Posting Towards Gomorrah

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by sgtclub
NTTAWWT

Indeed. FWIW, I was far more worried about the Kennedy cousins in that particular lockerroom. Those dudes pump out a few dozen sets of 400 pound bench presses and the adrenalin is flowing......the next thing you know, you are pinned to a sophmore named Chip.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Funny. I read the statute (for the second time, as it happens, having been accused by other people with a similar lack of basic reading comprehension of violating it) and I didn't see any prohibition on fantasizing about time travel.

Where's my pudding?

Not being a prosecutor, I will make the admittedly amatuerish assertion that it seems to me to turn on what is a "threat". Given that her general behaviour in re the President, in any other context, could likely be considered stalking, and given the nature of her remark, fantasy notwithstanding, and my understanding of the intent of the statute, I am not sure its quite as far fetched as you assert by your typically dismissively conclusory post would suggest.

As for your pudding comment, I would have been interested in whether your lawyer could have used the pudding defense if you had the seen the wrong side of that statute, but, you should thank RT that you didn't have to test it.....it doesn't seem to hold water, npi, to me.


Does www.waybackmachine.com cache this board? ETA: THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT SITE. Does anyone know the site that keeps historical caches of the whole of the interwebs????

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Spanky
But maybe I am wrong on this; do any of the conservatives on this board think there is a less militantly partisan left wing ideologue on this board than Ty? Penske, Hank, Slave, Sgt, Bilmore?


You are using an anonymous source. Well there is a surprise.

Who you calling conservative?

My answer is no.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Not being a prosecutor, I will make the admittedly amatuerish assertion that it seems to me to turn on what is a "threat". Given that her general behaviour in re the President, in any other context, could likely be considered stalking, and given the nature of her remark, fantasy notwithstanding, and my understanding of the intent of the statute, I am not sure its quite as far fetched as you assert by your typically dismissively conclusory post would suggest.

As for your pudding comment, I would have been interested in whether your lawyer could have used the pudding defense if you had the seen the wrong side of that statute, but, you should thank RT that you didn't have to test it.....it doesn't seem to hold water, npi, to me.


Does www.waybackmachine.com cache this board? ETA: THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT SITE. Does anyone know the site that keeps historical caches of the whole of the interwebs????

She said she has "fantasized" about killing Bush as an infant.

My "typically dismissive conclusory post" was based upon a simple reading of the plain language of the statute. There was not even any need to fall back on the canon of statutory interpretation that an ambiguity in a criminal statute must be construed against the state. There was no ambiguity.

Now I realize that your experience with the criminal law goes back a few years. Nonetheless, I would be very interested to see how you could put her actual words into the actual proscription of the statute.

Prove me wrong. I am open to your persuasion.

[Penske_Account]

From the WSJ's book review page last week, reviewing Geoffrey Robertson's new book "The Tyrannicide Brief":

As Charles II looked on in approval, [John] Cooke [the prosecutor of King Charles I of England] was hanged slowly until he passed out and was then revived to watch as his genitals were sliced off (later to be fed to stray dogs). A length of his bowel was yanked from his body, pulled before his face and set alight as he bled to death in unspeakable agony.

While I don't think that this is torture per se, I think it probably falls close to the line....maybe they should have refrained from lighting the length of bowel on fire......


seems a tad bit rougher than waterboarding though, no?

[taxwonk]

This review of a new book by Judge Richard Posner suggests that we need to conduct a balancing test before tossing aside the Constitution in the name of defending the nation against the terrorist threat:

That is why Judge Richard Posner is such a welcome voice in the national conversation about balancing freedom against security. Posner, the brilliant and prolific federal appeals court judge, is renowned—and not always in a good way—for putting a price tag on everything. But whatever quibbles liberals may have with his law-and-economics approach to anything from rape to unwanted babies, they should celebrate the intellectual rigor he brings to the problem of civil liberties in wartime. In his new book, Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency, Judge Posner approaches the wartime civil-liberties problem in precisely the manner the Bush administration will not: with a meticulous, usually dispassionate, weighing of what is gained against what is lost each time the government engages in data-mining, indefinite detentions, or the suppression of free speech.

Now, as you all know, I am no fan of Posner, and I don't agree with many of the conclusions he reaches in this book. Nevertheless, he does at least engage in the exercise of balancing costs against benefits.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
From the WSJ's book review page last week, reviewing Geoffrey Robertson's new book "The Tyrannicide Brief":

As Charles II looked on in approval, [John] Cooke [the prosecutor of King Charles I of England] was hanged slowly until he passed out and was then revived to watch as his genitals were sliced off (later to be fed to stray dogs). A length of his bowel was yanked from his body, pulled before his face and set alight as he bled to death in unspeakable agony.

While I don't think that this is torture per se, I think it probably falls close to the line....maybe they should have refrained from lighting the length of bowel on fire......


seems a tad bit rougher than waterboarding though, no?

Damn, this is fine pie!

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by taxwonk
She said she has "fantasized" about killing Bush as an infant.

My "typically dismissive conclusory post" was based upon a simple reading of the plain language of the statute. There was not even any need to fall back on the canon of statutory interpretation that an ambiguity in a criminal statute must be construed against the state. There was no ambiguity.

Now I realize that your experience with the criminal law goes back a few years. Nonetheless, I would be very interested to see how you could put her actual words into the actual proscription of the statute.

Prove me wrong. I am open to your persuasion.

Without actually prosecuting her, it would be impossible for me to prove you wrong. I will let you know how my petition to Justice to become a junior prosecutor goes....

However, it seems to me, without having the benefit of reading the full passage in the book (which you do not either) that if the fantasizing, in context, could be construed to imply an actual threat (and/or perhaps if the recipient of the fantasized murder was actually threatened by her publication) then there could be grounds to prosecute.

Of course, if you read my original post more closely, I wrote, "I wonder if Gonzalez and the attorneys at Justice will do their appointed jobs and prosecute her", implicit in that "wonder" was that they would need to actually have a case to make, requiring a job to be done, which would have to be predicated on the actual language in the book, which, if you read carefully, does not come out until September 19th. I don't have a time machine, anymore, and as a result, I have not gone into the future and read her book. However, I am wondering. I am not asserting that she indisputably violated the statute. Yet.

On the other hand, you seem hell bent on giving her a pass no matter what the language says, which makes sense from the penultimate most militantly partisan left wing ideologue on the board, and a person, who, arguably, may have violated that statute himself.....,,,maybe you think your spirited defense will get you Seven Minutes of Heaven with Ms. Sheehan??

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Damn, this is fine pie!

Another zero. Spanky, perhaps Wonk has passed Ty?

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by taxwonk
This review of a new book by Judge Richard Posner suggests that we need to conduct a balancing test before tossing aside the Constitution in the name of defending the nation against the terrorist threat:



Now, as you all know, I am no fan of Posner, and I don't agree with many of the conclusions he reaches in this book. Nevertheless, he does at least engage in the exercise of balancing costs against benefits.

Can you cite the actual evidence that Dahlia Lithwick has that Bush has not engaged in a balancing of the costs and benefits? Has she been in every meeting with him where the issues/policies are discussed? Is she in his head? This is more typical militant left wing reconfirming ideological material.

As for Posner, he is just bitter at being passed over for the court.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
I know many conservative Democrats that only vote Democrat in the general election because they place the social issues above all others. They won't vote for a legislator that will vote in a majority leader who is pro-life, no matter what the individual legislator's views. Yet they are much more centrist than you are. They just understand how the system works.

And that's fine. But yellow-dog Democrats don't pretend to be centrists.

For you to talk about killing centrism, considering your placement on the political spectrum, and ideological rigidity, is really ripe. Except for maybe Tax Wonk you are the most liberal member on this board.

I think you misunderstand my views, but I also don't think you care.

You only read stuff that reconfirms your already preconceived notions.

I've told you otherwise, but again I don't think you care.

You say you have voted Republican, but Michael Moore has made the same claim.

Are you calling me a liar or are you calling me a fat?

I can't imagine a single issue you would support a Republican on.

I voted to the right of you in the last California gubernatorial election, which only shows that you don't have a good imagination or a good memory.

At the national level, I have very little fondness for Bush, Frist, and DeLay. Since they've set the tone the last several years, that leaves me pretty unhappy with the GOP. At the state and local level, and in the specific area of law in which I practice, I frequently find myself on the side of the GOP. Since we don't post much about those areas here -- indeed, I'm not going to post at all about my area of practice -- you'll just have to wait until we have a drink to find how wrong you are.

Finally, I didn't pretend to be a centrist. You did.

You are using an anonymous source. Well there is a surprise.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
I don't care what the situation. If I say it once, I will say it a hundred times, your definition above is how you find the Median in basic mathematics. However, in statistics, especially in statistical analysis where you use sample groups, the median is not found using that system. The term "Median" is a much more expansive term than you seem to realize.

Statisticians pick seemingly random spots on the bell curve and call it the Median. I just don't trust it when people use the term.

Cite, please.

And let's just be clear. I'm not talking about sampling, since that's not what the data was. What are two different ways that you would determine the median income for the state of Michigan?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
I certainly respect and remain in awe of the sheer volume of reconfirming ideological material that Ty reads and sources. He is also a good writer, in a mechanical/grammatical sense, albeit a tad didactic. On the positive tip, if I had to be a militantly partisan left wing ideologue, I would rather be the most militantly partisan left wing ideologue than say the penultimate most militantly partisan left wing ideologue......it's like in Sixteen Candles when Molly Ringwald tries to boost Farmer Ted's woefull state of misery at his loserdom by pointing out that at least he is the King of the Geeks......

IRL, for those who have met him, does Ty wear one of those Che Guevara berets? That is how I picture him sometimes when I read his posts.

you really didn't like the "Ted William's frozen head" analogy?

[Hank Chinaski]

Say if you were starting up a country, what guidelines and sanctions would you create for advance fee fraud, check/money order scamming and fake banks?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Penske_Account

On the other hand, you seem hell bent on giving her a pass no matter what the language says, which makes sense from the penultimate most militantly partisan left wing ideologue on the board, and a person, who, arguably, may have violated that statute himself.....,,,maybe you think your spirited defense will get you Seven Minutes of Heaven with Ms. Sheehan??

yet you and I remind the board of the likelihood of Kennedys drowning women in the future, and while a prediction is not a threat, all* the Kennedy males are governemnt officials and the Kennedy males themselves die in about 50% of the drownings-

I ask you Penske, are you not violating the statute?




*within standard and accepted statistical error