Assuming Kemp doesn't pardon him.

[Frank Drackman]

Kemp doesn't have that power

[Lennyk78]

Now he doesn't. We'll see if the Georgia legislature makes an exception.

[tylertusta]

Kemp cannot pardon anybody.

[Kazinski]

Jack Smith has formally given up, he has moved to dismiss the charges in DC.

And of course the Florida charges have already been dismissed.

[not guilty]

The government's motion is for dismissal without prejudice pursuant to Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149.281.0_5.pdf

The indictment could be revived after Trump leaves office as President.

[Bob from Ohio]

"indictment could be revived"

Keep hope alive!

[not guilty]

If Trump doesn't die in office, the indictment can be revived. At this point I am unsure which outcome I would rather see.

[Noscitur a sociis]

How? Even ignoring the possibility of a pardon, the statute of limitations will have long expired.

[not guilty]

It is uncharted waters, but the commencement is timely with the original indictment, and there is an argument to be made for equitable tolling of the limitations period while the defendant is not subject to prosecution.

[Bob from Ohio]

The threat of such prosecutions led Caesar to cross the Rubicon. I guess Trump should bring a legion with him across the Potomac.

[Noscitur a sociis]

The federal statute of limitations, 18 U.S.C. § 3282, only permits exceptions that are “expressly provided by law”. As such, equitable tolling is not available. See United States v. Plezia, 115 F.4th 379, 389 (5th Cir. 2024). And of course there is no statutory exception applicable.

[not guilty]

Section 3282 itself does not indicate whether the limitation period applies to reinstated counts of an indictment which was originally "found" within five years. United States v. Plezia involved the trial court's refusal to dismiss an additional count of a previously found indictment, which was added after the five year limitation period had expired. During that entire time the defendant remained subject to indictment and prosecution, unlike the instant matter.

[David Nieporent]

I don't think that § 3282 precludes equitable tolling, which by definition is non-statutory. I also don't think anyone will have the appetite to prosecute Trump in 2029 for offenses that occurred in 2020, 2021, 2022, so I think it's moot.

I also think that there ought to be a package of reforms passed by Congress to address the issues raised by Trump, even if they won't apply to Trump:

1. Presidential immunity: not a thing. If that takes a constitutional amendment, so be it.
2. Presidential pardons: not a thing. Ditto.
3. Statutory tolling of all SOLs for any period for which the president can't be prosecuted.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Sections 3289 and 3290 explain how the limitations periods interact with dismissed indictments.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I don’t think that § 3282 precludes equitable tolling, which by definition is non-statutory.

If Congress wanted to preclude equitable tolling, how much more explicit would the language have to be?

[David Nieporent]

"This statute of limitations may not be tolled."

I mean, if all it takes to eliminate equitable tolling is to enact a statute of limitations, then there will never be equitable tolling.

[not guilty]

Hmmm. Per 18 U.S.C. § 3290, "No statute of limitations shall extend to any person fleeing from justice."

Speaking tongue in cheek here, but isn't that exactly what Donald Trump has done by asserting absolute immunity -- which, BTW, can be waived -- and by running for President?

[Kazinski]

Perhaps, but after the last 4 years I will be surprised if Trump doesn't grant himself a pardon in the waning days of his new administration. And for all his senior advisors.

Normally that would be an admission of at least a guilty conscience, but his supporters will understand after all the accusations and indictments and two impeachment trials.

His detractors already think he is Hitler. Of course a real Hitler would just kill all the people he thought might go after him later, not just immunize himself from federal legal consequences.

[Mr. Bumble]

You are pathetic. For the better part of a year you've been pontificating about how Trump would be behind bars and nothing.
Keep placing your hope in Judge Shitcan.
Should be dismissed with prejudice for all of the time and money wasted so far.

[David Nieporent]

That's not how the law works. And in any case, Chutkan has just granted Smith's motion and dismissed w/o prejudice.

[Martinned2]

It's a good thing Brett promised me that Trump doesn't support Project 2025 or the people who wrote it, otherwise I might worry about the five authors of the report who have already been nominated for government jobs, including the new chair of the FCC who is now going around threatening news networks that he will yank their broadcasting licenses unless they stop saying things Trump doesn't like.

That's at least one thing I get from reading the comments here: Assurance that all will be fine in the US.

[Brett Bellmore]

What did I specifically say? Because I usually take great care to say what I mean, and nothing more than what I mean.

I said that it wasn't HIS Project 2025. And, of course, it isn't.

That means that the presence of something in Project 2025 doesn't mean he's obligated to support it, that the involvement of somebody in Project 2025 doesn't mean that he's obligated to support them.

But the converse is, of course, also true. That they suggest something doesn't mean he has to oppose it, that somebody was involved doesn't mean he has to reject them.

[Martinned2]

You said that Trump wasn't touching those guys with a barge pole, and certainly wasn't going to hire them for his future administration.

That they suggest something doesn’t mean he has to oppose it, that somebody was involved doesn’t mean he has to reject them.

It doesn't? That's quite a novel insight compared to before the election. Now I'm suddenly starting to think that you and Trump aren't such committed democrats after all.

[Brett Bellmore]

I routinely carefully chose my words. Then people read them, derive from them some high level abstraction they think I'm trying to communicate rather than the specific thing I actually said, and, remembering that abstraction rather than my words, think I said something more.

That's what you're doing here.

It's not HIS Project. He is not bound to follow it, he's not bound to avoid following it.

As it's a conservative document generated by conservative people, and he's intent on governing in a conservative adjacent manner, there's going to be some overlap.

[Martinned2]

I don't think "conservative" means what you think it means...

[Michael P]

The last seven words of your comment were redundant.

[Brett Bellmore]

These days conservative doesn't mean what you'd think the word means, ("Conserving" something...) any more than liberal means a concern about liberty. They're just arbitrary labels people use because they identify particular ideological/policy groupings.

So, yes, in an American context Project 2025 is "conservative", while Trump is merely conservative adjacent.

[Bwaaah]

In popular parlance, "conservative" now means Republican, and "liberal" now means Democrat. As for the meanings of "Republican" and "Democrat," they have, in practice, no persistent philosophical meaning. They are morphing meandering groups of political marauders whose only enduring purpose is to prevail in elections.

Allusions to party philosophy are aspirational, and now mainly a form of historic romanticism.

[David Nieporent]

It is his project, but even so he's not bound to follow it — making that a strawman argument on your part — but he's going to follow it — making it a disingenuous argument on your part.

[Bwaaah]

David Nieporent: "It is his project, [...] he's going to follow it"

I don't think DJT ever had an idea he couldn't express in less than one page. (More like one paragraph.) Even the few things he appears to say clearly remain matters of endless conjecture. And yet, you say, Project 2025 is his?

That's the disingenuous irrational analysis born of TDS there, David. Donald Trump isn't following anybody or any project. You see that as clearly as anybody else.

[bernard11]

Nobody said he's bound to follow it. They predicted he would. Meanwhile, Trump himself proclaimed loudly that he knew nothing about it, had no interest in it, it was just some guys BS'ing in a bar, etc.

And you sucked all that up, and repeated it, and now you're doing the Bellmore two-step.

"I never said," "I wasn't in the delivery room," etc. Always leaving a back door to slither out of.

[Sarcastr0]

You are not even technically correct, Brett.

Functionally it’s his.
Formally he has adopted it.

By any metric voters care about, you were wrong or lying.

Your semantic games do you no favors.
Remember before Trump when you never had to defend your own consistency with your past statements?

[Michael P]

How has he "formally" adopted it?

Keep in mind that functionally, it was never his, it was always a list of things that other people wished he would do.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm not even going to bother to like the many stories to you, since you're not a good faith poster.

Look it up, and stop sealioning.

[Michael P]

I did search before I asked, and found nothing. Which is all that you have. You are projecting again.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"I’m not even going to bother to like the many stories to you, since you’re not a good faith poster."

I refuse to provide evidence of my claims, everybody arguing in good faith already agrees with them!

[Bwaaah]

"Formally," in Sarc Speak, means "not really in any clear sense."

And anyway, he called you names. So there.

[Sarcastr0]

No, Bwaah, he's promising to do the stuff in the Project, and using it as a guide to his transition.

Do you a notarized letter to call it formal?

[Bob from Ohio]

Got your resume updated? I think Project 2025 is coming for you.

[Sarcastr0]

I think it’s incredible someone like you who puffs up to defend Christianity makes this kind of low and spiteful comment.

[Bob from Ohio]

Not a Christian but I respect Christians [despite it being a Jewish heresy, nobody's perfect]. I do not care much for atheists who mock it but dare to tell Christians how they should live their lives.

I also mock your silly fearmongering about a think tank policy book. Booga booga

[Sarcastr0]

Your empty tribalism is showing.

So is your backpedaling to ‘I was just joking.’

Man you sure can be lame.

At least you didn’t tell me to drink draino.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, I want to know how he's "formally" adopted it, when he's explicitly said it's not his, and he's actually repudiated parts of it. You've got a link to some formal adoption of his that you can show us, or are you just pulling that out of your ass?

[Mr. Bumble]

He's not GaslightO or Il Douche for nothing.

[Sarcastr0]

Check the news Brett.

[Brett Bellmore]

Screw that, Sarcastr0: You've claimed Trump has "formally adopted" Project 2025. Let's see the adoption papers. Certainly you should be able to provide them if he did it formally.

Or just admit that you pulled that claim out of your ass.

[Michael P]

This is not the first time in the last few days that Gaslight0 has claimed something stupidly counterfactual and then fallen back on the defense that he read something like it somewhere like Twitter.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I’d like to believe I follow the news fairly closely, and I have no clue what you’re referring to.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm guessing he means this, though it hardly amounts to formally adopting the whole program:

Trump's transition team turns to Project 2025 after disavowing it during the campaign

Like I said, it's not his Project, and he's explicitly repudiated parts of it, but that hardly obligates him to not make use of anything in it even if he likes it.

[Sarcastr0]

Well that, and adopting a lot of it's plans as campaign promises.

Your standard for 'his project' is 'he is bound to follow all of it???'

When you argued it wasn't his project before the election you sure didn't specify that ridiculous standard.

[Michael P]

I think the standard for it being Donald Trump's project is whether he started it, funded it, directed it, or things like that. Using it as a Rolodex or as binders full of job candidates falls well short of him formally adopting it or otherwise it being "his project".

[Brett Bellmore]

But that latter doesn't allow Sarcastr0 to blame Trump for the parts Trump doesn't adopt, and in fact has explicitly repudiated. So he NEEDS it to be Trump's project, not the Heritage Foundation's.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

He also needs "Project 2025" to be a pejorative.

[Sarcastr0]

Trump doesn't write things that aren't tweets. He has people for that.

Those people did Project 2025. They boasted about it. They talked about how it would be part of the transition.
Trump repudiated them, but that turns out to have been the obvious lie it looked like.

[Mr. Bumble]

Would someone be kind enough to throw Il Douche a life preserver.

[Sarcastr0]

I've noticed you do a whole lot of empty cheerleading.

[Martinned2]

The weekly round-up post on the UK human rights blog has some US news too:

A Wyoming Judge on Monday struck down the State’s ban on abortion – including its explicit ban on abortion pills – following a legal challenge brought by a group of women and non-profit organisations. Melissa Owens, Teton Country district judge, ruled that the ban violated a 2012 state constitutional amendment which enshrined the right of Wyoming citizens to have control over their healthcare decisions. Owens stated in judgment that ‘abortion procedures constitute essential health care for pregnant women’ and that there is ‘no compelling governmental interest to eliminate abortion procedures based on the State’s position that abortions are gruesome and barbaric’. Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon announced the day after judgment was handed down that he has instructed the Attorney General to prepare an appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court, whose members were all appointed by anti-abortion Republican governors.

https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/gdpzkkagkvw/Summary%20Judgment%20Order%20Wyoming.pdf

[not guilty]

Thank you for the link.

[not guilty]

The trial court's decision appears sound to me.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

You could've just read the headline and posted that and saved your time reading. As you were going to come to that conclusion no matter the content.

In other words, a classic "not guilty".

[not guilty]

JHBHBE, when I comment on material that I haven't read, I have enough respect for my fellow commenters to say so.

The paragraphs of the order are numbered. Which paragraphs, if any, do you claim that Judge Owens got wrong?

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

But you don't have enough respect for your fellow commenters to qualify your legal analysis with "Note, while this may appear neutral, I am in fact an ideologue and hyper-partisan and will spin facts to achieve my goals and I do not conduct neutral interpretations or analysis even though I proffer it as such."

Weird.

[not guilty]

JHBHBE, I have never pretended to be anything other than a partisan Democrat. I acknowledge that motivated reasoning is a thing, to which I am as subject as anyone, and I have stated my vantage point repeatedly. (Unlike many of the partisan Republican commenters here.) That is why I am careful to back up my analysis with legal authorities and original source materials.

Now tell us which paragraphs, if any, do you claim that Judge Owens got wrong.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Again, you are not conducting analysis. You’re goal-seeking some spin.

Stop dressing up the garbage you spew. Just admit your poseur nonsense is just LARPy bullshit and write your lEgAL anAlysiS with the same tone as when you try to argue a boy can transform into a real, authentic, beautiful princess if he just wishes upon a star and blinks three times!

[bernard11]

Ok then. What did Owens get wrong?

[santamonica811]

Why would you think a whore (bot??) like JesusHad would give an actual substantive response, even to a clear and simple question? Don't be silly.

[Joe_dallas]

no mention of the baby's right to control the baby's health care decisions

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Well that ends when you're 18, unless you want an abortion yourself or want to permanently alter your sexual systems. Then anything goes as soon as you hit 8.

[Martinned2]

Cricket's brat autumn continues apace. After the truly bonkers English tour of Pakistan, the first test of India's five-test tour of Australia just ended with India winning by 295 runs with more than a day to spare. On day 1 17 wickets fell, Australia went all out for 104 in its first innings, and then suddenly India (led by Kohli of course) scored 487/6d in its second innings and ran away with it.

[David Nieporent]

I recognize most of those words on an individual basis.

[SRG2]

Remarkable test. India all out for 150 in their first innings then set a record for the opening stand against Australia in their second. Bumrah is a monster!

[Martinned2]

Yeah, I skipped over Yashasvi Jaiswal's second innings. That dude is quite something. He basically ran away from home (?) when he was 12 or so to live in a tent in the streets and play cricket.

Jaiswal was just a slight and shy 10-year-old boy when he left his home district of Bhadohi, eastern Uttar Pradesh, with his father, and headed 1,000 miles south across India’s vast expanse to the bright lights of Mumbai in pursuit of a seemingly impossible dream – to make it as a professional cricketer in a country of 1.4 billion people where the game is revered as a quasi-religion.

His father left him with an uncle in Mumbai and headed back to the rest of the family. After just a few days the young Jaiswal left to live and work in a dairy shop before he seized the opportunity to live in a groundsman’s tent in the city’s famous Azad Maidan. Here he existed on a diet of glucose biscuits and the occasional free meal. More than that, he survived on a diet of cricket. With endless net practices and matches, Jaiswal set about honing his batting skills with an almost incomprehensible focus. “I have been alone a long, long, time,” Jaiswal told the Hindustan Times last year. “When my father left, it was very hard for me at first. Slowly, I got used to it. I got busy.”

After a couple of years of living in the tent on the Maidan – playing cricket from dawn until dusk and occasionally earning a rupee or two of pocket money by helping the food vendors sell their pani-puri – Jaiswal was spotted by cricket coach Jwala Singh. Singh took him in and eventually became his legal guardian. The two of them working together tirelessly towards their dream.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/mar/10/yashasvi-jaiswal-new-india-cricket-england

[Martinned2]

More generally of course it often strikes me how few people in the West can possibly imagine what it must be like to be Sachin Tendulkar or Rahul Kohli. Maybe Messi during the World Cup, that's about it. The hopes and dreams of a billion people focused on you, demanding nothing short of victory.

The cricket journalists sometimes give you a clue, like The Guardian yesterday:

But there is always the heat of being Kohli, the player who fans most want to see succeed. There is the want, the expectation. The big Indian contingent in the stands celebrated his first run, a tap to cover, then cooed a quality drive through mid off for three. After a run of low scores and some early rumblings about whether his occupancy in the team was expiring, this innings still mattered.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/nov/24/australia-india-match-report-kohli-jaiswal-first-test-day-three-report

[TwelveInchPianist]

Huh.

"Parent Trespassed from School After Wearing 'XX' Wristband to Girls' Game Against Trans Athlete"

Good to know free speech is alive and well in our schools.

[Martinned2]

Bong Hits 4 Jesus FTW!

[TwelveInchPianist]

Huh? Bong hits for Jesus is a terrible case that doesn't seem to have any application to these facts.

[Martinned2]

It was a terrible case, that essentially establishes that free speech in schools is dead letter. I'm sure you can apply it to parent speech on school premises without too much difficulty.

[Michael P]

Morse v. Frederick was about the free speech rights of students to advocate for drug use, so no, one cannot easily apply it to speech by parents (about chromosomal sex definitions).

[Martinned2]

It turns out that if you let school authorities censor speech, somewhere else a school might censor speech you agree with. Who knew that censorship might be a bad idea?

[Mr. Bumble]

Tell Herr Starmer and friends.

[Martinned2]

I will, next time I meet him.

[Michael P]

It turns out that school officials have a long history of illegally censoring people, regardless of what is allowed or not. You might want to re-read Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District.

[Martinned2]

In that case it certainly didn't help that the Supreme Court said it was OK with whatever.

[Michael P]

Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court did not say that.

[Josh R]

Morse established that student speech which advocates for illegal conduct can be censored. It doesn't apply to this case because 1) the people speaking aren't students and 2) a symbol "XX" doesn't advocate for illegal conduct.

Instead, the school seems to be arguing Tinker applies as if the parents were students wearing XX at school. If so, Tinker permits a heckler's veto when as a result of the speech there is substantial disruption. I doubt that's going to fly either.

[Martinned2]

That's a pretty generous summary...

[TwelveInchPianist]

"It was a terrible case, that essentially establishes that free speech in schools is dead letter."

It doesn't establish that. There's nothing in Morse that the school can rely on as a defense to their actions.

[Martinned2]

And yet I predict they will rely on it anyway.

[not guilty]

The headline presents a novel use of the verb "trespassed." I hope that it doesn't catch on.

That having been said, I doubt that any use of criminal trespassing statutes against these parents would be constitutional as applied.

The parents are acting like jerks by insisting upon referring to their daughter's teammate as a boy, https://www.foxnews.com/sports/federal-judge-pushes-back-parents-calling-trans-athlete-a-boy-legal-battle-over-pro-girls-protests (not to mention the questionable wisdom of pissing off the judge before whom you are testifying), but as Justice Felix Frankfurter observed in the Fourth Amendment context, "It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people." United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting).

[Noscitur a sociis]

The headline presents a novel use of the verb “trespassed.” I hope that it doesn’t catch on.

The usage isn’t remotely novel. I would have put it at Garner language-change 5, but there’s no way it’s less than a high 4.

[Michael P]

Should we sanction that use of "trespass" or other enantiosemic terms?

[Krayt]

I went to my online dictionary of record, m-w, and they don’t mention any synonym remotely like “ejected”, or even a category implying ejection. Just that it’s a violation of someone elses land without permission.

M-w isn’t the final authority on it, of course, but this new use seems like a poverty of imagination.

I can handle “meme” and “ironically” being stretched out of all recognion, but not this. Also, it’s use in this way suggests poverty of imagination. Rather, “The two parents wore a wristband that was disruptive, and so were deemed tresspassing, and were circus-cannoned outta there.”

[Michael P]

The verb form in question means to give someone a formal warning that future return to, or presence at, a public accommodation will be considered trespass. It supports (and in some cases is required?) bringing criminal charges for that future trespass.

[Absaroka]

I've heard it often enough that I'm surprised to hear people aren't familiar with it. Maybe it's a regional thing? More familiar to people who handle shoplifting cases?

Here's a mention from 2013.

[Joe_dallas]

not guilty 2 hours ago
"The parents are acting like jerks by insisting upon referring to their daughter’s teammate as a boy,"

NG - The daughters teammates is a boy!
Your active participation and/or defense of the delusion does not change the fact that the boy remains a boy.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

You should go read that thread the other day where not guilty was saying how he cares deeply about the meaning of words and the congruency of reality.

lol, what a dipshit

[David Nieporent]

The parents are acting like jerks by insisting upon referring to their daughter’s teammate as a boy

I'm pretty sure it was someone on the opposing team, FWIW.

[not guilty]

The article I linked to does not make that clear, but the article linked upthread by TwelveInchPeckerchecker does. I stand corrected.

That does not detract from my point that it is unwise for a litigant to piss off the judge who sits as finder of fact in your lawsuit.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"That does not detract from my point that it is unwise for a litigant to piss off the judge who sits as finder of fact in your lawsuit."

It seems unwise, and extremely unfair, for the judge to refuse to let the parents make their argument. "Transgender girl" is a politically loaded term designed to advance one side of the argument. People advancing that side of the argument have the right to use the term to advance their agenda, but the judge has no business forcing people to use it.

[not guilty]

Witness testimony and argument are different parts of a trial, TIP. (Argumentative testimony is objectionable.) But both the parties' testimony and counsel's argument in a bench trial should be directed toward persuading the judge, for heaven's sake. Referring to a player, a youth or a child would have worked quite nicely.

And the judge did not "force" any witness to say a damn thing. He may have been indicating that the parents' rhetoric was not helping their cause.

[TwelveInchPianist]

It sounds like the judge was indicating that he should have recused himself.

[not guilty]

No, it doesn't sound like that at all. Especially in a bench trial a judge will often steer counsel's presentation toward matters that will help him to decide the case. Political posturing in a United States District Court (other than in Amarillo) is hardly persuasive.

Why do you assert that the judge was indicating that he should have recused himself? As a preacher from my youth was fond of saying, that doesn't even make good nonsense.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Because the judge is so committed to one side of the issue that he can't stomach factual statements from the other side's perspective. It would be the same if the told one side they had to say "boys" and not "transgender girls".

[Josh R]

I can't read the Fox News article because I block ads. But, the title says the judge "pushed back" on calling her a boy, not that the judge prohibited it. What exactly was the "push back"?

[TwelveInchPianist]

” the judge “pushed back” on calling her a boy, not that the judge prohibited it.”

I can’t say I’ve ever seen a judge that thought there was a difference.

And the article doesn't elaborate.

[Josh R]

From this article, it appers the pushback is reasonably directed at the plaintiff’s argument that they have nothing against transgender people and are only concerned about the safety of their child. That is far, far different from prohibiting it.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"McAuliffe asked Foote whether it occurred to him that a transgender person might interpret the pink XX wristbands as an attempt to invalidate their existence."

Sounds like the judge definitely needs to recuse himself, if he doesn't understand the difference between believing someone can be characterized as a boy, and "invalidating their existence."

And in any event, it doesn't matter. Per Tinker "In order for the State in the person of school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, it must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint."

[TwelveInchPianist]

*assuming arguendo that Tinker applies to parents.

[Josh R]

What the judge said was "You seem to go out of your way to suggest there’s no such thing as a trans girl." He may be right or wrong on that, but he is allowed to ask whether insisting on calling her a boy means that Foote believes being trans is not a trait.

I agree the school is very likely to lose.

[TwelveInchPianist]

” but he is allowed to ask whether insisting on calling her a boy means that Foote believes being trans is not a trait.”

1. Why does it matter what Foote believes?
2. How does characterizing a biological boy as a boy suggest that Foote doesn’t believe that there are biological boys who self-identify as girls? His comments seem to indicate that he harbors some sort of quasi-religious belief about gender that should disqualify him from the case.

“I agree the school is very likely to lose.”

Actually it could be that the judge is bound by the idiotic ruling in the two-genders case.

[Josh R]

1. It goes to whether Foote is disrespecting the trans girl enough to trigger substantial disruption (assuming Tinker appplies).

2. As I see it, The judge did not imply that Foote doesn't believe there are boys who self-identify as girls. Rather, the judge thinks Foote may believe that being trans is either mutable behavior or a delusion, thus disrespecting the trans girl.

I don't think Tinker applies to the parents, so the two-genders case is inapposite.

[TwelveInchPianist]

" It goes to whether Foote is disrespecting the trans girl enough to trigger substantial disruption (assuming Tinker applies)."

What does what he believes have to do with the level of disruption he created (as opposed to what he said)? And in any event, as I pointed out upthread, the discomfort associated with a belief that you disagree with doesn't count as disruption.

[Josh R]

Of course discomfort is not enough. The question is whether Foote's XX watch might lead to disruption, and that hinges on how others would react to Foote's watch. If Foote were to admit he believes that being trans is ether mutable or a delusion, that would be evidence in support of a disruptive reaction.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"That does not detract from my point that it is unwise for a litigant to piss off the judge who sits as finder of fact in your lawsuit."

If the factfinder is pissed off by a litigant's failure to use ideologically loaded terminology that favors the other party's position in the dispute, the factfinder shouldn't be factfinding.

[Josh R]

The judge wasn't pissed off by Foote's language. The original misunderstanding that the judge prohibited the language or admonished Foote led to not guilty's incorrect assumption.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Agreed, but judges insisting on newspeak has been an issue in other cases, and it should get the judge disqualified.

[Josh R]

What other cases?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Here

What I’m saying is you must refer to them as “transgender females” rather than as “males.” Again, that’s the more accurate terminology, and I think that it fully protects your client’s legitimate interests. Referring to these individuals as “transgender females” is consistent with science, common practice and perhaps human decency.
To refer to them as “males,” period, is not accurate, certainly not as accurate, and I think it’s needlessly provocative; and, for me, civility is a very important value, especially in litigation.

Of course, "males" and "transgender females" are equally accurate, but this judge appears to have a quasi-religious belief about the nature of reality that makes him unqualified to judge the case.

[not guilty]

I find it interesting that you link to a defense document in opposition to the Connecticut plaintiffs' motion to recuse.

The docket sheet contains the trial judge's ruling on the motion:

ORDER denying 103 Motion to Transfer/Disqualify/Recuse Judge. Plaintiffs have moved for my recusal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 455(a) because during a telephone conference I informed plaintiffs' counsel that I wanted them to refrain from continuing to refer to the transgender females involved in this case as "males." In calling on plaintiffs' counsel to accept that limitation going forward, I explained that for plaintiffs' counsel to continue to call these transgender youth "males" would be needlessly provocative, and inconsistent with norms of civility in judicial proceedings, which I want to be careful to maintain. As I further explained, for plaintiffs' counsel to refer to these young people as "transgender females" in accordance with their gender identity would entail no concession whatsoever relating to the merits of the case; plaintiffs' counsel would still be able to refer to them as "biologically male" with "male bodies." They just couldn't refer to them as "males, period." Plaintiffs assert that as a result of my statement the public might reasonably believe that I am partial or biased. Plaintiffs have clarified that what troubles them in particular is my statement that for plaintiffs' counsel to refer to the transgender students involved in this case as "transgender females" rather than "males" would be consistent with "science." Plaintiffs argue that "the public might reasonably conclude that the Court has bias in [this] case where [plaintiffs'] arguments, claims, and expert testimony are based on the assertion that athletes born male remain male as a matter of scientific fact no matter their gender identity, and that as a result those athletes have 'an unfair competitive advantage to competition' in women's and girls' sports." ECF No. 199, at 3-4. I do not agree that the public might reasonably construe my reference to "science" as a comment on the merits of the issue whether transgender athletes have an unfair competitive advantage in girls' sports. In the telephone conference, I stated that referring to the transgender youth involved in this case as "transgender females" would be consistent with "science, common practice, and perhaps human decency." That statement does not reflect a preconceived conclusion on the issue of unfair competitive advantage presented by this case. In fact, and as I think objective members of the public would readily understand, the "science" I referred to is not the science relating to the issue of unfair competitive advantage but the science that tells us calling transgender girls "males" can cause significant mental and emotional distress. The insight provided by this science has led to a "common practice" of referring to transgender persons by their gender identity, which is viewed by many as a matter of "human decency." Thus, as I said, referring to these transgender youth as "transgender females" would be consistent with "science, common practice, and perhaps human decency." By referring to science in this way, in this context, and for this purpose, I did not state or imply anything about whether the transgender youth in this case do or do not enjoy an unfair competitive advantage when they compete in girls' track. To the extent plaintiffs' counsel argue that they must be able to refer to the transgender girls in this case as "males, period" in order to fulfill their responsibilities as zealous advocates, and that they have an absolute Constitutional right to do so, the argument is unpersuasive. The issue of unfair competitive advantage can be fully and fairly litigated consistent with professional ethics and constitutional protections without referring to the transgender females involved in this case as "males, period." I think objective members of the public would agree. I also think objective members of the public would understand that just because I want plaintiffs' counsel to avoid needlessly calling the transgender females in this case "males, period" does not mean I am partial or biased with regard to any issue in the case. Accordingly, the motion is hereby denied. Signed by Judge Robert N. Chatigny on 6/16/20. (Chatigny, Robert) (Entered: 06/16/2020)

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16835048/soule-v-connecticut-association-of-schools-inc/?page=1

That litigation does not support your assertion upthread, "but judges insisting on newspeak has been an issue in other cases, and it should get the judge disqualified."

[Lennyk78]

This is why transgenders belong in mental hospitals, locked away from the rest of us. Then concerns about what bathroom they use or sports team they play on would be irrelevant.

[Joe_dallas]

While I disagree with putting Transgenders in mental hospitals since it is very unlikely to be benefical to their treatment, at the least it should be recognized that transgenderism is a form of mental illness and the treatment of the mental illness should take that properly into account.

[bernard11]

it should be recognized that transgenderism is a form of mental illness and the treatment of the mental illness should take that properly into account.

I thought this blog was oriented towards discussions of law, not psychiatry.

Of course given all the omniscient folks commenting here I should shouldn't be surprised at comments like Joe's.

[Joe_dallas]

Bernard - Getting the facts correct is an integral part of getting the law correct.

Its also worth noting how frequently Prelogar mispresented the medical science in her briefs in the Skrmetti case

[TwelveInchPianist]

"The headline presents a novel use of the verb “trespassed.” I hope that it doesn’t catch on."

Like it or dislike it, it's not novel and quite common.

[John F. Carr]

The Supreme Court has requested a response to the student's cert petition in the "two genders" shirt case. We may have some clarification or rewriting of school free speech law next year. Case 24-410.

[not guilty]

Which lawsuit do you refer to, Mr. Carr? SCOTUS has scheduled oral argument for December 4 in a case where the question presented is:

Whether Tennessee Senate Bill 1 (SB1), which prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity,” Tenn. Code Ann. § 68-33-103(a)(1), violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-477/288875/20231106135238432_U.S.%20v.%20Skrmetti%20-%20Pet.pdf

The trial court there issued a preliminary injunction, reasoning that a classification which discriminates based on transgender statutes requires intermediate scrutiny. L.W. v. Skrmetti, 679 F. Supp. 3d 668 (M.D. Tenn. 2023). The Sixth Circuit reversed, applying rational basis analysis. 83 F.4th 460 (6th Cir. 2023).

[John F. Carr]

The case I referred to (Supreme Court docket 24-410) is about a student in Massachusetts who got in trouble for wearing a shirt reading "there are two genders". The First Circuit sided with the school. It's not about medical procedures which involve different legal issues.

I don't link directly to the Supreme Court docket because I found the backslashes in the link confuse Reason's commenting software.

[Magister]

https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/24-410.html

[not guilty]

Thank you for the clarification.

[not guilty]

The First Circuit decision is reported as L.M. v. Town of Middleborough, 103 F.4th 854 (1st Cir. 2024). I agree that the case is certworthy based on Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969).

I hope that SCOTUS does not use this as a vehicle to curtail student speech under Tinker.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The brief notes:

"The First Circuit’s novel legal standard and analysis conflicts with this Court’s decisions and those of ten other circuits in a multitude of ways."

Error correction aside, how is it cert worthy? Is there a dispute in the circuits?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Um, the part of the brief you quoted says there is.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The Supreme Court can just say that one court made a mistake. They did that in the past -- they used a per curiam to note the law was clear & the one circuit made a blatant mistake. The quote suggests the SCOTUS rule is obvious & the circuit made a blatant mistake.

A dispute among the circuits here means a reasonable disagreement between them regarding the law.

[TwelveInchPianist]

What you're talking about is called a GVR (Grant-Vacate-Remand) which still involves a cert grant.

But in the cert petition here, they are arguing that the 1CA ruling creates or deepens several splits.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Okay. The quote itself doesn't necessarily say that. And, I said "other than" error correction, so didn't deny it would be cert too.

[not guilty]

The culture warriors on the Court cannot be pleased with the result here. Multiple justices have shown special solicitude for religiously motivated speech.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"I hope that SCOTUS does not use this as a vehicle to curtail student speech under Tinker."

Hopefully they'll use it to clarify that Tinker doesn't create a Heckler's veto, but applies to disturbances by the students engaging in the expressive conduct.

[David Nieporent]

That would not be "clarifying" Tinker; that would be overruling it. The entire point of Tinker is to create a heckler's veto. Holding that students who create disturbances could be punished is banal and would've broken no legal ground at all; of course they could be.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

"In my opinion, Clarence Thomas is a House Negro" - not guilty

[not guilty]

Do you fancy that you have a point, JHBHBE?

[Commenter_XY]

You actually wrote that, NG?

[not guilty]

Indeed I did. Jesus cautioned against casting pearls before swine, but sometimes shooting fish in a barrel on these comment threads is too tempting to resist.

Point of clarification. I have previously referred to Clarence Thomas as a House Negro. I pointed out earlier today that that metaphor is an expression of my opinion.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

That new “Thank you, Dr. Fauci” documentary brings the receipts.

Hard. Powerful. Very Powerful.

Fauci. Treason. Riker’s Island. Solitary confinement. Justice.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

I continue to find the term "woke" as used dismissively ("woke" traditionally had some more positive implications) a tad ridiculous. It comes off as more troll and stupid vibe than anything else.

Anyways. This is a helpful summary. Hegsweth's criticism of women in the military should be offensive to the several women vets -- of both parties -- in Congress. Targeting trans people seems the most likely in the current environment to have staying power.

https://verdict.justia.com/2024/11/25/unwoking-the-military

[not guilty]

As I once heard a Sunday School teacher explain, "P.C." may as well stand for plain courtesy.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Did that courtesy include using racial slurs for judges you don’t like?

[not guilty]

I have referred to Clarence Thomas as “Uncle Thomas” and as a “House Negro.” That is not commentary about his being black; it is about his behavior regarding blackness.

Clarence Thomas made his bones as a black Republican critic of affirmative action, despite having benefited therefrom at Holy Cross and at Yale Law School. He served in two sinecures during the Reagan Administration and he received two judicial appointments for which he was not remotely qualified. But when his SCOTUS nomination was in jeopardy, he suddenly played hell out of the race card. Do you remember “This is a high tech lynching for uppity black folks”?

There is quite a difference between my saying that Clarence Thomas was never qualified to carry Thurgood Marshall’s briefcase and saying that he was never fit to shine Mr. Marshall’s shoes. There is a difference between a House Negro and a “nigger.” Mr. Thomas is a despicable opportunist, topside to bottom — a quisling in the struggle for equal opportunity.

[Michael P]

In short, you only use racial slurs that you approve of.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I have referred to Clarence Thomas as “Uncle Thomas” and as a “House Negro.”

Do you feel that that is either politically correct or plain courtesy?

[not guilty]

I consider it appropriate under the circumstances. The man is so shameless a race hustler that he would make Jesse Jackson blush.

[Michael P]

Up-thread you asked for an example of you lying. This comment is an easy example.

[not guilty]

Michael P, what false statement of fact (from my perspective), do you claim that I have made? My characterizing Clarence Thomas as an Uncle Tom and a House Negro are statements of opinion, the factual basis for which I have identified.

If the Senate in 1991 had defeated then-Judge Thomas's nomination for SCOTUS, he would still have held a lifetime appointment on the United States Court of Appeals, as did Clement Haynesworth and Robert Bork. Nice work if you can get it! Invoking the spectre of "lynching" there was simply outrageous.

If in the next life Clarence Thomas encounters Emmitt Till, James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and Leo Frank, I hope they beat the stuffing out of him every day and twice on Sunday for trivializing the horror of actual lynchings.

[Michael P]

I'm still waiting for substance rather than namecalling from you.

Clarence Thomas is not a race hustler, and Jesse Jackson would love a race hustler as strident as you. I mean, as strident as you describe.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

"If Thomas didn't want me to call him a House Negro, then he shouldn't be acting like a House Negro! ... Unless he was on the Democrat Plantation, then it would racist to call any of our House Negro's House Negro's!

[not guilty]

In my opinion, Clarence Thomas is a House Negro, just as much as Stephen Wallace was on the Candyland Plantation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZsUhJpmMjo

George H. W. Bush's pronouncement in 1991 that then-Judge Thomas was the "best qualified at this time" for nomination to SCOTUS is the most egregious lie that any American president has told in my lifetime -- moreso that "I'm not a crook", moreso that "We did not trade arms for hostages", moreso than "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

[Commenter_XY]

NG, Justice Thomas is a flawed human being, as all of us are flawed human beings. For example, it is a second marriage. The triumph of hope over experience (as you know). Justice Thomas overcame great obstacles in life (with help) to achieve the level of success that he has enjoyed. His story is compelling. He in an authentic American hero.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"He in an authentic American hero."

Nah, he's trash just like you.

[Sarcastr0]

I don’t follow ng all the way on Thomas a lie isn’t just something you think is wrong and bad.

[Michael P]

Do you believe there are colorable facts to call Clarence Thomas a race hustler, or to allege that any level of race hustling would make Jesse Jackson blush, or are you just doing your usual shtick of criticizing anyone to the right because you are constitutionally averse to criticizing anyone on the left?

[Sarcastr0]

I think you need to do a lot more work on the distinction between awful opinion and lie.

I've criticized ng about his cringey namecalling before, and I'll do it again. It's one of the things that seperates me and tools like you.

[TwelveInchPianist]

" cringey namecalling"

Cringey? Not racist or bigoted?

[Joe_dallas]

not guilty 2 hours ago
Flag Comment
Mute User
"I have referred to Clarence Thomas as “Uncle Thomas” and as a “House Negro.” That is not commentary about his being black; it is about his behavior regarding blackness."

In other words - CT departure from your version of the plantation is not something a racist should approve of

[Harvey Mosley]

So you're saying he was a DEI hire.

[Michael P]

Or calling people loose cannons or bottle blondies?

He is surely "not guilty" of applying plain courtesy.

[not guilty]

It is much easier to respond to snark than to substance, isn't it, Michael P.

[Michael P]

Do you consider your vacuous rationalizing above of your use of racial slurs to be "substance"?

[not guilty]

The substance is my criticism on the merits of Clarence Thomas and Pam Blondi, among others.

[Mr. Bumble]

You're facing a long four years if you don't stroke out first.

[Michael P]

There's no real substance there, just a lot of namecalling. For example, you disparaged Thomas's service as the chairman of the EEOC as a "sinecure", even though according to Wikipedia:

During Thomas's tenure, he was credited with improving the efficiency of the EEOC. Settlement award amounts to victims of discrimination tripled, while the number of suits filed decreased.

Democrats have been trotting out the same playbook against Thomas for more than 30 years, and it's still stupid and racist.

[Mr. Bumble]

Racists gotta be racist.

[Joe_dallas]

yet you havent provided anything addressing the merits - only racist slurs

[David Nieporent]

I do not agree with NG's name-calling wrt Thomas either in tone or substance. (Even if I agreed, I would find it juvenile and utterly unhelpful to say.) As for criticism of Thomas as a justice: like virtually every justice (even Alito and Sotomayor) there are votes and opinions of his that I agree with and ones I disagree with.

My criticism of Thomas is more about his lack of understanding of the role of judges. He too often approaches his job as though he were writing law review articles and thus free to come up with whatever creative and half-formed ideas that pop into his head. But the job of a judge is to be judicial, which means respecting and working with precedent. Stare decisis isn't just a slogan; it's an important part of being a judge. Thomas just doesn't GAF about things like settled expectations. And that's true not only with respect to constitutional interpretation, but statutory interpretation as well.

(Note that this doesn't even make him an effective judge, let alone a good one. He rarely can build 5 votes for his wacky ideas, which makes them nothing more than verbal masturbation.)

[Joe_dallas]

Stare decisis is an important legal principle - though it should be used appropriately to follow the law, not used as an opportunity to deviate from the law.

Both Kelo and Grutter were decided correctly based on precedent, but completely wrong based on the plain meaning of 5A and 14A, respectively.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

His value to the cause seems more to be a mentor to a range of conservative officeholders & lower court judges.

[Sarcastr0]

Stare decisis is an important legal principle – though it should be used appropriately to follow the law, not used as an opportunity to deviate from the law.

This is not a principle; this is just 'when I like it it's good, when I don't it's bad.'

[David Nieporent]

Stare decisis is an important legal principle – though it should be used appropriately to follow the law, not used as an opportunity to deviate from the law.

Not only is that not right, but (to steal from Pauli) it isn't even wrong. It's just a confused misunderstanding of the underlying concepts. Stare decisis by definition is about following precedent, not some notion about "the law." If you only follow precedent when you agree with it, then that's not stare decisis.

[Roger S]

You have no actual criticism of Justice Thomas's 30+ years work on the court.

[Joe_dallas]

His criticism is that Thomas hasnt voted / written opinions in a manner consistent with the Democrats belief of how a member of the plantation should rule on the SC

[Ed Grinberg]

"Woke" means leftist / Marxist (and not just "cultural Marxist" either, see Kamala Harris's whole "equity" initiative). "Politically correct" means preventing people from saying anything contrary to the (leftist) "Party line."
https://www.thefp.com/p/judges-ruin-high-school-debate-tournaments
https://www.thefp.com/p/personal-tweets-lose-high-school-debates

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, that's the scam: The left declares that simply agreeing with them is simple politeness, and then demands that people stop obnoxiously disagreeing with them.

[Sarcastr0]

Courtesy isn't transactional or making an argument; it's fucking tragic you can't see that.

You insist on calling people what they don't want to be called, and so so performatively.
And then YOU get pissed when people use terms like undocumented.

Everything is a fight with you; it doesn't need to be.

[Brett Bellmore]

You insist that it's impolite to call people what they are if they demand that you lie about what they are. You're never getting me to agree with that.

What's impolite is demanding that other people humor your own delusions.

[Frank Drackman]

OK, I'm a native Atlantan (Lot of Natives in Atlanta) but I can't hear "PC" without thinking of the Varsity, the worlds largest drive in, on North Avenue in Midtown, (Like the Roman Empire it's expanded, but I only consider the original location to be the Varsity)
I'd tell you what it stands for, but then I'd have to kill you (politely, I'm a Southerner)

Frank "Walk 3 MK Dogs, and FO"

[Noscitur a sociis]

I continue to find the term “woke” as used dismissively (“woke” traditionally had some more positive implications) a tad ridiculous. It comes off as more troll and stupid vibe than anything else.

What would you like us to call it?

[Ed Grinberg]

"Please just fucking tell me what term I am allowed to use for the sweeping social and political changes you demand! You don't get to insist that no one talks about your political project..." (source)

[Sarcastr0]

You linked to yet another eugenicist, Ed.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Freddie deBoer, one of America’s most prominent communist thinkers, is a eugenicist?

Get ahold of yourself dude.

[Michael P]

Some might say that red-pilled Sarcastr0 is making the based observation that communist has deep affinity to eugenics, but I don’t think he put that much thought into it.

The closest I can find to anything eugenics-related in deBoer’s positions are (a) an essay or something he wrote titled “Perhaps Not Everything Is Eugenics” (although the substance is either behind his paywall or has disappeared) and that he believes (b) intelligence has a significant heritable component. But (b) is extremely well-supported in scientific literature, and most of those scientists are not what reasonable people call eugenicists, so I don’t think that is good grounds for the epithet.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah he’s know these days for his ‘intelligence is heritable and the government should make policies based on that.’

Not the only person to go from far left to post left reactionaryism.

[Michael P]

What specific pro-eugenics government policies does deBoer advocate on that basis? I saw him calling to get rid of “the cult of smart”, which on the surface sounds pretty anti-eugenics.

[David Nieporent]

I'm not sure FdB is a eugenicist, but is there some reason you think a communist can't be a eugenicist? What does a belief about the economic arrangement of society say one way or the other about eugenics?

[Noscitur a sociis]

Obviously there’s no law of physics that prevents someone from espousing both. But there aren’t many people in the U.S. today who support either, qhd the space where they intersect is pretty sparsely inhabited. So I thought it might be worth mentioning to give Sarcastr0 pause before reflexively dismissing him (especially since the linked article makes a pretty good point).

[Sarcastr0]

I’m not going to tilt at windmills, but woke is used more for inchoate anti-liberal polemics than to refer to anything precise.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2023/03/16/anti-woke-author-who-cant-define-woke-goes-viral/

[Noscitur a sociis]

Well, no. There is a concept that’s being referred to.

Unlike not guilty, I believe in being courteous, and so I’ll make reasonable efforts to use a different term if that’s preferred. But you do need to tell me what the term is!

[Sarcastr0]

My issue is not the charge of the word, it’s the lack of precision.

That allows a common two-step fallacy of ‘woke is like ridiculous thing A and also thing B is woke so thing B is ridiculous too.’
Which doesn’t work of woke is just ‘liberal social thing I don’t like.’

See also CRT (which has a definition by the right says that’s a lie) and DEI and fascism.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

https://teachnthrive.com/history-passages/u-s-passages/critical-race-theory-principles-why-is-it-controversial-to-teach/

[Sarcastr0]

From my understanding, merely talking about systematic racism writ large is not CRT.
CRT is a legal discipline, as practiced academically. It grew out of critical legal studies. (Will Baude did a deep dive on his old podcast)

But even taking the linked article at it's word, CRT was waived about as a lot more than just teaching systematic racism. It, like it's successor wokeness, was used to contain a whole constellation of strawmen and nutpicking and also normal stuff like teaching slavery.

It's main definition as used on here was red meat for the right about race. Shape could change depending on the needed function.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The term has been tossed around as a buzzword.

I think it addresses some important issues. It goes after systematic racism in certain ways. So, yes, it isn't just going after systematic racism. That can be done various ways.

Sometimes, there is somewhat of an overcorrection to the criticism & it is put out there as merely some complex academic discipline. Even some of the leading scholars behind the movement have used it in a looser sense.

So, for instance, CRT can influence high school curricula. It isn’t just something you will learn in college.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Don't let them put you in their stupid mind prisons. Next up you'll be calling that hairy ugly smelly man in a dress a "woman".l

[bernard11]

There is a concept that’s being referred to.

If you will describe the context, maybe we can come up with a better word, and the right can speak more precisely, rather than cast a random insult at anyone they disagree with.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Did you read the Freddie deBoer post that Ed Grinberg linked to?

That’s the concept I’m talking about.

Tell me what you want me to call it, and I’m happy to work with you.

[Noscitur a sociis]

woke is used more for inchoate anti-liberal polemics than to refer to anything precise.

You linked to yet another eugenicist, Ed

Do you need any help with those 10,000 spoons?

[JoeFromtheBronx]

I don't know what "it" is specifically.

The term from experience is loosely used to cover a whole lot of things people don't like, often in a trolly way.

The list of things considered "woke" -- to cite one person here -- does not seem very "Marxist" to me, for instance, though along with "communist" that term is tossed around rather loosely by some.

[Frank Drackman]

at least if Hedgesex had his way Senator Duckworth would still have legs...
I've got 2 daughters in the military, Marine Corpse and Air Farce (well semi military), both fighter pilots, both taller and stronger than the average Split-tail, but no way they could perform as well as even the most mediocre male infantryman.
OK, they're in better shape than 90% of today's 18-22 Males, that's a different topic.
Even the Israeli's, who know a thing or two about wah, don't have chicks in the infantry

Frank

[hobie]

Currently, Jewish women participate as combat helicopter/fighter pilots and also in the infantry currently in Gaza, Frankie.

But it looks like if Hegsweth/Heritage get their way, your girls will be back in the barracks. I mean, why train them to fly combat aircraft when they won't be able to use them? And military healthcare? Best hope no Mexican rapists gets 'em pregnant over the next four years

[Frank Drackman]

You don’t read so good Hay-Seed? I don’t have a problem with Vaginas in Cockpits (See what I did there? Vaginas in Cockpits?)
Since the closest you’ve been to any Army is trying to shakedown the Salvation Army Bell Ringer, I’ll explain it to you with small words.
Yes, the IDF has started having some Bee-otches in Infantry Units (as Drivers (that’s going to work out well), Secretaries, Cooks) just like the US has done for the last 30 years, you see, Hay-Seed, Infantry Battalions aren’t 100% Cavemen with Rifles, they need Geeks like me to treat their ow-ies, Clerks to keep their personnel records straight, cooks to keep them fed,
1: since my daughters aren’t idiots (Aeronautical Engineering Degrees from that Hay-seed Georgia Tech*) they use Birth Control,
2: there’s more abortions (thank Jehovah) after Dobbs, than before, amazingly, even more disproportionately killing the Black/Brown babies you supposedly care so much about,
and Mexican Rapists? you mean like the one who murdered/raped “Lincoln Riley”?? unlike Laken, my daughters go everywhere Armed, any potential Mexican Rapist will be a dead potential Mexican Rapist
* I couldn't get in even as a "Legacy", I didn't want to go there anyway, bunch of Nerds with their pocket protectors and Slide Rules,
Frank

[bernard11]

* I couldn’t get in even as a “Legacy”, I didn’t want to go there anyway, bunch of Nerds with their pocket protectors and Slide Rules,
Frank

I had - still have - some friends who went there. They mostly rather liked the grapes.

[Frank Drackman]

one of the unusual schools in that women are still in the minority, my daughters had to beat them away with sticks (the other women, the guys they didn't mind) Encouraged them to go Lesbo, but they like the big manly type (so no Tech Nerds need apply)

Frank

[Kazinski]

A study on DEI from Rutgers and NCRI:

"The study, conducted by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) in collaboration with Rutgers University, found that certain DEI practices could induce hostility, increase authoritarian tendencies, and foster agreement with extreme rhetoric."

The NCRI study investigated the psychological effects of DEI pedagogy, specifically training programs that draw heavily from texts like Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist and Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. The findings were unsettling, though perhaps not surprising to longstanding opponents of such programs. Through carefully controlled experiments, the researchers demonstrated that exposure to anti-oppressive (i.e., anti-racist) rhetoric—common in many DEI initiatives—consistently amplified perceptions of bias where none existed."

https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/why-was-this-groundbreaking-study

Woke should be dismissed.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, check-the-box training programs are crap. This is well known, but organizations like how easy it is.

That's not the same as 'woke should be dismissed' whatever that lame-ass slogan is supposed to mean.

[Mr. Bumble]

Here's hoping that President Trump will eschew any pomp and circumstance on January 20, 2025 and immediately get down to the business of cleaning the Augean stables that our Federal government has become.
No parades or balls but just a flurry of actions to begin the cleanup.

[Martinned2]

Yes, that definitely sounds like Donald Trump who [checks notes] famously doesn't care for pomp and circumstance.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Can you point to even a single thing Donald Trump has done in his nearly 80 years on this planet that makes you think there’s any conceivable universe where that happens?

[Frank Drackman]

his first term 2017-2021 comes to mind

[Mr. Bumble]

Well, he loves to poke his opponents in the eye with a stick and there is a first time for everything. He's been there and done that once along with being impeached twice (the second time after he left office), surviving two assassination attempts, being only the second person to win non consecutive terms, having his opponent switched out late in the game and faced multiple bogus legal actions; so why not?
Tell the DC swamp to go fuck themselves and have a swearing in at Mar-a-Lago with Judge Cannon administering the oath and then immediately begin firing people and signing EOs.

[Noscitur a sociis]

so why not?

Again, you realize this is Donald Trump you’re talking about, right?

[Mr. Bumble]

Of course I do and I don't expect it to happen. Only think it would be the ultimate "fuck you" to him many critics.

[hobie]

And the truth shall set you free! MAGA's unstated raison d'etre:

"Of course I do and I don’t expect it to happen. Only think it would be the ultimate “fuck you” to him many critics."

[Brett Bellmore]

I do believe he should probably whip out a long list of names right at the inauguration, and fire them on the spot. He should have done that the first time around, it would have saved him a lot of trouble later.

[not guilty]

Uh, Trump tried that with Andrew McCabe. It didn't work out so well.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Trump was blind to the evil and vileness of the Den of Sarcastr0's in DC.

No longer.

[Brett Bellmore]

I don't recall McCabe being fired at the inauguration; Are you sure about that?

[Commenter_XY]

He wasn't.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Do you think McCabe’s wrongful termination case would have been stronger or weaker if he had been?

[Brett Bellmore]

I don't think he'd have had a wrongful termination case if he'd simply been fired on inauguration day by the incoming President. "Change of administration" isn't a wrongful cause for firing somebody in his position.

As it is, he didn't win his wrongful termination suit, all that happened is that a new administration took office and settled with him for political reasons.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

For those interested in reading about the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Iran, Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) and others put together a graphic account with that name that I found helpful.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199469832-woman-life-freedom

[Ed Grinberg]

flashback:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2011/11/why_obama_betrayed_the_iranian_people.html

[Sarcastr0]

This seems to argue the State Department was suborned by the Iranian regime, via Soros money. Which is mighty stupid.

Do you think Obama should have invaded Iran?

[Michael P]

The State Department was, in fact, suborned by the Iranian regime, via Soros money.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/iran-spy-ring-robert-malley-lee-smith

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/george-soros-funneled-more-than-50m-to-iran-sympathizer-groups-linked-to-robert-malley/ar-AA1lfMNC

[Sarcastr0]

Neither of those are about policy.

Look up what suborned means. You have a lot of work to do.

[Michael P]

"Suborned" does not imply policy, you goof. No new goalposts!

But I guess your extremely weak comment here means you don't have any response at all to the half-dozen or so other places I owned you this morning.

[Sarcastr0]

Suborned means the State Department is acting as an agent of Iran, not the US.

You specifically called it out with respect to Biden's policy during the student protests in Iran.

Did you lose the thread of your own argument?

But I guess your extremely weak comment here means you don’t have any response at all to the half-dozen or so other places I owned you this morning.
If you have to insist you're a big winner...

[Michael P]

Biden's policy during the student protests in Iran? The Pam Geller article was about Obama's stance towards Iran. You are the one who lost the thread of the argument. And you never rebutted Geller's arguments about the State Department being suborned, you just called it a stupid idea, probably because you were projecting again.

For another example of an Iranian agent influencing Obama, see Robert Malley's friend Vali Nasr: https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/anews/who-is-who/who-is-vali-nasr-former-us-state-dept-advisor-on-middle-east-policy/

Or maybe you think it was official Obama/Kerry policy to not faithfully execute the law? https://www.iranintl.com/en/202405231235

[Frank Drackman]

More female babies will be aborted in the US today than in Ear-ron in the last 45 years

[Frank Drackman]

OK, My bad, I pulled that out of my Rectum without checking first (the Fact, not my Rectum)
Turns out, even with restrictions, there are 73,000 Abortions/year in Ear-Ron, when adjusted for Population, not much below the US.
And as Ear-Ron’s Abortion restrictions are administered at the National level, you could say that a woman in Terror-Anne has more of a right to kill her unborn baby than a woman in Miami.

Frank

[Michael P]

What thinking motivates the Taliban to bomb a mosque?

https://apnews.com/article/pakistan-arrest-peshawar-suicide-bombing-bc056da2cd2c598b9bf781815a8ea597

[Moderation4ever]

If you have been keeping up you will have seen that part of what is happening in the Middle East is an intra-faith conflict. Rival Islamic factions fighting each other for dominance. Christianity had this with the Protestant reformation, which was itself at times very violent. Killing other in the name of your faith is an old story.

[Brett Bellmore]

Most people don't understand that the Middle Eastern genocide of Jews is essentially complete outside of Israel, and they're in the final mopping up stages of their genocide against Christians. So there's hardly anybody BUT Muslims for Muslims to attack in most of the Middle East.

[Sarcastr0]

When did this happen?

[Frank Drackman]

Duh, the last 50 years

[Brett Bellmore]

When you weren't looking, apparently.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think you prove genocide just with 'number went down.' But if you do, I have bad news about Israel.

I'm also interested with your thinking of when the Islamic genocide of Christians happened.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's not yet finished, but, like I said, it's in the mopping up phase.

Persecution of Christians by the Islamic State

"The depopulation of Christians from the Middle East by the Islamic State as well as other organisations and governments has been formally recognised as an ongoing genocide by the United States, European Union, and United Kingdom. Christians remain the most persecuted religious group in the Middle East, and Christians in Iraq are “close to extinction”.[8][9][10] According to estimates by the US State Department, the number of Christians in Iraq has fallen from 1.2 million 2011 to 120,000 in 2024, and the number in Syria from 1.5 million to 300,000, falls driven by persecution by Islamic terrorists."

The reason that "Christians remain the most persecuted religious group in the Middle East" is that there essentially aren't any Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel anymore.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm not defending the islamic state by any means, but you weren't talkign about IS:

"the Middle Eastern genocide of Jews is essentially complete outside of Israel, and they’re in the final mopping up stages of their genocide against Christians."

That is vastly broader about the actor, and the action.

Don't make accusations you need to backpedal on.

[Moderation4ever]

Following the formation of the State of Israel many Arab Middle East countries forcibly expelled their Jewish populations. Many of these Jews then resettled in Israel, along with many displaced European Jews following WWII. Not really a genocide, but clearly Jews were not welcome in Arab countries. Again, some of this is similar to the time leading up to the Protestant Reformation when Jews would find themselves the first target before Christian sects would go again one another. Moslems did not more far north into Europe, but were forcibly expelled from Catholic Spain.

[Brett Bellmore]

UN definition of 'genocide'

I believe conditions were made sufficiently bad in most of the Middle East to meet this definition. FYI: My neighbors back in Michigan were Christian refugees from Jordan.

[Sarcastr0]

This seems concerning as applied to Israel and Gaza, no?

[Noscitur a sociis]

Not really, no.

[Sarcastr0]

If Brett wants to argue purely based on population change, that overbreadth cuts both ways.

[Noscitur a sociis]

What, pray tell, are you talking about? Jews were almost entirely expelled from most countries in the Middle East: non-Jews have not been expelled from Gaza (although Jews certainly were when Israel ended its occupation).

[Sarcastr0]

Brett's not talking about expulsion, just pure population numbers.

And the population of Palestinians in Gaza has fallen precipitously.

Yes, it's a dumb argument. That's my point.

[Mr. Bumble]

"Moslems did not more far north into Europe, but were forcibly expelled from Catholic Spain."
You mean the Muslims who invaded and subjugated Catholic Spain?

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

It's the Jews "accidently" bombing the remaining churches.

FYI

[Michael P]

And now for something completely different: international legal action over an 836-pound emerald estimated to be worth over a billion dollars, alleged to have been mined illegally and smuggled out of Brazil in 2001.

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/bahia-emerald-brazil-us-lawsuit-b2652314.html

[John F. Carr]

I read a story about that and it appeared the government had a technique to invert the burden of proof. Usually if I have something the burden is on a claimant to prove superior title. Brazil asserted a need to have the emerald for evidence based on a lesser standard of proof. Essentially, an international search warrant. Once the emerald is in Brazil it's never coming back unless the former American owner proves legitimate title to Brazil's satisfaction.

[Michael P]

For a reminder of which party has insight and how badly the media cover politics, let's go back in time just 13 months.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/republicans-float-conspiracy-theory-biden-wont-ballot-rcna121467

And then step forward to four months ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/technology/conspiracy-theories-biden-replacement.html

[ThePublius]

Anything that goes counter to the Democrat/progressive agenda is characterized in the mainstream media as a "conspiracy theory," to discredit it.

[Moderation4ever]

I am watching new Shogun Miniseries and I am very impressed. The more Japanese centered approach is very interesting. Same story told differently from the book and the original miniseries. Can anyone make a suggestion for a Japanese history book that would cover the feudal period of Japan? I would like to learn a little more of the actual history.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

The Book of Five Rings is a great book. Written around 1650.

[Swede425]

Poor Kamala. She's gonna need a little time off, ok guys?
She needs to work on her new strategy for winning in 2028 when she actually has to win a primary.
Of course, Dementia "Sharp As A Tack" Joe has been off for years.
And I don't think Jill is interested in running the country herself now that they threw her, I mean her husband, out of office.
Autopilot seems dangerous because the deep state really seems to want to go to war before President Stage Wanderer retires to nothingness. So, a dangerous couple of months perhaps.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Scott Alexander noted some time ago that,

There is an ancient Sufi saying beloved of the Buddha, which like a surprising number of ancient Sufi sayings beloved of the Buddha, originates from a book of preachy Victorian poetry. It goes:

Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates; At the first gate, ask yourself, is is true? At the second gate ask, is it necessary? At the third gate ask, is it kind?

He asked his commenters to try to hit at least two of those three.

Do you think your comment hits any?

[Swede425]

To be honest, I don't really think of you or Scott Alexander before I post anything on an open thread.
Sorry if that hurts your feelings.
But, fair warning, I'm going to continue not taking either of you into account before I post anything.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Are you trying to Sarcastr0 him?

[Michael P]

I think he's encouraging civility. And as odd as some people may think it is for me to say, I applaud him (NaS) for doing so.

[Absaroka]

I concur.

[Mr. Bumble]

You might say he's fair and balanced.

[SRG2]

I've seen this attributed to Plato as well. But it seems to have been coined by Rumi, so far more recent than the Buddha, Plato, etc.

[hobie]

It always amuses me that the deplorables swell like toads when called a pejorative, yet here's old Swede dishing two in one go

[Swede425]

"Deplorables".
Is that you, Hilary?
The new hotness is "Garbage" people.
Try to keep up.

[hobie]

I didn't like it when MAGA/Trump called America and also Puerto Rico garbage. It's a rather cynical view to have of our nation

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Good thing that's not what happened.

Also,
https://globalpressjournal.com/americas/puerto-rico/trash-crisis-leaves-puerto-rico-brink/

[Michael P]

Hm. When would a comment, especially online, be necessary and kind but not true? In discouraging self-harm?

[Noscitur a sociis]

Alexander gave a generous construction:

Recognizing that nobody can be totally sure what is or isn’t true, if you want to say something that might not be true – anything controversial, speculative, or highly opinionated – then you had better make sure it is both kind and necessary. Kind, in that you don’t rush to insult people who disagree with you. Necessary in that it’s on topic, and not only contributes something to the discussion but contributes more to the discussion than it’s likely to take away through starting a fight.

Nobody can be kind all the time, but if you are going to be angry or sarcastic, what you say had better be both true and necessary. You had better be delivering a very well-deserved smackdown against someone who is uncontroversially and obviously wrong, in a way you can back up with universally agreed-upon statistics. I feel like I tried this here and though a lot of people disagreed with my tone, not one person accused me of getting the math wrong. That’s the standard I’m holding commenters to as well. And it had better be necessary, in that you are quashing a false opinion which is doing real damage and which is so persistent that you don’t think any more measured refutation would be effective.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Hard sell on these comment threads sometimes to ask for all three. For a few commenters, one is an uphill battle.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

How long after the Department of Education is dismantled before we see a rise in student outcomes?

I'm guessing it will take about 4 years for the benefit to ripple through the rest of the education system.

[hobie]

It will take awhile for the entire public school systems in the southern states to collapse

[Frank Drackman]

you been in Portugal too long, Hay-seed, the Pubic Screw-els in the South done been collapsed years ago, my Pubic High Screw-el, which was named after the Confederate President, was roughly 50% Black in 1980, now it's named after some Civil rights "Icon" and is 97% Black, Yay Progress!!!!

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

What’s the over/under on Cums-a-lot and the “2d Gentleman” Doug Jack-me-hoff’s Divorce filings?
Like with Vietnam, I’m thinking maybe a pretend peace for 6-12 months until they can “Divorce with Honor”, and don’t blame the guy, I’d stick with screwing Au Pairs, maybe with a Condom next time

Frank

[Swede425]

Well, now that he and Tim Walz have been catapulted into the limelight as paragons of Democrat masculinity, he'll be pulling a lot more tail.
Especially among the bald, celibate TikTok crazies.

[John F. Carr]

The Department of Justice has settled a claim that the office of the US Attorney for Alaska retaliated against a woman who reported misconduct by former judge Joshua Kindred. The claim includes a ritual denial of liability.

I understand the claimant to be the clerk he ate out under ambiguous circumstances not amounting to sexual assault under the law then in effect. The claim is against the Department of Justice where she later worked. After reporting misconduct she was denied a transfer away from Kincaid and not given the permanent job she expected. At least one of the more senior lawyers in the office also had an inappropriate relationship with the judge. The office likely took his side.

https://osc.gov/News/Pages/25-08-AUSA-Sexual-Misconduct-Settlement.aspx
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/alaska-us-attorney-defends-office-from-retaliation-claims

[John F. Carr]

That should read "The settlement includes a ritual denial of liability."

Once the dust settles this will make a good training module for HR departments. I count at least four distinct types of legal issues: direct harassment, retaliation, case assignment by the US Attorney to force a particular judge to recuse, and a possible need to retry several criminal cases. Most HR training modules I have met are wastes of time. This one could be a good watch.

Another HR training module I thought was good was about Foreign Corrupt Practices Act compliance. It concluded with a big player who got away with it. The lesson was the law is not enforced uniformly or fairly and you, humble servant of the giant machine, will be the one who gets crushed like a bug. Lesson understood. I am not too big to fail.

[John F. Carr]

Also from Bloomberg Law, RFK Jr. as Health Chief Excites Mass Tort Lawyers Eager to Sue.

[RFK, Jr.] was of counsel at injury law firm Morgan & Morgan, according to its website, and served as co-counsel with Wisner Baum in ongoing litigation over Gardasil, a vaccine for certain types of human papillomavirus.
At HHS, he would have the power to influence drug and medical device regulation, scrap a liability shield for pharmaceutical companies, or re-review the science behind products that are already on the market.
That would be welcome news for attorneys who believe the FDA is beholden to the companies it regulates and could create a path for litigation against different products.

This is the Gardasil case: In Re: Gardasil Products Liability Litigation 3:22-md-03036, (W.D.N.C.).

[Swede425]

Justin Trudeau dances like a teen girl.
Which is appropriate, since he goes to Taylor Swift concerts like he is one.
Too bad more of his followers didn't attend, but they were busy rioting in Montreal.

[Frank Drackman]

it's peoples like Trudeau the Colonists tarred and feathered and rode out of town on a rail (Like Dueling, should be revived), if they were lucky

[ThePublius]

Ezra Levant arrested and jailed in Toronto for doing nothing but filming a pro-Palestinian protest; while others filming were ignored, left alone.

Canada has gone completely leftists crazy.

I was arrested two hours ago, handcuffed, searched and jailed for “causing a disturbance”.

[Swede425]

Do they still have the Queen on their money? I don't remember.
I ask because the similarity between Canada and GB is remarkable, especially when compared to how they punish people who say bad things about their respective commie governments.
It's a good thing those batshit crazy leftists rioting in Montreal weren't Canadian truckers, or they would have felt the wrath of the commie regime.

[David Nieporent]

Canada may indeed be further left than I care for, and definitely further left than the U.S., but "Guy who was arrested says he didn't do anything wrong" isn't really strong proof of that.

[Swede425]

No, but the video is.
And, before you ask, look it up yourself.
I'm not your research assistant. You could use one, though.

[ThePublius]

David, you are pitiful. Did you watch the video? The guy did absolutely nothing wrong. He was filming the demonstration. Many others were, too. He was identified by the police as someone opposed to what the demonstrators were saying, and he was targeted for that reason, accused of creating a disturbance, and arrested and jailed. This is like Nazi Germany.

Why do you excuse it, or try to minimize it?

[bernard11]

This is like Nazi Germany.

No. It isn't.

[Bored Lawyer]

It may not be Nazi Germany. But it’s a wanna-be. Look at the posts here:

A keffiyeh-clad woman stands on the streets of Montreal giving the Nazi salute and belting out that “The Final Solution Is Coming Your Way.” Canadian authorities do nothing.

A terrorist who bombed a Paris synagogue and murdered four people, convicted by a French court, is hired by a public university as a professor. And Canadian authorities have made no efforts to extradite him.

Meanwhile, a Jew who peacefully films a protest is arrested.

“That’s Who We Are.” — PM Justin Trudeau.

How do you say Juden Raus in French-Canadian?

[Commenter_XY]

BL, it is happening again.

[Bored Lawyer]

There is one infuriating difference. Nazi German was run by Jew-haters with a Jew-hater agenda. They stated so openly.

The leftists operate more clandestinely. They let others do the dirty work, while mouthing pieties, and selectively enforcing the law. In Canada, people have been arrested for "misgendering" someone (calling a girl who thinks she's a boy a girl, or ripping a copy of the Koran.) But give the HItler salute and yell out that the "Final Solution Is Coming Your Way" and the authorities do nothing.

In that vein, see this article (about Great Britiain):
https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/the-illusion-of-jewish-free-speech-rights/

[Sarcastr0]

There is one infuriating difference. Nazi German was run by Jew-haters with a Jew-hater agenda. They stated so openly.

The leftists operate more clandestinely.

The left are crypto-Nazis???????

I never want you to complain when people call Trump Hitler again, if you're going to come in this ridiculously hot.

[SimonP]

A keffiyeh-clad woman [engages in free speech].

A [man accused of bombing] a Paris synagogue and [murdering] four people, convicted [in absentia] by a French court, [was] hired by a public university as a professor [prior to that conviction]. And Canadian authorities have made no [further] efforts to extradite him [having initially extradited him once before to stand trial, a trial after which the man (who has continuously maintained his innocence) was released and legally returned to Canada].

Meanwhile, a Jew who [claims he was merely] peacefully film[ing] a protest is arrested.

FTFY.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I’m not sure “they only started sheltering after he became fled from justice before his trial and got convicted” is the rousing defense you think it is.

[Bored Lawyer]

A keffiyeh-clad woman [engages in free speech].

Indeed. Now try burning a Koran in Canadian city street and compare what happens. Hint: It ain’t Skokie.

A [man accused of bombing] a Paris synagogue and [murdering] four people, convicted [in absentia] by a French court, [was] hired by a public university as a professor [prior to that conviction]. And Canadian authorities have made no [further] efforts to extradite him [having initially extradited him once before to stand trial, a trial after which the man (who has continuously maintained his innocence) was released and legally returned to Canada].

Ah yes, he maintains his innocence after he fled the jurisdiction. How convincing.
And the university has kept him on and scheduled him to teach an upcoming class. So the “we already hired him” defense is on thin ice.

Meanwhile, a Jew who [claims he was merely] peacefully film[ing] a protest is arrested.

Yes, those filthy Jews. Probably doctored the video showing that all he did was peacefully film, and then posted it to the internet to fool the world. What won't those Elders of Zion do?

[ThePublius]

Yes, it is.

[TwelveInchPianist]

The cop says he is being arrested for inciting the protestors by recording them.

[Bored Lawyer]

Glad you brought that up. As a contrast, consider this protestor in a recent Montreal protest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqlvxJspcn8
Wears keffiyeh which covers her face, gives the Nazi salute, and belts out “The Final Solution Is Coming Your Way.”

This is the face of the radical left. Let’s see if the fellow-travelers around here will defend her.

Meanwhile, while she apparently lost a coffee-chain franchise, thus far nothing from Canadian authorities. To quote the PM of Canada: “That’s who we are.” You can call for the Final Solution on the streets of a major city, nothing will happen to you. You can film it, and get arrested. Ain’t woke grand?

[Bored Lawyer]

And, further in the "That's who we are" category:

https://www.thejc.com/news/world/man-convicted-of-bombing-french-synagogue-to-teach-social-justice-at-canadian-university-t9w3qz4s

A man convicted by a French court of bombing a Paris synagogue and killing four has fled to Canada (for a second time) and is to be employed as a professor in a Canadian university.

[M L]

I watched 30 seconds of some video footage of this the other day and saw where Ezra was talking with the police chief about the law and the chief responded "I AM the law." Got a chuckle out of that.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Whose ready for Special Prosecutor Matt Gaetz?

[David Nieporent]

Well, not Aileen Cannon or anyone who accepts her ruling; according to her that would be unconstitutional.

[Mr. Bumble]

So no "Special Prosecutors" ever again?

[David Nieporent]

No special prosecutors from outside DOJ (e.g., Gaetz) if Cannon's ruling is valid. (Spoiler alert: it's not. It's tendentious garbage that ignores precedent and text. Also, even if it weren't, it wouldn't be binding on any other judge. (Indeed, it's not even binding on Cannon herself in another case either.) But one can't defend it and support the appointment of Gaetz.)

[Roger S]

The purpose of the prosecution was really just to sabotage Trump's campaign, and make life difficult for him. The same could be done to Democrats, until they all understand what a bad idea it is.

[tylertusta]

I would like to think that perhaps now Republicans, after being on the receiving end of back-to-back SCO investigations and seeing Durhams' fizzle, would see the folly of the enterprise and refrain.

But I doubt it. The norm has been set.

[Roger S]

Congress could pass laws abolishing special prosecutors and repealing the overbroad and obsolete laws that were used against Trump and his supporters. Funny, I do not hear any Democrats favoring that. Maybe they will after a few prosecutions.

[tylertusta]

I think the vindictiveness with which Democrats went after Trump et al has thoroughly poisoned the well.

[Bored Lawyer]

and repealing the overbroad and obsolete laws that were used against Trump and his supporters.

I have to disagree. The problem is not the laws per se, but their application. The NY laws that were used against Trump are perfectly reasonable on their face. The prosecution contorted them in a way that made a Rube Goldberg contraption look simple and straightforward. It’s the creative statute reading that’s the problem — and courts that go along with it. Due process is out the window when you have The-Next-Hitler to go after.
(To be fair, SCOTUS is partly to blame here in going along with creative readings of criminal statutes. United States v. O'Hagan, 521 U.S. 642 (1997) comes to mind.)

[hobie]

"overbroad and obsolete laws that were used against Trump"

Oh? Which federal statutes would those be?

[Bored Lawyer]

Gaetz found a more lucrative gig:

Matt Gaetz is now giving pep talks and holiday wishes on Cameo
The former Florida congressman began selling personalized video messages on the platform just a day after withdrawing from consideration as Trump's attorney general.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/matt-gaetz-on-cameo-platform-rcna181565

Franz Kafka is jealous of the 21st century.

[hobie]

Heh. Is that the same service George Santos went on to earn some spending money after he was drummed out?

[Z Crazy]

Science says sex is merely a state of mind, with no relation to the structure of human physical organs like cocks and tits and pussies.

What's the point of sex-segregated anything. It doesn't make sense anymore!

[Krayt]

Does the "male" gaze have any meaning anymore?

[Roger S]

So boys can dress up as girls and humiliate them in sports competition.

[Kazinski]

That kind of leaves an unanswered question, if gender is just a state of mind, why are hormones needed to effect a transition?

[hobie]

Or organs for that matter

[M L]

This liberal reporter listened to many hours of Steve Bannon’s show War Room (something I would never have time or inclination to do) and usefully summarized it in this article. Not a terrible article, actually. Reading between the lines I think I agree with Steve Bannon, by and large.

https://news.yahoo.com/news/just-listened-steve-bannon-show-104000247.html

[Frank Drackman]

It's a great show.

[M L]

I believe it. I just don't really watch or listen to any shows. Reading is a faster way to intake information.

[Frank Drackman]

But you’re missing Steve and Natalie Winters dulcet tones!

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

This is what insurrection looks like:

The State of California is threatening to take pensions and charge police officers with felonies if they comply with federal deportation laws.

https://x.com/MayorBillWells/status/1861046647381528767

[John F. Carr]

Jack Smith has filed an unopposed motion to dismiss the D.C. charges against Trump without prejudice.

As a result of the election held on November 5, 2024, the defendant, Donald J. Trump, will be inaugurated as President on January 20, 2025. It has long been the position of the Department of Justice that the United States Constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting President. But the Department and the country have never faced the circumstance here, where a federal indictment against a private citizen has been returned by a grand jury and a criminal prosecution is already underway when the defendant is elected President. Confronted with this unprecedented situation, the Special Counsel’s Office consulted with the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), whose interpretation of constitutional questions such as those raised here is binding on Department prosecutors. After careful consideration, the Department has determined that OLC’s prior opinions concerning the Constitution’s prohibition on federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President apply to this situation and that as a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated. That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind. Based on the Department’s interpretation of the Constitution, the Government moves for dismissal without prejudice of the superseding indictment under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 48(a). The Government has conferred with defense counsel, who does not object to this motion.

Docket entry 281 at https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67656604/united-states-v-trump/?page=3.

I would have waited for the formal counting of the electoral votes.

[Dan Schiavetta]

If I were Kamala Harris, before announcing the electoral vote count in that Senate chamber, I would say a few things.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Like what?

[Rubbish!]

We are unburdened by the things left unburdened. N-kay?

[Swede425]

LOL!
Yes, that's definitely helped her in the past.
Saying things is a real strength of hers.

[Mr. Bumble]

Why would she start now?

[tylertusta]

Smith has also filed a motion to dismiss his appeal before the 11th Circuit.

Link

[Roger S]

So the determination of the illegality of Jack Smith's office remains unchallenged. It is now fair to say the whole prosecution was bogus, as ruled by the court.

[SRG2]

Nope.

[Noscitur a sociis]

It is now fair to say the whole prosecution was bogus, as ruled by the court.

Could you point to the language in Judge Cannon’s opinion where you feel she ruled that?

[Roger S]

Cannon ruled that Smith did not have the authority to get the indictment and prosecute the case, and was not properly funded. So the indictment was dismissed. It was bogus. And now it is not being appealed.

[John F. Carr]

Trump's co-defendants' appeals are still live. Although not many people care without Trump in jeopardy, the legality of Smith's appointment will be decided.

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68955302/united-states-v-donald-trump/

[Commenter_XY]

That is actually a good thing = the legality will be decided.

I hope they decide it (Smith's appointment) is illegal.

Hypothetically, could an AG Bondi hire a dozen outside SCs like Smith and just turn them loose on 12 different people, before the legality is actually decided? Or is everything in abeyance and an outside SC cannot be hired.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Judge Cannon’s order isn’t binding precedent, and the regulations under which Smith was appointed remain in place, so yes, another attorney general could use them.

However, I think it’s likely Smith himself is going to be gone not later than about 12:30 on January 20, and I doubt the Trump DOJ is going to be pursuing this case on his behalf. So unless they can get an opinion out in the next two months (which is possible but not, in my opinion, a specially likely), I wouldn’t expect a decison on the merits.

[David Nieporent]

Or is everything in abeyance and an outside SC cannot be hired.

As I mentioned above: Cannon's ruling is not bindng on anyone — not even on Cannon herself. A district court's ruling of course has effect in a particular case (subject to appeal), but establishes no precedent. DOJ is free to hire any special counsels that it wants, to investigate and/or prosecute anyone it deems appropriate.

[SRG2]

We must applaud Cannon's integrity - when she had to make a decision, she did so in support of the man who appointed her. WTG

[not guilty]

Aileen Cannon is to integrity what John F. Kennedy was to marital fidelity.

[John F. Carr]

AG Bondi could order mass prosecutions by regular Justice Department employees. So could Garland. Garland thought appointing somebody outside the department would make the case against Trump look less politically motivated. He did not think a similar measure was necessary in the January 6 cases.

[David Nieporent]

Garland thought appointing somebody outside the department would make the case against Trump look less politically motivated. He did not think a similar measure was necessary in the January 6 cases.

Note that he only did so wrt Trump once Trump announced he was running against Biden. Before that point, regular DOJ was perfectly capable of handling it.

[not guilty]

Commenter_XY posits:

That is actually a good thing = the legality will be decided.

I hope they decide it (Smith’s appointment) is illegal.

Hypothetically, could an AG Bondi hire a dozen outside SCs like Smith and just turn them loose on 12 different people, before the legality is actually decided? Or is everything in abeyance and an outside SC cannot be hired.

In the D.C. Circuit, the authority of the Attorney General to appoint a Special Counsel is settled law. In re Grand Jury Investigation, 916 F.3d 1047, 1054 (D.C. Cir. 2019); In re Sealed Case, 829 F.2d 50, 55 (D.C. Cir. 1987).

[hobie]

Correct, there will be a lot of fake electors and lawyers sent to prison in state courts for trying to steal the election. But the Orange Caligula will skate free. But will Trump pardon the two men who helped him hide classified docs in defiance of a subpoena? That will be interesting

[Noscitur a sociis]

How does Smith’s appointment being invalid imply that the whole prosecution was “bogus”, whatever that means?

[tylertusta]

I don't know about being wholly bogus, but if the argument is that the Trump prosecutions were politically motivated, then having a mere employee improperly assert the authority of a US Attorney is indicative that things are not well at the DOJ.

I personally think it's one component of a larger pattern of disturbing behavior from this DOJ in how they have conducted several high profile cases.

[David Nieporent]

having a mere employee improperly assert the authority of a US Attorney is indicative that things are not well at the DOJ.

It was consistent practice, blessed by history and SCOTUS, until Cannon made up new law last month.

[tylertusta]

When was the last time that a mere DOJ employee- unconfirmed by the Senate- was a Special Counsel and exerted as much power and independence in prosecutorial decisions as the other confirmed US Attorneys?

When did SCOTUS bless that?

[not guilty]

He was not a DOJ employee at the time of his appointment, but SCOTUS blessed Robert Bork's appointment of Leon Jaworski on Jul 24, 1974.

[tylertusta]

I don't see Nixon as blessing the constitutionality of Jarowski's appointment since Nixon did not challenge it.

[David Nieporent]

SCOTUS blessed it in U.S. v. Nixon.

And it was used many times, including Archibald Cox, Leon Jaworski, Robert Fiske, John Danforth, and Robert Mueller.

[tylertusta]

David, the Court said that the Executive Branch was bound by its own internal regulations on Special Prosecutors.

It did not speak of a broad appointment power for prosecutors who would be used against private citizens. Those citizens are not bound to obey the Executive's internal regulations like President Nixon was.

[David Nieporent]

Incidentally, Jack Smith has filed his reply brief in the 11th circuit:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca11.87822/gov.uscourts.ca11.87822.80.0.pdf

[not guilty]

"I don’t see Nixon as blessing the constitutionality of Jarowski’s appointment since Nixon did not challenge it."

First of all, Nixon did challenge whether the matter was justiciable, both in the District Court and before SCOTUS. 418 U.S. at 692. The Court regarded its consideration of the matter as essential to determine whether a justiciable case or controversy was presented. Id., at 693. That is a matter that all federal courts must consider sua sponte even where no party raises the issue.

[Mr. Bumble]

What will Judge Shitcan do?
Has anyone checked on not guilty?

[tylertusta]

In (a limited) defense of our friend Mr. Guilty, he was merely proposing what he wanted Smith to do, not what Smith was likely to do.

I think it's safe to say that the DC case will be dismissed one way or the other.

[Commenter_XY]

This seems appropriate. Thanks to Ray Charles.

Hit the road, Jack, and don't ya come back
No more, no more, no more, no more
Hit the road, Jack, and don't ya come back no more
What'd you say?
Hit the road, Jack, and don't ya come back
No more, no more, no more, no more
Hit the road, Jack, and don't ya come back no more

[Bored Lawyer]

Jack will get a high-paying legal position in some BigLaw firm. There are plenty of ideologically motivated suckers willing to plunk down $1000 to $ 3000 per hour for his services. Especially since that goes on the corporate tab.

[Commenter_XY]

BL, it will be interesting to see whose Company he keeps = Jack Smith. No doubt, his next position is already lined up.

[not guilty]

Jack Smith has been a career prosecutor for 30 years. If making tons of money were his priority, I suspect he would have made different career choices to this point.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Trump's term in office will be an obstruction of justice:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/jack-smith-files-drop-jan-6-charges-donald-trump-rcna181667

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Future convict Smith knows what's in for him when Lady Justice puts her blindfold back on.

[not guilty]

JHBHBE, what crimes do you claim that "[f]uture convict Smith" has committed? Several other commenters have refused to answer that question in any meaningful way, so now it's your turn.

Suppose you were an Assistant United States Attorney drafting indictments for presentation to one or more grand juries in regard to the prosecution of Jack Smith. Please answer each of these questions or, in the alternative, admit that you are unable to do so:

(1) Is Smith the sole individual you would charge? (If there are co-conspirators, whether indicted or not, please identify them.)

(2) What statute(s) would you allege that Smith has violated? (Please cite by number.)

(3) As to each such violation, when did it occur?

(4) As to each such violation, in what federal district did it occur?

(5) As to each such violation, what facts evince the commission thereof?

[not guilty]

Still waiting, JHBHBE.

[Kazinski]

I said a long time ago the voters in the election would functionally be a jury of Trump's peers, and they aquitted him.

You can't say the media, the Jan 6 committee, and the current administration didn't fully air the allegations against Trump.

The nation as a whole is a much more representative than a DC jury would be.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I’m not sure that makes a lot of sense. Obviously anyone who voted for Trump must have thought that his conduct wasn’t bad enough to make him the worse choice, but I don’t think that necessarily I implies they thought he was innocent. Likewise, there’s nothing remotely inconsistent about someone thinking Trump was definitely not guilty but that he’d still be a worse president than Harris.

(To be clear, I agree that a lot of people engage in motivated reasoning, and I’m sure there’s a high degree of overlap in people’s view of Trump’s criminal culpability and their preferred candidate.)

[Rubbish!]

Lawfare proponents: you should have to disclose in-kind contributions for helping Trump get elected a second time. So wrong but never in doubt, even after the humiliating defeat. Self reflection and ability to acknowledge your own flaws, or to look at yourselves and laugh the absurdities, has never been a strength.

[Lennyk78]

Hopefully Bondi brings murder charges against the semi-retarded ogre who shot Babbitt on 1/6.

[not guilty]

What makes you think it was murder? That takes more than a dead body and a known shooter.

[Lennyk78]

She was unarmed. See I can play this game too? If Thugvon Martin and the Gentle Giant Michael Brown were victims because they were unarmed, then so is Babbit.

[Bob from Ohio]

"She was unarmed."

She was not a threat at all. Scardy cat cop, the only cop to fire a round that day, at a small woman who was not even thru the window. Was she going to fly at him?

Dude got promoted for his trouble.

[hobie]

What happened to the Rittenhouse Defense, Bob? I thought you liked it. Armed guard has someone smashing through his window; gets subjectively scared; fires. Simple. Stand your ground, dude

[Brett Bellmore]

I think you really need to ditch some biased accounts of the Rittenhouse trial, and see what the actual defense was. It was a bit more than "I was scared".

[Estragon]

“She was unarmed”

That is a lie

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, I mean, she wasn't a double amputee, so technically you're right.

But I suppose you're talking about the pocket knife that remained in her pocket the whole time. Somewhat smaller than us kids routinely carried around when I was a child in the 70's, and the cop who shot her had no idea it was there.

Using that to deny that she was "unarmed" is just cringe, you know that? It ought to embarrass you. Do I really have to pull out that Crocodile Dundee quote?

I've characterized her as a suicide by cop, and she was scarcely innocent, but pretending she was armed just discredits you.

[Mr. Bumble]

What would make you believe she was suicidal?

[Brett Bellmore]

In a clearly criminal situation, with a cop on the other side pointing a gun, she tried to climb through a broken window.

I'm not going to say that she was actively suicidal, but she clearly was not exhibiting anything remotely like a decent sense of self preservation, and under those exact circumstances?

I'd expect to be shot, myself.

[Estragon]

“but pretending she was armed”

Who is pretending? Even you admit she was carrying a knife. Could she take it on a plane? Or on a tour of the capitol?

Why does this particular lie get repeated over and over? We had a conversation about Horst Wessel Lied once. The answer lies there.

[Brett Bellmore]

Because it's not a lie. A pocket knife is a tool, not a weapon. Like many tools, it can be used in a pinch as a weapon, but that doesn't make carrying a ring of keys being "armed", just because they teach in self defense courses that you can use them as an expedient weapon. Any more than a gun ceases to be a weapon because you could use it as a hammer in a pinch.

If she'd been wearing a combat knife, or even carrying a switch blade or butterfly knife, you might have a point. As it is, you don't. You're just trying to use an irrelevant factor that the cop who shot her didn't even know of, to make shooting her seem more reasonable than it was.

Look, just being where she was, and doing what she was doing, gets her over that bar in my opinion. You don't have to invent additional bullshit justifications.

[Estragon]

I am not talking about whether it was justified or not. I am pointing out that this particular lie gets repeated over and over again. Why?

[Brett Bellmore]

That's what I'm asking: Why are you lying about her being "armed", when she just had a perfectly ordinary pocket knife in her pocket?

What's the point of lying about this? The cop didn't know she had a pocket knife when he shot her. She never pulled it out. Perfectly ordinary people carry pocket knives like that, and you'd never say they were 'armed'. It wasn't even a "weapon" under DC law, being an ordinary folding knife with a blade under 3". And while nobody but staff or members of Congress are allowed to carry even ordinary pocket knives in the Capitol building itself, it would have been fine in most federal buildings in DC.

What is the freaking POINT of insisting that she was 'armed'? Does it make you feel better about her being shot, or something? Why would you need that? Her conduct alone was sufficient.

[Estragon]

She was carrying a knife. That is armed. Even you are waffling here, slicing the salami ever so thin— some knives count but not this one. Could she take that knife into a ballgame? How about a concert at Madison Square Garden? A tour of the Supreme Court?

You keep wanting to argue about justification, but I am not interested in that. I don’t “feel better” about this poor misguided woman who was killed by Trumps lies based on what was in her pockets. The knife played no role in the shooting.

However, why do huckleberries insist on repeating the lie “she was unarmed” over and over again? I have linked you to Timothy Snyder before, he has some insights as to why that might be. Heroic martyrdom and prior innocence are concepts here. Like Horst, who I pointed out to you before.

[Estragon]

Speaking of lies, how would you characterize the assertion that smart thermostats are changing votes?

[Bwaaah]

Estragon: "She was carrying a knife. That is armed."

And you are maintaining an arms cache in your kitchen silverware drawer.

Gimme a break.

[Estragon]

“Gimme a break.”

Why is it so important to assert she was “unarmed”?

I urge you to reflect on why your fellow travelers insist on claiming this.

[Estragon]

“Discredits”

If my accurate description discredits me, what do you think your willingness to defend Jeffrey Clark’s smart thermostat theory in this space does for your credibility?

[not guilty]

The federal statute applicable to murder in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States is 18 U.S.C. § 1111, which defines murder as follows:

(a) Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. Every murder perpetrated by poison, lying in wait, or any other kind of willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing; or committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, any arson, escape, murder, kidnapping, treason, espionage, sabotage, aggravated sexual abuse or sexual abuse, child abuse, burglary, or robbery; or perpetrated as part of a pattern or practice of assault or torture against a child or children; or perpetrated from a premeditated design unlawfully and maliciously to effect the death of any human being other than him who is killed, is murder in the first degree.
Any other murder is murder in the second degree.

The prosecution would need to first persuade the jury that the killing was unlawful. That would require proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the shooting was not a justifiable use of force in defense of other persons. (The D.C. Pattern Jury Instruction on defense of a third person is reproduced here: https://lawofselfdefense.com/jury-instruction/dc-instruction-9-510-defense-of-a-third-person/)

The United States Capitol Police's Office of Professional Responsibility determined the shooter's conduct was lawful and within Department policy, which says an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defense of human life, including the officer's own life, or in the defense of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury. https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/uscp-completes-internal-investigation-january-6-officer-involved To quote the USCP OPR press release:

The actions of the officer in this case potentially saved Members and staff from serious injury and possible death from a large crowd of rioters who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol and to the House Chamber where Members and staff were steps away. USCP Officers had barricaded the Speaker's Lobby with furniture before a rioter shattered the glass door. If the doors were breached, the rioters would have immediate access to the House Chambers. The officer's actions were consistent with the officer's training and USCP policies and procedures.

These factual findings, while not conclusive, are non-hearsay under Fed.R.Evid. 803(8)(A)(iii) and would likely be admissible.

[loki13]

It's going to be a long four years.

For someone who devoutly wishes for politics to be boring, Trump years are like dog years. Every week feels like a year of constant ... just ... noise.

[Absaroka]

Many moons ago, before silicon, I subscribed to the big three weekly news magazines - Newsweek, Time, and US News & World Report. I'd read all three at some convenient time over the weekend, which took about an hour. That's all the time you really need to be an informed voter. Missing all the hour-by-hour reporting as details change and so on doesn't add value; the end of the week report after the dust has settled is what you need to know.

[Sarcastr0]

Magazines I read regularly, at different times, in rough chronological order:

-Ranger Rick
-Boy’s Life
-Zillions
-Skeptical Inquirer
-Scientific American
-Cosmopolitan (joke gift subscription – jokes on them I enjoyed it for a year)
-US News and World Report
-Science
-NoVA magazine (still subscribe)

[David Nieporent]

Don't think I could really come up with a comprehensive list, and this isn't in much of an order, but

Boys Life
Games Magazine
Scientific American
National Geographic
Baseball Digest
Economist
Macworld
Nation
National Review
New Republic
Reason

(I'm not including anything that I read only online, even if I had/have a subscription. Only print magazines.)

[Kazinski]

Where's The National Lampoon in that list?

[Absaroka]

Oh, yeah, at various times we had assorted non-news subscriptions: Nat Geo, SciAm, and Science for extended periods, others for shorter periods. Hobby ones - Fine Woodworking, Fine Homebuilding, Hobby Machinist, various backpacking ones, yadda. We'd occasionally take Atlantic or Slate or several others for a while. But those were all for fun, whereas I felt the news ones were a a bit of a civic duty.

[loki13]

I miss reading the Economist.

[Commenter_XY]

Clearly, you and the rest are uncultured, and uncouth! Brutes!

I read Mad Magazine! It is the only one that makes any sense. 🙂

(ps: I was being sarcastic about uncultured and uncouth, you know that, right?)

[Ridgeway]

I used to read the Economist ages ago (like in the '80s and '90s) but eventually the smug anti-American tone got to me. It was like reading post after post from Martinned2, and having to pay for the privilege. Once in a while I will read it these days, and it usually reminds me why I stopped.

I am surprised nobody has listed The Dragon (TSR) or The General (Avalon Hill). No old-school AD&Ders or wargamers? I am disappointed by the nerd quotient .

[Martinned2]

If you think I write like The Economist, I'll definitely take that compliment.

[Lennyk78]

https://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-woman-faces-sentencing-fatal-shooting-neighbor-ajike/story?id=116196178

This is a great example of a story where the shooter is not justified, but I'm sure glad the ghetto bitch is dead.

[Krayt]

It continues apace: 3/4 of Americans are fat!

What a novel problem to have, historically! Economists measured things like what a nation produced as calories per person, dollars per calorie, that sort of thing, in the ancient historical tradition of starvation, want, and need, trying to understand things that could be improved.

Now our biggest medical problem is too much high calorie, cheap food. How wonderful! And the poor are the fattest of all.

Central planner kibitzers have had to shift their rhetoric. No flat-out starvation, but “nutrition insecurity”, and a few have intermittant meals, “empty calories”, things all other generations and much of the world today would kill to have as “problems”.

You’d think this would be cause for celebration, but that doesn’t get interveners elected, rather than being pleased, with just a few rough edges to chamfer.

[Sarcastr0]

People are still low on food in America. We just added a different problem as well. One that cuts across socioeconomic class.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-security-and-nutrition-assistance/

This is shades of 'our poor have refrigerators. That means they're rich!'

Central planner kibitzers have had to shift their rhetoric
You know? I've never met one of those in real life.

[Absaroka]

I kinda wonder about those numbers. 38% of people who have an income under $15K are obese. Your link says that about the same percentage of people under the poverty line are food insecure.

I don't see how you can be both food insecure and obese. Moreover, I doubt the distribution is bimodal, with 38% obese and the remainder scarecrows; I'd expect quite a few of the not-obese to be merely overweight or healthy weight.

I'm not saying those numbers are wrong, but I'd want a long look under the covers before I took them at face value.

Anecdotally, we have friends who frequently offer us the excess they get from the food bank. Much as we hate to, because we're cheapskates, we decline on ethical grounds. They give some of the excess away and put some in the trash, but we're just not comfortable taking it (not saying that's rational).

That's not to say I haven't heard stories of hungry kids because Mom is a crack addict who doesn't bother to avail herself of the various options, but that seems like an orthogonal problem.

Heh. Another memory ... after college I worked a min wage construction job. It was a remote location and we all lived in a company flophouse. On the first Thursday I worked there I noticed a couple of coworkers weren't eating lunch, which seemed odd because it was heavy physical work. They said they were out of money because they had gotten carried away stuffing bills into G-strings at the strip club last weekend. I shared my lunch with them, and made a couple extra lunches for the next day (PB&J FTW). That was payday. I assumed they had learned their lesson and they would save a little bit of food money before hitting the club, but they repeated the cycle. They repeated the cycle every two weeks, in fact.

That meets the definition in your link: "...experience food insecurity at times during the year, meaning that their access to adequate food for active, healthy living is limited by lack of money". But I don't think we need a program for people who spend too much at strip clubs.

To their credit, they never complained about going hungry for a couple of days every pay period, nor did they fail to work hard those hungry days. Tough dudes.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"I don’t see how you can be both food insecure and obese."

While most U.S. households are food secure, a minority of U.S. households experience food insecurity at times during the year, meaning that their access to adequate food for active, healthy living is limited by lack of money and other resources.

The cheap food options are frequently the most unhealthy ones.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Maybe the government should stop their market manipulations.

[Brett Bellmore]

Actually, the cheap and easy food options are that way. It's perfectly possible to feed yourself healthy food cheaply, if you know what you're doing. I expect, however, that few poor people have been taught anything meaningful about nutrition, or retained it if they were.

[Sarcastr0]

It’s perfectly possible to feed yourself healthy food cheaply, if you know what you’re doing.
For you and me, this is true.
But it would generally to depend on the place and situation, I'd imagine.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You can't think of any other reason someone might be poor and choose unhealthy food aside from the implication that they're ignorant or dumb?

[hobie]

I live in a black neighborhood and I'm pro-black. But everyone here are fat as gophers. Same as whites. Why? Because like you said, they're ignorant and self-indulgent...same as whites

[Frank Drackman]

Probably drunk and stupid too, no way to go through life

[Brett Bellmore]

Depends on how you define "dumb", I guess. Is it "dumb" to chose convenience over healthy? It's at least ignorant.

Look, the poor are not, by and large, that way because economic lightning struck them out of the blue. That happens, but it's not the usual reason.

The poor are poor because they tend to make bad choices.

Dumb can't be fixed at present, except prospectively, and we could do a lot in the area of prenatal nutrition. But ignorant can be fixed, and why isn't nutrition an important class in K-12?

[Sarcastr0]

What's convenient and what's necessary is a lot more situational than you seem to believe.

You've got this mini-solipsism going on where you have trouble understanding a life different than your own.

The poor are poor because they tend to make bad choices.
The capitalist meritocracy canard has been transparently bullshit since I've been alive.
Life is full of luck, and inheritance, and class mobility is getting rarer every year.

[Brett Bellmore]

You've got this problem where you can't 'blame the victim', which blinds you to the degree to which people cause their own problems.

[Sarcastr0]

You're saying poor people deserve what they get.

I think that's bullshit.

It's pretty simple.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, I'm saying poor people are usually responsible for what they get, which is not quite the same thing as "deserve".

If you live off bacon for a year and suffer a heart attack, did you deserve a heart attack? No. Were you responsible for having had it? Hell yeah.

Look, if you refuse to accept the chain of causality that leads to a problem, because accepting it offends your sense of justice or whatever, you've just sabotaged any hope you had of fixing the problem!

People are generally, but not exclusively, poor because they make bad choices. Recognize that and you can try to help them make better choices. Refuse to recognize that, and they're screwed.

[Sarcastr0]

Life at the individual level is not fair or just thing.
Your insistence on order is why you keep embracing conspiracies to explain why things aren't as you want them to be.

Sure, you can take some edge cases where people cause their own suffering, but life is a riot of choice and fortune and birthright and relationships and intuition and emotion.

In this complicated whirl, there are vastly more broken chains than unbroken ones. This is unappealing to folks who want an orderly world that makes sense. I'm pretty pleased with my deal too, and wish life rewarded me more for being so awesome. But you can't project what you want onto what is.

So what? So you didn't get where you are largely by virtue. You aren't entitled to plaudits for being middle class.
Doesn't mean life isn't still there to make of it what you can.

People are generally, but not exclusively, poor because they make bad choices.
This remains a statement of ideology. Burden is on you, but the class mobility link I posted should at least be something you grapple with - what fraction of America are you going to condemn as dumb and unvirtuous to make the universe align with what you want?

[Bwaaah]

It’s a blame-the-victim game if you see people as victims. That works as a generalization in the absence of talking to people and getting to know how they make their decisions. But if you talk to actual people, as I do, you’ll see that they’re typically not victims in any simplistic sense.

Typically speaking, people exercise conscious judgement to choose behaviors that they understand will have negative consequences. They don’t make those bad decisions because of a lack of choices or information, but because they seek the positive aspects of their choices and ignore the negative aspects. It is unusual for ignorance to be the cause of an eating decision. (“Why am I fat?”)

There are, of course, many exceptions and cases of people with distinct disadvantages. But informed decisions with negative consequences are common, even when known choices with better outcomes are available. If you talk to people without being a douchebag about the matter, they’ll freely admit that fact.

Sarc speaks with a groupist voice in which he describes people in categorical generalizations that happen to fit nicely with his political policy objectives. However, it’s theory divorced from individual reality. Individual reality is what’s going on, person by person, decision by decision. That’s nothing like Sarc’s stereotypical model that isn’t even generally accurate, but simply consistent with the well-earned moniker, “Bleeding Heart Liberal.” That model reflects his compassion for people, but also his general misunderstanding of them (or his willful misstatement of them in his generalizations).

For most people, eating enjoyable food is one of the great pleasures in life. Fortunately, in a region and time as plentiful as the United States today (particularly in cities), food is plentiful even for poor people. So they get to have that pleasure, often with an unwanted side effect of obesity. The complaints about “fat” people come mainly from people who don’t like fatness, and they usually couch that bigotry in a veil of concern for health. But really, they just think fat is grotesque, and they’re not afraid to express that one way or another.

[Absaroka]

>>The poor are poor because they tend to make bad choices.
>The capitalist meritocracy canard has been transparently bullshit since I’ve been alive.

I'm all on board that luck and circumstance matter. But so do choices... stuffing half your paycheck into G-strings week after week isn't a path to success. And it's not that being born poor locks you into stuffing bills into G-strings, of getting fired for showing up drunk or high and wrecking the company backhoe. Some of my dirt-poor colleagues did those things, and some didn't, and I expect the ones who didn't had better life outcomes.

[Sarcastr0]

Choices matter, but the stats tell us that for the vast majority good choices or bad won't get them out of being poor.
That being said, it can certainly change some of the burdens of what being poor entails.

And the reverse - class mobility backwards is a thing, but it's not that much of a thing. Which is kind of incredible considering how many bad choices on amongst the upper and middle classes.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/stuck-on-the-ladder-wealth-mobility-is-low-and-decreases-with-age/

Certainly, the more good choices you get the more you set yourself up to get and be able to capitalize on a lucky break.

But these days it's who your parents are as much as anything else that determines where you'll end up socioeconomically.

But the big thing I reacted to was Brett's 'the poor deserve it' is transparently bullshit. Check out those who talk about silicon valley - by and large those who manage to get rich due so with as much luck and charisma as innovation.

[Absaroka]

You are looking at that study and seeing a half empty glass, while I'm seeing a half full one. Look at Figure 1. Half of people who are in the bottom quintile in their 30's end up above the median by their 50's. A fifth end up in the top two quintiles. That's not exactly being being locked into a caste system.

Moreover, you see even more of an effect if you look at generations rather than individual 30-to-50 numbers. If you are born dirt poor and join the Army to get trained as a mechanic and then work your buns off first at someone else's shop, then eventually opening your own shop, you don't end up in the top 1%, but you can send your kids to college and they can get the MBA if they are so inclined (and talented). Neither of my parents graduated from high school, but their kids all graduated from college.

And conversely, I know families where both parents graduated from college and had professional careers ... and none of their kids did, and are working menial jobs.

[Brett Bellmore]

"But the big thing I reacted to was Brett’s ‘the poor deserve it’ "

And you're reacting to something you fantasized, not something I said.

Look, wealth insulates people from the consequences of bad choices, not entirely, but substantially. The wealthy can afford to be screwups. The poor, living close to the edge, can not afford to be screwups. They need to do everything right to survive and start that long climb out of poverty.

That might strike you as "unfair", but it's still true.

This is a big problem here in the US and other advanced countries, relatively wealthy people advocating policies that have bad consequences their own wealth insulates them from, but which are economically fatal to the poor.

Three Simple Rules Poor Teens Should Follow to Join the Middle Class

1. Graduate from high school.

2. Waiting to get married until after 21 and do not have children till after being married.

3. Work full time.

Do all three of these, and you practically guarantee that you will not be poor, and your children will be better off than you were. Break all three rules and you almost certainly will be poor, short of lucking into a lot of money through no effort of your own.

[Sarcastr0]

First, to lay out my thesis, I'm not taking a maximalist view, I'm taking specific issue with the notion that virtue and socioeconomic class are connected in a strongly correlated and generalizable way.

If you are born dirt poor and join the Army to get trained as a mechanic and then work your buns off first at someone else’s shop, then eventually opening your own shop, you don’t end up in the top 1%, but you can send your kids to college and they can get the MBA if they are so inclined (and talented).

Maybe! Maybe not.
Lots and lots of structural headwinds on those in the lower class. One big thing is middle and upper classes have ways to hedge and make it so some bad luck doesn't derail their life. Not so for the lower class, though Obamacare did help with some of that.

I've worked for the DoD, and it is the best of a bad lot in terms of class mobility. Though I'm not sure how comfortable I am with soldiering fitting in that slot in our society's structure.
And I also saw how our military also does some bad stuff to families and demands that hurt the health of it's soldiers. And I was working for the Air Force!

Neither of my parents graduated from high school, but their kids all graduated from college.
Yes, we had more of this back in the day.

[Sarcastr0]

I also want to add that Brett’s not wrong – I do have a deep seated belief in the collective value of most demographic groups, including the poor. So I do have the danger of projecting just as I accuse Brett of doing.

This does get at some baseline of my moral universe. I try and combat this with due diligence and to have some objective economic backup beyond just hypotheticals.

Still, I do have strong priors in the area.

That being said, Brett did say: "The poor are poor because they tend to make bad choices" which I find indistinguishable from "the poor deserve it."

And no, "The poor...need to do everything right to survive and start that long climb out of poverty" does not mitigate this. "Your virtue matters, if you are inhumanly perfect" is not actually a relevant standard.

[Absaroka]

"“The poor are poor because they tend to make bad choices” which I find indistinguishable from “the poor deserve it.”"

Well, there's your problem 🙂

You can make choices that **on the average** will help you rise or fall on the economic ladder.

These things tend to make you rise:
-get whatever skill advantage you can. If you start at the bottom that might be diesel mechanic or plumber; if you start at the top it might be law school. But from the bottom you can get well above the median.
-Put off having kids until you can afford them. Condoms are cheaper than becoming a parent at 17.
-be frugal. When I drive through Appalachia and see a brand new 80K pickup truck parked next to a dilapidated singlewide ... not how to get ahead. Not to mention stuffing bills in G-strings.
-work as much as you can. Second jobs can be a thing.

etc, etc.

Luck matters a lot ... I know people who took the seemingly safe route of going to work at an auto factory, then were 50 when the US auto industry crashed. That bites (but they got whatever other job they could and ended up OK). I was really lucky that, when the prospects in wildlife biology dried up, you could still get programming jobs w/o a CS degree. But I also had references that said this dude works hard and shows up on time, and those didn't hurt.

OTOH I know people who started out in upper class families, had prep school and college ... and are stumbling through middle age with bleak prospects because, inter alia, they don't have references that say they work hard and show up on time ... because they don't.

When you snort the rent money ... you become homeless. That's a real world example.

We all go down the river, but you get a paddle, and it matters whether you paddle in the right direction or not.

[Sarcastr0]

To be clear I am very much NOT saying 'there's no point in acting responsibly if you're poor' which is not what I'm saying.

What I am saying is the reverse - that you can't see someone who is poor and say 'odds are you made bad choices.'

Do we agree on this?

[Brett Bellmore]

Climbing out of poverty does not require inhuman virtue. It just requires not making some fairly basic and easily identified mistakes.

That's the very issue I was complaining about: People who are comfortably secure treating not making basic mistakes (Like having children before marriage.) as inhuman virtue.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett: "Climbing out of poverty does not require inhuman virtue. It just requires not making some fairly basic and easily identified mistakes."

Also Brett: "The poor, living close to the edge, can not afford to be screwups. They need to do everything right to survive and start that long climb out of poverty."

Also Brett: "The poor are poor because they tend to make bad choices."

You can't have your cake and eat it too. You are claiming it's easy for the poor to do the right thing, and also one mistake and they're screwed. And that it's their fault for making bad choices.

Do you blame the poor or not?
You're mixing up virtue ethics and Objectivism and into a mess of conflicting ethical precepts.

[Brett Bellmore]

"That being said, Brett did say: “The poor are poor because they tend to make bad choices” which I find indistinguishable from “the poor deserve it.”"

"Do you blame the poor or not?"

You seem to be conflating causality and moral responsibility here. I just want to identify causal factors so that the problem can be solved, and I find attributing moral weight to those causal factors muddies your thinking about them.

People can scarcely ever be blamed for being stupid, it's not like people start out geniuses and then decide one day to take a stupid pill. They just are what they are, and you can't fix stupid after the fact, you just have to work around it.

Though you can sometimes improve that prospectively, by proper prenatal nutrition, and other interventions, which I said above we should put more effort into.

And people often can't be blamed for being ignorant, either, though this is less clear cut, because though refusing to take advantage of educational opportunities you're given is somewhat blameworthy, you have to have had the opportunities in the first place.

So, here I am suggesting improved prenatal nutrition and better education about nutrition, home economics, and the real world consequences of certain personal choices, and you're treating it as me going on an accusation spree.

I'm really not that moralistic. I'm not blaming anybody, I'm trying to identify where change has to occur to get better outcomes, and what would lead to that change.

[Sarcastr0]

Seems odd to argue that people don't deserve the consequences of their bad choices.

The poor tend to be stupid is also not a very well supported position. Especially since you are distinguishing stupid from ignorant.

The poor are stupid and make bad choices, but you don't *blame* them.

That doesn't track.
Your blame drips from every comment except the parts where you say you don't blame them.

Which checks out- you cite a stew of objectivism and capitalist prosperity gospel in your precepts; both of those are all about blaming the poor.

[Brett Bellmore]

"The poor tend to be stupid is also not a very well supported position. "

There you're just in denial.

[Sarcastr0]

You don't mean ignorant.

The other definition of stupid is lower in mental capacity.

Are you a social Darwinist, Brett?

[Brett Bellmore]

You just have to make a factual assertion into a moral accusation, don't you? It's like a spinal reflex that you have no control over.

When I say ignorant, I mean somebody lacks relevant information. Such as, oh, information concerning how to supply themselves with a cheap and nutritious diet.

When I say stupid, I mean in terms of raw intellectual power.

Neither ignorance nor stupidity are moral wrongs, any more than any other handicap somebody might labor under.

It has been proven with a ridiculously high level of confidence that the poor tend to be both more ignorant than, and stupider than, the wealthier. How could it be otherwise when both ignorance and stupidity will tend to reduce your options and lead you to pick badly among them? It's hard to imagine how the universe would have to operate, for that not to be true.

Am I a Social Darwinist?

Britannica defines social darwinism as " the theory that human groups and races are subject to the same laws of natural selection as Charles Darwin perceived in plants and animals in nature."

Are we not biological organisms subject to mutation and differential reproduction? So, in that regard, of course I'm a social Darwinist. What scientifically literate person wouldn't be?

But social Darwinism as a historical movement is all tied up with various ideological and moral positions are not demanded by that empirical observation, and since I don't accept them, in that sense I'm not a Social Darwinist.

You may now predictably throw away 99 44/100ths percent of what I just tried to communicate, and attack me over the minute residue mixed in with your own preconceptions. Go ahead, I'm used to it.

[Sarcastr0]

You said stupid.
I asked you about it.

You claim this is factual nor moral, maybe don’t say poor people tend to be stupid. 'Stupid' apart from being really imprecise, sure does have a moral charge to it!

If you notice, I explicitly didn’t push back on ignorant. I pushed back on stupid.

It has been proven with a ridiculously high level of confidence that the poor tend to be both more ignorant than, and stupider than, the wealthier
You still haven’t said what you mean by stupid!

Waiving you hand and saying “Science says!” when you haven’t defined your terms is bad practice. Doing so in service of the thesis that poor people tend to be stupid is worse.

You think the poor are responsible for their lot, and it’s because they’re stupid.

No matter how many times you assert it, double down, or add other bad things that poor people are, you have yet to support your thesis that how rich or poor you are is not a sign of how smart and wise you are.

The most common way to be rich? Be born that way. The most common way to be poor? Be born that way.

Start there.

[Brett Bellmore]

"You claim this is factual nor moral, maybe don’t say poor people tend to be stupid."

Good God, why do you think being stupid is a moral matter? The universe doesn't hand out personal attributes on the basis of moral desert, or revoke your IQ if you behave badly.

"You still haven’t said what you mean by stupid! "

Because I presume you're not.

"The most common way to be rich? Be born that way. The most common way to be poor? Be born that way."

And the most common way to not stay poor is to make good decisions, and the most common way to stop being rich is to make bad ones.

[Absaroka]

Ignorance: I knew a PhD. He was in the Peace Corps, in a seaside Amazon village. When the tide went out, they walked out through the shallow water to gather fish from the traps. He's walking with them and notices them pointing at him 'wow, he's a stud' expressions. He asks what's up and they say 'You are a very brave, powerful man, just walking like that. We shuffle our feet along the bottom so we don't step on the stingrays'.

Intelligence: He starts shuffling his feet along the bottom.

I don't like the word stupid, but what do you call this: you live in a singlewide. You need a truck for work. You can get a brand new base F150 for 38K, $xxx a month for 4 years, or an F150 Raptor for $78k, the same $xxx a month but for 8 years. You choose the Raptor.

The rent is due in a few days, but it's been a long week at the chicken processing plant, so you snort the $600 of rent money in one night of partying (again, actual example).

You routinely go hungry because you stuffed half your take-home into a stripper's G-strings.

I'm not sure stupid is the right word. Perhaps 'short sighted' is more descriptive? But those are decisions with negative consequences; they aren't random bad luck that could happen to anyone.

What term do you prefer?

[Mr. Bumble]

As Forrest Gump said:
Stupid is as stupid does.

[Sarcastr0]

Ab - you are talking about judgement or wisdom, I think.

Maybe it's the D&D player in me, but I've always found a pretty easy distinction between wisdom and education.

But there are lots of other parts of mental capacity, and they're often not correlated with one another - how fast you learn, how well you remember, raw processing power, seeing patterns, intuition, creativity, seeing the big picture...
Summing that all up into 'intelligence' is reductive.

But I got off track.
And I don't think it's at all clear that poor people are worse at any of that mental stuff, and it's rank prejudice to declare otherwise without a source.

[Absaroka]

"And I don’t think it’s at all clear that poor people are worse at any of that mental stuff,"

Not all, to be sure, My parents started poor, and they were neither dumb nor lazy. I don't think Brett is arguing that knowing someone is poor implies they must be dumb.

But choices matter. When Adam routinely stuffs half his paycheck in stripper's G-strings, he is going to end up lower on the economic ladder than similarly situated Bill. And there is nothing the matter with that, if that is Adam's preference.

By the same token, their unequal outcomes are not evidence that the system is rigged against Adam.

I think I mentioned I read Rudolf Peierls' bio recently. And, TBH, the reason I didn't run with Peierls and Feynman and Einstein isn't because the system was stacked against me ... to be blunt about it, God just didn't see fit to give me the intellectual gifts he gave them. In a similar vein Dicky - my fellow dishwasher in my first job - didn't forego a life as a lawyer or software engineer because he thought dishwashing was more fun. Luck is a big factor, but so are brains, work ethic, desire, and so on.

[Sarcastr0]

I think, as I suspected, we're pretty close.

Yes, choices matter.
BUT short-term thinking is selected for when you're living paycheck to paycheck.
You're putting a lot of other stuff in jeopardy if you prioritize long term payoffs.

No, mental capacity writ large is not associated with being well-to-do. You and I disagree with Brett on that.

No, unequal outcomes are not evidence that the system is rigged.
BUT yes, our meritocracy misses lots of talent, especially outside of some particular demographics. (Middle class or above/well-off state/parents went to college/)

I will also push back on 'my mental power is the main reason why I didn't pall around with Feynman.'
It's true, but it's not the whole picture.
Even were you that smart, decent chance you wouldn't have gotten there.
And that's a damn shame for our country - we leave a ton of talent on the table.
Not just class - what state you grow up in is way overcorrelated, even controlling for class.

Another unfortunate correlate is what school you went to. We way overdo the elite institutions access the elite grants thing.

The only thing worse is elite legal circles, which have like 2 schools that access the top for no reason associated with quality of education or legal acumen that I can see.

[Brett Bellmore]

"I don’t think Brett is arguing that knowing someone is poor implies they must be dumb."

Of course I'm not. That would be confusing statistical trends with individualized information about specific people. There are all sorts of reasons why people end up or stay poor, it's just that being dumb amplifies them all, so you get a disproportionate fraction of dumb people at the lower end of the economic scale.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

People only choose convenience over healthy because of ignorance? Might they be choosing it because of it's convenience?

Does everyone have the time or ability to spend in the kitchen doing things how you suggest they must be? Does everyone have the ability to routinely go to the grocery store to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, or might they choose frozen options because the traveling is an issue? What about retirees and other fixed-income folks, like those with disabilities?

"But ignorant can be fixed, and why isn’t nutrition an important class in K-12?"

Your question says everything anyone needs to know about your viewpoint. Somehow you're unaware that nutrition is taught in K-12.

And if it isn't being taught somewhere, that sure sounds like a good thing for a national department of...education to ensure all 50 states are doing, don't you think?

[Brett Bellmore]

It certainly hasn't been taught in my son's K-12 education, or at least so shallowly that it left him no better equipped to design a healthy meal than before. A week in a general class is no substitute for making it a dedicated subject.

[Absaroka]

"if you know what you’re doing"

...and it isn't exactly rocket science. I spent a winter working at a Fish & Wildlife Service installation, maybe 10 or 15 miles out of town. No public transport, no car, can't ride a bike in 4 feet of snow. The other tech and I rented a room in a closed motel, for cheap, because the heat was set at 50 just to keep the pipes from freezing. They owner objected to hotplates, but was OK with an electric popcorn popper (from Goodwill, of course). We could walk a half mile or so to a store. Breakfast was oatmeal, lunch was PB&J, dinner was 'Co-op Surprise', which was barley (cooks quick!) and whatever chopped up or canned veggies were on sale, plus a can of mackerel. We tried 100% tuna cat food but ... I wouldn't feed that to my cat. It's probably the healthiest and cheapest diet I have ever eaten. No fridge, no equipment but the popper, bowls, and spoons.

[Sarcastr0]

Do you see in this story how much invisible support you had for that frugal lifestyle?

I'm not saying the poor can't make healthier choices, I'm saying it's not a simple 'so easy if you're smart' thing for everyone.

[Absaroka]

"Do you see in this story how much invisible support you had for that frugal lifestyle?"

Not so much. Educate me!

[Sarcastr0]

1. Had others who could share the room
2. You had a co-op
3. You had others who were sharing your burden
4. You had a light at the end of the tunnel

[Absaroka]

C'mon...

1)having roommates isn't limited to upper class folks. In fact, for most of those jobs I didn't (the co-op jobs were splattered all over and were for 3 or 6 months, so you didn't have time to find local roomies).
2)Eating cheap food can be done by anyone, whether working as a min wage co-op, some other min wage job, or even...when you are well to do!
3)Not sure how that's different from #1, or different than living with 20 other guys in the company flophouse.
4)I'll halfway agree here, and halfway disagree. The 'disagree' is because I have known many dirt poor people who could also see a light at the end of the tunnel. They showed up sober and on time, pinched their pennies, didn't blow their paycheck at the strip club, got that foreman job after a few years, etc, etc.

I don't personally know anyone who has gone from the economic 5th percentile to the 99th, for example, but I know quite a few who have gone from the 5th to the 80th. And I know several who have gone from the 80th to the 5th. In both directions it had a lot more to do with choices than luck.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm making a comparative point, not an absolute one.

Having a roommate isn't the same as, say, living multigenerationaly. Sharing a background and shared expectations and goals is huge when dealing with life's nonsense. It's something I work on with DEI folks - providing that support for first time college goers who don't have that.

Eating cheap food is harder than you think - the cooking takes time, the finding a place that sells it is not universally easy. And the opportunity cost isn't the same for everyone.

You know the part of 'Common People' about "If you called your dad he could stop it all?" there's a bit of that here. Not that you are or were a tourist of poverty, but the fundamental difference between being poor long-term, and temporarily by choice.

[Absaroka]

"Eating cheap food is harder than you think"

Having done it all my life, I'm pretty confident in my estimation of the difficulty :-). In fact, I'm about to go eat a cheap breakfast!

"the cooking takes time"

My breakfast - oatmeal - is going to take 5 minutes. Because I'm not using quick or even instant oats. Co-op surprise took 20 minutes.

"finding a place that sells it is not universally easy"

I'll only agree a little bit. There aren't very many places that don't have an IGA/Safeway/whatever. And cheap food keeps. You don't need to shop for oatmeal every day. I've lived without cars or public transport ... walking works.

You keep telling me theories that don't jive with personal experience. You keep saying it's rare for people to do things that I see them do all the time. I don't get the sense you know as much as you think you do about living on a bottom decile income.

[Sarcastr0]

What you and I experience is not necessarily generalizable.

Your situation has a number of fundamental differences from someone trying to eat the same way when they're poor, versus as a choice.

There aren’t very many places that don’t have an IGA/Safeway/whatever
I'm not sure that's self-evident. Food deserts are a thing, even if the definition is a bit muddier than I'd like.

You keep telling me theories that don’t jive with personal experience
Yes, I think once you realize that personal experience is not data we'll be largely on a similar page.

[Absaroka]

"Your situation has a number of fundamental differences from someone trying to eat the same way when they’re poor, versus as a choice."

You'll have to flesh those out for me. ISTM that oatmeal is oatmeal.

"Food deserts are a thing, even if the definition is a bit muddier than I’d like."

There may be a few places like that, but I've lived in poor neighborhoods. Before EBT cards, people used literal food stamps. Seeing people using them was commonplace. The people using them and I were literally shopping in exactly the same store.

"personal experience is not data"

Sure it is. I personally experienced the sun coming up in the east north east, this very morning.

That said, sample size matters, but I'm not extrapolating from a single place or time or person, either. Moreover the very studies you cite agree there is a pretty high level of income mobility - 50% of the lower quintile are above the median in just 20 to 30 years.

[Sarcastr0]

Man doesn’t live on oatmeal alone.

This is hardly my area of expertise, but freshness and variety are both important to maintain a healthy diet. You can skimp on some (e.g. your frozen veggies) but that’s not sustainable.
Beyond what you need for nutrition, having variety of options is important to some people, and not others. At that time in your life, you didn’t need it.

Freshness and variety are not always available, even for those that have the time and energy to shop and cook as often as fresh ingredients require. That’s how food deserts work.

I’m not saying all poor people have this issue, only that your experience is not broadly generalizable.
There’s stuff you and I have trouble relating to for some folks re: their support system, health situation, and location.

Moreover the very studies you cite agree there is a pretty high level of income mobility – 50% of the lower quintile are above the median in just 20 to 30 years.
We should drop a separate thread or pick this bit up on Monday. It’s a can of worms, but basically looking at the momentum re: Income mobility as well as the position relative to the past does not look like good news unless you do janky stuff with the stats.

[Brett Bellmore]

"This is hardly my area of expertise, but freshness and variety are both important to maintain a healthy diet."

Eh, not actually. You could actually do pretty well on a diet of onions, potatoes, and canned salmon, supplemented with a good multivitamin. It wouldn't be particularly fresh, but it would satisfy your biological needs. Add some freeze dried eggs for the choline, and it would be good prenatal nutrition, too.

Freshness and variety are psychological needs when it comes to diet, not biological ones. Actual nutritional needs are dirt cheap to satisfy in America if you know what you're doing. The problem is that most people don't actually know what they're doing, nutritionally speaking.

[Absaroka]

"Man doesn’t live on oatmeal alone"

Sure. Oatmeal, canned fish, beans, rice, split peas, sweet potatoes, onions, carrots. All cheap, all available at the local IGA.

They may not be available in every 7-11, but IMHE they are available in 7-11 sized stores when a Safeway isn't nearby.

Moreover, how far is it to a supermarket? Safeway has an online map of stores. I looked as Washington, D.C. The farthest you can be from one inside the city limits is 2 miles (southern point to Hillcrest). The average is way less. Oh, wait, there is one in Oxon Hill, so the max distance is a mile. I routinely walk a mile to get groceries a couple times a week, because walking is good for you. And Safeway isn't the only place in D.C. that sells food.

We know people who live on a fast food diet. It's not because they don't have access to a supermarket.

Now, you can say 'what about people in wheelchairs, or quadriplegics'. Yup, that makes life hard. But it's not a huge slice of the population. People in rural areas have to travel farther, just like they have to wait longer for police or an ambulance. That's part of rural life.

But the notion that any significant part of the population does not have access to an adequate food supply if they try doesn't seem supportable to me.

[Sarcastr0]

You could actually do pretty well on a diet of onions, potatoes, and canned salmon, supplemented with a good multivitamin
I don't know. Seems the multivitamin is covering for a lot of stuff that fresh food would be better for.
Saying why don't poor people do the onions, potatoes, and canned salmon multivitamin diet is a great sign you've not done a lot to think about anyone with a life different from your own.

Freshness and variety are psychological needs when it comes to diet, not biological ones.
Yeah, human beings have psychological needs. Any kind of framework whether moral or policy cannot ignore baseline stuff like that.

[Brett Bellmore]

“I don’t know. Seems the multivitamin is covering for a lot of stuff that fresh food would be better for.”

Just not nutritionally or economically. Biologically it gets the job done just fine. “Variety” is mostly promoted by nutritionists in the expectation that real world people have no idea how to construct a nutritionally complete diet, but if they eat enough different stuff they’re unlikely to end up with a deficiency of anything.

Look, I’m an outlier in terms of dietary preferences, I’m perfectly content eating the same thing 3 meals a day, 365 days a year. I’ve actually done that, and it didn’t bother me a bit. Boredom is largely a theoretical construct in my life, and I’m perfectly aware that’s abnormal. After all, I cook for my family, and they’re not like me in that respect, so I make sure to continually mix it up.

I gave that as an example of a nutritionally healthy diet that didn’t involve variety and freshness. It’s easy to construct enough different nutritionally complete and cheap meals that you could go through a month never eating the same thing twice.

Because healthy food is cheaper today than at any time in history. (Excepting right before Biden took office, of course; It was a tiny bit cheaper then.) If people aren’t eating right, it’s not because they can’t afford to, it’s because they don’t know HOW to, or care to.

[Absaroka]

"Because healthy food is cheaper today than at any time in history."

Not only that, it's cheaper than a diet of junk food.

[Sarcastr0]

Absaroka – I don’t know the research behind food deserts with sufficient confidence to speak to them.

But I do know enough to say that denying they exist based on your survey of supermarkets in Washington DC is not going to answer the mail.
From doing a quick check, it looks like the definition of food desert suffers from a lot of formal variation, but the binary of ‘is it a thing or no’ seems to be yes.

But of course FDs are a headwind, not a sentence to being unhealthy. Still, as we seem to all agree headwinds matter more to the poor than to the rest of us.

And yeah, I’m staying away from ‘you need to include these edge cases or you’re ablest’ discourse. That’s always a silly place.

Anyhow, this is a good conversation; reminds me of the VC back in the day. Ideological differences, but in depth and discursive conversations going deep on something, but leaving space to talk about the nature of lived experience versus statistics etc.

I cut off the discussion on class mobility only because I got some grants to review. TTYL!

[Brett Bellmore]

Sarcastr0, looking up the wikipedia article on 'food deserts', I was likely classed as living in one back in Michigan, as I lived in a rural area and had a significant drive to the nearest grocery. But I don't recall having any difficulty feeding myself.

The concept seems to mostly revolve around the convenience of getting a healthy diet, not the capacity.

[Michael P]

"... invisible support ..."

Boy, won't Gaslight0 be surprised when he reads "I, Pencil"!

[Sarcastr0]

Hadn't heard of it. Read a similar analysis of a cheeseburger.

How is your comment relevant?

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Oh my gawsh, socialism is great! Invisible support! yes, everyone vote for BIG GOVERNMENT and it's INVISIBLE SUPPORT!

You've turned the tide with brilliant insight, Sarcastr0, we'll be bootlicking statists JUST LIKE YOU!

Big e-props to you good sir! You've saved the day! Individualism is FOR LOSERS! Collectivism RULES! and RAWKS!

[Sarcastr0]

You want to argue against anything I actually said?
Nah, actual interesting conversations are not for you.

[Commenter_XY]

boil, bake, broil...it is not difficult. It is the knowledge deficit that is the problem.

Yes = ...few poor people have been taught anything meaningful about nutrition, or retained it if they were -- I would add to that, in many instances, these same poor people never had a role model to teach them. Too busy trying to survive.

[Sarcastr0]

Abrasoka - I get your moral hazard argument.

My understanding is that means testing tends to be more cost and trouble than it's worth, so it's better to lump that some undeserving folks will benefit in return for those who need getting some help.

That being said, I'm really not locked into the current ways we assist those in need of food, shelter, healthcare, etc.
I do expect there are better ways to do it.

[Frank Drackman]

Flew to ATL last weekend, first class, (OK, in a "Regional Jet")
guy sitting next to me had to be 400lbs,
row in front of us was empty he asked the Stew (Sorry, I still call them "Stews") if he could move forward
She said she'd have to "Check with the Captain" to see if the "Weight and Balance" would be affected.
OK, I'm the son of a B52 Pilot, former Naval Flight Surgeon (38 landings on my own if you're curious), Father of 2 Military Pilots,

Pretty Sure a Fatso moving 6 feet forward doesn't matter

She came back a minute later and said he could move. (I don't think she told the Captain)

Problem isn't too little food

Frank

[Brett Bellmore]

I've had the stewardess come through and reposition passengers on a commuter flight once. The plane was definitely small enough for the need to be plausible.

[Frank Drackman]

Did they really check with the Captain?

[Brett Bellmore]

The captain sent them to do it. It was one of those tiny commuters with one row of seats on each side. Do they even get "captains"?

[Michael P]

There’s always a Pilot In Command (PIC), at least until our magnificent robot pilot overlords take over. When the flight crew has at least two people, the PIC is normally called the captain.

[hobie]

Frankie 'wounded warrior' Drackman, America's neediest veteran. You certainly earned your nickname with that comment, Frankie

[Frank Drackman]

Don’t hate me because I’m rich and skinny, hate me for being better looking than you

[Estragon]

LOL, this again. I swear, it gets more believable every time!

[Frank Drackman]

Can not one Reason-able ("Reason"-able, get it?) member of Parkinsonian Joe's ("Parkinsonian Joe"? he's more like "Terminally ill Parkinsonian Joe") Cabinet invoke the fucking 25th Amendment, so we're not in fucking WW3 in the next few weeks?
You want to Nuke Roosh-a? go ahead, we've got 450 ICBM's (most over 50 yrs old, whether they'll work who knows?) not like they have anything to shoot them down or shoot back at us...
OK, looking at his Cabinet, doesn't look to optimistic, Fatty Lloyd Austin, Blinken, Winken, and Nod, Booty-Judge, Major Dork-Ass, DNI Avril Haines (Avril Lavigne would be better)
Does nobody fucking understand that the US giving weapons to use on Roosh-a makes us Roosh-as fucking Enemy, and they might do things you do to Enemy's like sink Aircraft Carriers, and umm, does Hiroshima ring a bell??

Frank

[John F. Carr]

A high profile trial is concluding in France. The rapes of Mazan. Over a period of years a man repeatedly drugged his wife so men could have sex with her without her knowledge. Today's news has a procedural twist relative to American law. The prosecution is arguing sentencing before guilt has been adjudicated. The prosecution says find him guilty and sentence him to 20 years, the statutory maximum. In America sentencing arguments follow a guilty verdict.

The man has admitted guilt and I expect him to get the 20 years. His co-defendants, the men who had sex with his wife, have argued mistake as to consent. I don't know what French law has to say about that. In my state even an honest mistake of fact is not a defense to rape. It would not matter if the men truly believed she wanted to have sex with strangers while unconscious.

Maybe there are two procedural twists. In America the husband and the other men could get separate trials because their interests are not aligned. In France there is one big trial.

In America a defendant might die of old age waiting for the charges to be read to the jury. Americans love duplicitous counts, and charging each incident in a separate count instead of charging a pattern of abuse. The French proceedings seem to be simpler.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"I don’t know what French law has to say about that. In my state even an honest mistake of fact is not a defense to rape. It would not matter if the men truly believed she wanted to have sex with strangers while unconscious."

Is consent a defense if the woman is unconscious? According to the new rules it might not be.

[John F. Carr]

If the woman explicitly consented, while conscious, to sex while unconscious then I think it would not be rape. The legal question in the French case is what happens if the husband told a convincing but false story about such consent. The husband is liable. Are the other men? Assuming the trier of fact believes they were misled. The court could avoid the issue by concluding they didn't really believe she consented.

The American version of this story is vengeful man posts somewhere online using the name of his ex. I love it when strangers come to my house and rape me. Here's my address. It works sometimes. Works in the sense that men try to rape her. They still face criminal charges.

My state leaves rape sentencing totally up to the judge, who might choose to consider gullibility as a mitigating factor. In other states there is a presumptive sentencing range.

[Absaroka]

"The American version of this story is vengeful man posts somewhere online using the name of his ex. I love it when strangers come to my house and rape me. Here’s my address. It works sometimes. Works in the sense that men try to rape her. They still face criminal charges."

Somewhat contra that, I recall a case from several years ago - woman texting about rape fantasy with man, she tells him to come on by to 1324 Maple Drive, she'll leave the door unlocked and be upstairs in bed. He goes there, finds the door unlocked, goes upstairs and finds a woman who is *very* convincing in acting out the 'I don't want to be raped' end of the fantasy. Convincing enough that he stops. The police arrive .... ooops, typo, the right address was 1234 Maple Drive. Story confirmed by the text messages and a presumably embarrassed lady at 1234.

The guy wasn't charged. Dunno if he could have been according to that state's laws (Kansas?????).

Protip, I guess: double check those addresses!

[not guilty]

Was the man who came to Maple Drive never charged, or just not arrested by police at the time?

In my experience it is common in rape/sexual assault cases for the prosecution to proceed directly to the grand jury in order to avoid the defendant having an opportunity for a preliminary hearing.

[John F. Carr]

That description rings a bell. I can't remember the details of the case. Mistake of fact is probably a defense to attempted rape under my state's law although it is not a defense to actual rape.

[Noscitur a sociis]

In my state even an honest mistake of fact is not a defense to rape.

If you’re in Massachusetts, that is not correct: the prosecution “must prove that the defendant knew or reasonably should have known that the victim lacked the capacity to consent.” Commonwealth v. Gibson, 178 N.E.3d 51, 56 (Mass. 2022).

[Noscitur a sociis]

.

[tooreasontoodoubt]

Law student wondering what's going on with the FCC case that was just granted cert? Is that just about private delegations? Is that case less important than I think it may be?

[Noscitur a sociis]

No. It raises the question of whether Congress could delegate the power to set the rate to the FCC, as well as the FCC’s putative delegation to a private party. So this could be significant in developing nondelegation principles more generally. Or it might not be, especially if the Court decides to just hold that the plaintiffs don’t have standing instead.

[Michael P]

The Washington swamp is full of The Very Best People: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/11/25/fbi-agent-charged-with-rape/

[Sarcastr0]

What strawman are you even arguing against?

[Martinned2]

I think the idea is that all the Trump investigations are meritless because an FBI agent allegedly raped someone.

[David Nieporent]

It was probably a Trump supporter in the FBI, anyway.

[Mr. Bumble]

Maybe they are meritless because they are in fact meritless and which is why the prosecutions are all falling apart.

[David Nieporent]

None of the prosecutions are "falling apart." In fact, Trump lost one and is temporarily prevailing in two of them on pure technicalities unrelated to their merits. The last, well, is being poorly handled.

[Frank Drackman]

Yes, and the Titanic, Challenger, and Columbia will be back in service soon

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Donald Trump is actually a rapist, but that doesn't seem to bother you...

[ThePublius]

Are you referring to the E. Jean Carroll case?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You're fully aware that I am, and I'm fully aware that you have some idiot's excuse as to why the jury was wrong and Trump has never actually raped anyone, despite bragging about how consent doesn't matter to him.

[Mr. Bumble]

FWIW: Seth Barrett Tillman's take on Jack (Javert) Smith.

https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-law-of-case-ii.html

[John F. Carr]

Tillman: “Special Counsel Smith has had a full and fair opportunity to prove—before the trial court and now on appeal—that he was lawfully appointed and lawfully compensated. He failed to establish those specific points in court. As a result, the DOJ may and (in my opinion) should sue for return of illegal salary paid by the U.S. Treasury to Smith and his staff (that is, those not otherwise employed at DOJ).”

The 11th Circuit appeal is still alive with Trump’s codefendants. The court may still rule that Smith’s appointment and employment were lawful. Trump may pardon the codefendants before the court rules. If the 11th Circuit rules Smith was not properly appointed and the government sues in the 11th Circuit, I don’t know what happens. It seems to me that D.C. would be the better venue. In D.C. the appointment question would be decided de novo. The Florida ruling is not the law of the case except in one criminal case in Florida, and Smith as a private citizen was not a party to that case.

[David Nieporent]

In D.C. the appointment question would be decided de novo.

No. There's binding precedent in the DC Circuit that rejects the Cannon theory.

[not guilty]

The New York Times reports that President-elect Trump’s legal team found evidence that Boris Epshteyn asked for retainer fees from potential appointees in order to promote them for jobs in the new administration, and Trump has ordered an investigation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/25/us/politics/trump-boris-epshteyn-investigation.html

Let's see if anything comes of that investigation. I'm not holding my breath.

[David Nieporent]

It's Trump; he'll probably give Epshteyn the Presidential Medal of Freedom for the idea.

[John F. Carr]

If Trump wasn't getting a piece of the action he might be upset, or at least not supportive.

[Sarcastr0]

Dropping a new thread for this discussion with Brett:

Good God, why do you think being stupid is a moral matter
Because it's a baseline pejorative. Don't choose words used as an insult when trying to characterize population, lest someone think you have an issue with that population.

Putting you to the question: do you think poor people have less mental capacity than rich people?

And the most common way to not stay poor is to make good decisions, and the most common way to stop being rich is to make bad ones.
I don't think this is clearly true - luck seems as likely tops for both. Maybe not! I don't know. But it's not slam-dunk 'making good decisions.' You need to establish that.

Also, this is not the relevant metric. Don't talk flux when your thesis is about the total.

[Absaroka]

I guess it depends on how good/bad the luck and decisions are.

Winning the lottery is very good luck, but what is the expected wealth a few decades hence of the typical $100M lottery winner?
No idea of the quality, but the first hit I found:

"...70% of lottery winners end up broke within 5 years. But the real figure is likely closer to 30% who manage to stay rich in the long run"

(again, not sure that's a reliable link. ISTR seeing better numbers ... Freakanomics??)

But for the sake of discussion, if 70% go broke inside of 5 years, doesn't that argue against 'it's what chance gives you to start with, not the decisions you make' notion?

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, it's a disputed stat.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnjennings/2023/08/29/debunking-the-myth-the-surprising-truth-about-lottery-winners-and-life-satisfaction/

Assuming it's true, I'd say we're talking a pretty rarified case. Prime target for scammers in and out of the family, etc. What it shoes to me is that that there's a lot here about the benefits of a support system and concomitant expectations, like I was saying about you and your roommate. It goes to the class mobility is really hard discussion.
It's not a generalizable experience to use in the 'luck isn't as important as choices' thesis.

I'm not going to take the 'it's always luck' view. I don't know! It's hard to quantify luck's role (though I'd say not impossible). Which is why Brett's bald assertion "And the most common way to not stay poor is to make good decisions, and the most common way to stop being rich is to make bad ones" is not nearly as self-evident as he thinks.

I could as easily say "work has hard as you want; most won't get a lucky break will end up where they started at best." Is it true? No idea. I just stated it super confidently, though!

Found this, but didn't find it said enough to be convincing:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/analysis-if-youre-rich-youre-more-lucky-than-smart-and-theres-math-to-prove-it

[Brett Bellmore]

Just a data point, somebody I know won the lottery and retired. A year later he was back at work with nothing to show for it but a really nice pickup truck.

I guess he did have a good time in the meanwhile.

[Absaroka]

Yeah, interesting question. That study included some pretty small lottery winnings. If I win $10k, that will make me happy, but it's not life changing. Whether I just stick it in savings or use it on a vacation or whatever, sure it will be a plus. It's when I win $100M that things get interesting, either really good (I get to buy that 10000 acre ranch in WY and start each morning with a brisk 20 mile horseback ride) or bad (I find out my friends care more about money than me) or whatever.

[Brett Bellmore]

Agreed. If I won $10K I'd probably just stash it in my emergency fund, though my wife would probably demand we spend some of it. If I won $100M? Nice chunk of mountain property and a retirement house, and enough of an annuity that I'd be secure. The rest we'd have fun donating to our favorite charities.

[Sarcastr0]

If I won:

$10K – straight to savings; continue life as is

$100K – Dedicated savings account, to be used for 1) when kids happen 2) for travel 3) emergencies

$1M – Upgrade house, gift some to family members, charitable giving, wife can change jobs if she wants

$10M+ – Start a charitable trust/foundation. I think I’d keep my job – I really like what I do. But that may be naive of me.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, if I weren't in my middle 60's, with a family history of dementia, I'd probably keep my job too. As it is the only thing keeping me working rather than enjoying such time as I (maybe) have left is that I don't have the money to do anything else, my first wife having cleaned me out.

[Sarcastr0]

Most everyone else I know is looking forwards to retirement.

I'm very lucky and have a job I want to do forever.

It is a lot of wrangling 20 and 30-year olds.
We'll see if I feel the same way in 20 years.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Because it’s a baseline pejorative."

See, there's your problem in a nutshell. You conflate moral worth and objective capacity. I don't. All "stupid" means is that somebody doesn't have a lot of intellectual horsepower, nothing more. Sure, people use it as an insult because nobody wants to be thought of as lacking intellectual power, any more than they want to be thought of as being slow, weak, ugly, clumsy.

But personal capacities have no moral dimension, no moral implications. Somebody can be ugly and a saint, beautiful and a monster. Being smart, unless you're careful, just lets you rationalize bad deeds.

Conflating moral worth and objective capacities, you treat the common place observation that people without a lot of intellectual capacity tend to end up/stay poor, while people with a lot of it tend to retain/accumulate wealth, as a moral accusation.

But it's not, it's just a natural feature of the world, with no more moral significance than noting that slow people tend to lose races.

[Sarcastr0]

This is getting silly, Brett, I realize that the word stupid is an insult, and I guess you don't.

All “stupid” means is that somebody doesn’t have a lot of intellectual horsepower, nothing more
There it is.
Asserting this about poor people without evidence is fucked up.

Being smart, unless you’re careful, just lets you rationalize bad deeds.
And here you conflate judgement with intellectual horsepower. I'm not even sure they're correlated.

As for your 'why are you making it a morality thing?' You did with using an insult. Choosing the word stupid to describe poor people is really telling on yourself.

Slavers justified themselves with 'blacks are inherently savage and dumb.' No explicit moral judgment there! And yet they were still pieces of shit and profoundly immoral
How is your assertion about poor people any different?

[Bwaaah]

Sarc: "I realize that the word stupid is an insult"

Said like the simpleminded absolutist that you are. You can't even integrate a legitimate difference of understanding. I share Brett's view of the word, attaching no aspersions to a simple fact.

Some of my best friends are stupid. They're great, productive people (my stupid friends, that is; not all stupid people are great and productive). But in Sarc's elitist world, stupid is not a simple fact (which it is), it's an ugly affliction. He infers negatives upon low intelligence. He's one of those kinds of snobs. (That's a popular type of bigotry...people who look down on stupid people. Even many stupid people suffer from that one.)

"A man's got to know his limitations." This, my stupid friends know. Sarc, whose IQ is obscured by his expansive education, lacks that grasp of self. Even if he is stupid, that doesn't explain his lack of self awareness. He's filled with all kinds of bigotries that are seamlessly justified by his absolute truths.

"You're not stupid. You just have a low IQ." Sarc can't find a just way through this one. For him, stupid is bad. And that's what kind of person he is.

[Sarcastr0]

There are lots of words you can use that aren't insulting; stupid isn't one of them.

I don't this to be a good faith assertion.

Sarc, whose IQ is obscured by his expansive education, lacks that grasp of self
Quit thinking you know me.

[Mr. Bumble]

“Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:15–20).

[Absaroka]

"There are lots of words you can use that aren’t insulting; stupid isn’t one of them."

Consider these:

"Madoff was stupid to think he could get away with it"
"Absaroka was stupid to get a bigger wrench before considering whether that bolt might have left hand threads"
"No matter how tired he was from the new baby and the endless overtime, Fred was stupid to start using meth to get through the long shifts"

I'm willing to give Brett's usage the benefit of the doubt.

[David Nieporent]

Stupid and lack of moral worth are not the same thing, but of course calling someone stupid is an insult. Also, Brett and his ilk seem to think we shouldn't let people into the country who are stupid, so this preening about how stupid isn't really a negative judgment on someone falls rather flat.

[Absaroka]

"Stupid and lack of moral worth are not the same thing"

I think Brett has rather explicitly made that same point here.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett argues the poor are responsible for being poor, and that they are stupid, that they lack 'intellectual horsepower,' and they are the main cause of why they are poor.
He has no support for these beyond his personal opinion; they are axiomatic assertions.

If you can see a way that’s not a statement of morality, you can split hairs better than I can.

[Absaroka]

"Brett argues ..."

I see you saying Brett is saying that. I don't see Brett actually saying that.

FWIW, I get a sense that it's fairly common here for people to read a specific comment, then meld that comment with everything that commenter has ever said to come up with what the coded meaning must be.

Everyone does that to some degree, including me, but I try to guard against it. I mean, there are commenters here who if they post the sun rises in the east, I'd be setting the alarm clock tomorrow to check. But I really try to avoid the old Mad Magazine thing of "When they say...they really mean"[1]. I try to do that for Brett, and you, and everyone else here.

[1]which were...awesome

And a happy holiday to all...I have some pies to bake!

[Brett Bellmore]

"Brett argues the poor are responsible for being poor, and that they are stupid, that they lack ‘intellectual horsepower,’ and they are the main cause of why they are poor."

You redundantly repeat different formulations of the same point, as though they were different claims.

Statistically speaking, poverty and low IQ are correlated. And as intelligence is the ability to solve problems, and failing to solve problems leads to poverty, how would you expect it to be otherwise?

"If you can see a way that’s not a statement of morality, you can split hairs better than I can."

This is more of a rhino horn than a hair, even if they are both keratin.

[Bwaaah]

Do you honestly believe you frame people's arguments sincerely as they intended them, as with Brett here? Are you fooling yourself, or is it just bad faith?

[Sarcastr0]

I mean, it's all right there above; repeating that Brett wrote all in one place is not some evil deceitful trick.

Feel free to text search to find the quotes below.

1. The poor are responsible for being poor: "I’m saying poor people are usually responsible for what they get."

2. The poor are stupid: [re: poor are responsible]
Sarc: "“The poor tend to be stupid is also not a very well supported position.”
Brett: "There you’re just in denial."

3. The poor lack intellectual horsepower: "All “stupid” means is that somebody doesn’t have a lot of intellectual horsepower, nothing more"

4. The poor are the main cause of why they are poor: "I’m saying poor people are usually responsible for what they get"
---
And I'm not getting into IQ. That's not what anyone was talking about, and it's a new front in this conversation.
It's a black box metric with some correlates and utterly unclear causality, but it's not the same thing as "intellectual horsepower."

[Bwaaah]

I read Brett's stuff. Your comprehension is messed up. You add significant inferences that add overreach to his statements.

Seriously, Sarc, if you don't know how each of those 4 restatements of Brett's position are fallacious, then you have no idea how language is actually understood by serious listeners.

[David Nieporent]

Everyone does that to some degree, including me, but I try to guard against it.

Why? Statements and ideas don't stand in a vacuum. I would hope I'd be assessed — for good or ill — based on the body of my work here rather than just on one particular comment.

[David Nieporent]

I think Brett has rather explicitly made that same point here.

Yes, and I was pointing out that I agreed with that part, while disagreeing with the rest of Brett's related notions.

[Commenter_XY]

This Sarcastr0 inspired slap-fight is amusing, Brett. Looks like you got a citation from the tone police. I can empathize.

To be sure, there is no objective clinical definition of 'stupid' that is tied to an IQ score range. However, there is a scientific definition of sorts.
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2015/11/we_now_have_a_scientific_definition_of_stupidity.html

I am just going to say, this 'objective' definition of stupid was based on a sample of Hungarian college students, about 80% of whom were female. So take the definition of stupid with a grain of salt because my experience has been young college students generally don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

I do think that confident ignorance aspect of stupid applies perfectly here (not with you, of course). You know, you might get lucky and get a faux muting, lol. 😉

[Mr. Bumble]

Il Douche is the living embodiment of stupid and for the life of me I don't know why you and Brett (among others) even bothers to engage with him.

[Brett Bellmore]

So that people reading the exchanges won't come away thinking he's actually making solid points.

[Mr. Bumble]

Anybody with even a functioning brain stem should realize that.
Of course we have the likes of Estrogen who will argue with you that Ashli Babbitt's pocket knife constituted a weapon and therefore she was "armed.
In any event have a Happy Thanksgiving.

[Bwaaah]

I feel like Bumble when it comes to Il Douche. When Il Douche comments, I'm more prone to insult than argument. But the patient, legitimate arguments from others such as Brett, C_XY (when he's not just having fun), Absaroka (when he chimes in) and others transforms what would otherwise be pure trash talk into seriously winning and losing arguments.

I greatly appreciate the serious, patient arguments as essential in balancing the scales of truth (insofar as they may be found here). Against Sarc, those efforts border on saintliness.

Il Douche is an over-educated gnat. I ain't got [much] time for that.

[John F. Carr]

The Supreme Court of Brazil has released the indictment of Bolsonaro and others for plotting a coup.

https://noticias.stf.jus.br/postsnoticias/supremo-envia-investigacao-sobre-tentativa-de-golpe-de-estado-a-pgr/

See link "íntegra do relatório final da Polícia Federal" at bottom of page. If, like me, you only know a handful of words of Portuguese you will need the help of a computer. I find the machine translation somewhat amusing. The allegations of voting fraud lacked ballast.

AP summarizes very briely in English: https://apnews.com/article/brazil-bolsonaro-coup-investigation-8281b3df34426a0b589ad869c2abd696

[Commenter_XY]

When Joy became Oy....Kamala's X video statement to supporters.

The empty vessel is now a broken reed.

[ThePublius]

I didn't watch it. Did she address the 2/3's of DNC staffers who were let go on short notice with no severance pay? (After she burnt through $1.02 Billion(!)?)

[Brett Bellmore]

Apparently their internal polling was telling them all along that they were losing, and they spent the money anyway in the desperate hope that their own polling was wrong.

I do wonder how much of the money was just laundered to various left-wing causes and to cronies, rather than actually spent on real campaigning. They seem to have paid outrageous amounts for some things that really ought to have been cheap, and blowing through a billion dollars in a couple of months provides a LOT of opportunities for money laundering.

[Mr. Bumble]

What they did was launder money through various outlets.
$500,000.00 to Rev. Al for example.

[ThePublius]

They spent the money so they could keep the money. If they didn't spend it, they couldn't enrich themselves and their associates.

Now they have hung their staffers out to dry. People should take notice of this behavior, remember it.

[Brett Bellmore]

Seriously, if you work in politics, you saw that coming, along with the ending in debt. It's pretty unusual that the Trump campaign finished up with a surplus, not a debt.

The thing I find interesting is that most of Harris' spending went through her official campaign, while a much larger percentage of Trump spending went through outside groups.

The spending differential wasn't as impressive once you took that into account, although Harris still outspent Trump by a substantial margin. And a lot larger proportion of Trump's spending seems to have been devoted to building capability for future campaigns.

[David Nieporent]

Apparently their internal polling was telling them all along that they were losing, and they spent the money anyway in the desperate hope that their own polling was wrong.

As always, Brett tries to spin something sinisterly and also gets his facts wrong. What Plouffe said was not that they were losing, but that their internal polls — which btw are not actually some special type of poll that are more accurate than external polls — showed them as tied or behind, within the margin of error.

And "spent the money anyway"? As opposed to what? Saying, "Well, we're behind in the polls. Let's just concede the race now and go play Xbox"?

[ThePublius]

As opposed to giving Al Sharpton $500K before an interview? $2M to Oprah? She could have closed off her campaign with a surplus, but chose not only to spend it all, but go into debt to the tune of $20M.

[David Nieporent]

One can criticize any of her particular spending decisions as a bad idea, but why the fuck would a candidate want to close a campaign with a surplus? Particularly a candidate that was trailing? It's not a business; the goal isn't to turn a profit. Why would a candidate want to leave any resource on the table rather than utilizing it to try to win?

[Bwaaah]

Phrases I didn't hear this cycle:

"Follow the money."
"Money buys elections."
"We have to get the special interests out of politics."
"Super PACs are evil."

[Sarcastr0]

Do you think liberals are no longer supportive of campaign finance reform?

[Bwaaah]

"Campaign finance reform"
"Immigration reform"
"Criminal justice reform"

Do you think you asked a genuinely intelligible question?

Speaking personally, I'm for reforming everything.

[Sarcastr0]

None of those terms is a doge - they're all about solving a particular problem.
And I think the problems are pretty well laid out in your examples here.

The specific implementation of the solution is not part of the term.

Campaign finance reform - the problem is the financing of campaigns. You are aware of the problem, based on your quotes above.

What's your issue?

[Bwaaah]

"The specific implementation of the solution is not part of the term."

And that's why the question is useless. If you don't specify what "reform" actually means, you will not have established any material consensus in fact. Your question effectively becomes, "Do you think liberals are no longer supportive of change?"

Jeez, Louise. You got anything more meaningful than that?

I remember a headline years ago: "If 70% of Americans Want Immigration Reform, How Come Congress Can't Deliver?"

Answer: Because 35% want reduced immigration and 35% want increased immigration. The word "reform" is a pretty useless term of political art that creates an unestablished pretense of consensus.

[Brett Bellmore]

OK, now that I've actually seen the statement, the obvious question is, was she high on something? Drunk? Tranked to the gills?

She does not come across as being in a normal mental state, that's for sure.