The RPG Duelling League
Social Forums => Discussion => Topic started by: Dunefar on January 01, 2014, 04:51:58 AM
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For all your political discussion needs. Keep it civil and try and respect other people's opinions, even when you disagree.
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Since I couldn't find you in chat, Jim, a couple of legal questions related to abortion clinic buffer zone stuff going on in the Supreme Court:
At what distance can protesters even be on private property? I guess I don't understand the concept of being able to harass people in at a private business and how that is legal in any way. Secondly, what behavior would constitute suing for harassment as opposed to protesting? Watching videos of people outside of abortion clinics makes me think that some of their behavior is surely illegal.
Not really interested in debating about abortion, I am just not sure I understand the necessity of an abortion clinic buffer zone.
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Some of their behavior is definitely illegal, and the protesters have zero rights on private property. Go on private property without permission (implied or explicit) and you're trespassing. The property owners do not need a reason to get you out, and need not respect your desire to speak at all. The sidewalk, however, is a public forum, and that's what we're concerned with. Massachusetts' current buffer zone law replaced a more nuanced law that allowed protesters closer specifically because protesters kept doing illegal things. Massachusetts' law is in place specifically because this is a venue where allowing protected speech to be close creates a unique security concern, seeing as how abortion protesters keep breaking the law, threatening and assaulting patients and staff. This isn't theoretical, of course; before the law was in place all those things happened with great regularity. Anyway, nothing stops police from arresting lawbreakers, but the point of the buffer zone is to remove the high probability that the crime will be committed.
My thoughts on this are that this law is clearly legal even though it engages in what in any other circumstance would be unconstitutional viewpoint-based discrimination. I see this as no different than any other police action taken to keep protesters from physically molesting the target of their protest. It's a public safety measure based not on approval or disapproval of a specific viewpoint - which would be unconstitutional in the extreme - but based on the professional judgment of law enforcement and legislators that this type of activity at this present time attracts violent protests that the government has the right - and many would say the responsibility - to prevent.
So the question as I see it is, is this law somehow different from parade security because the law is ostensibly permanent? Does the permanence of the law create a constitutional violation even though the same behavior from police - creating a buffer zone - in response to a specific threat at a specific time would be fine? Or is it not problematic that the law is "permanent" because whenever a court decides it is no longer necessary it will be voided as unconstitutional?
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http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/education/oklahoma-teacher-need-reaches-crisis-point/article_5dddfa51-1e26-598c-b489-5d3884cd354b.html
This has been a pretty consistent problem in my state. Pretty much everyone in teaching knows that if you're a good teacher, just go to Texas/Kansas/Colorado.
"This is a reflection of a toxic political climate where education is considered a liability, not an investment, by many of our policy makers," Snow said. "This is a self-imposed crisis due to a lack of leadership that should concern us all."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/01/23/huckabee-dems-think-women-cant-control-their-libido/
Gee golly, without good ol' Mike Huckabee to tell me about the Democrats' belief that I can't control my libido, I'd just be lost. Women vote dispropotionaly Democrat because they can't see that sweet Mike is fighting a war FOR us. Better tighten your chastity belt, ladiez.
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Generally that sort of thing is offensive to women, I imagine. "You don't need those pills, and if you do you are a slut!" is the logical corollary to what he said. It is kind of amazing considering how very many women have used/still used birth control.
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Not to mention framing contraception - and insurance coverage thereof - as an issue with which only women should be concerned. Takes two to tango, after all, and to the best of my knowledge there aren't any generally available, effective, non-permanent means of birth control which men can use. Yet, anyway.
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Jenna about fell over laughing when I showed her Huckabee's comments there. The first thing she responded with was "Is he not aware that so many women take birth control just to regulate their cycles? Which is a very real and very major health benefit?"
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Not to mention framing contraception - and insurance coverage thereof - as an issue with which only women should be concerned. Takes two to tango, after all, and to the best of my knowledge there aren't any generally available, effective, non-permanent means of birth control which men can use. Yet, anyway.
Not medical ones, anyway. And to be fair people like Huckabee tend to oppose distribution of condoms too, for similar(ly stupid) reasons.
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I'm not noticing that he said anything of substance. All he did was set up a straw-man -- the Dems said this vile thing (which they didn't, as far as I know!), we're really on your side!
Never mind the fact that the Republicans are "fighting a war for women." Oh, yes. That makes me feel so much more empowered, thank you.
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Well they have to fight it for you, women aren't allowed to fill combat roles.
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So...my sister sent me this:
http://www.torontolife.com/informer/people/2014/02/11/avery-edison-toronto-airport/
Really Toronto?
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She got transferred to a female only jail. I have no idea if Canada typically jails people who return to the country after they overstay/violate a visa, the article doesn't talk about it. I assume you're more objecting to the treatment of edison/the policy of putting pre op prisoners in the male population?
She was going to end up in protective custody regardless as a high profile prisoner. Putting her in Max is more than a little eye raising though, let alone the gender issues there.
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Mostly the complete disorganization and "we have no idea what to do in this situation." Usually security people receive training for how to be sensitive of various minorities. (Stuff like "don't ask the muslim man to remove his turban").
Although, where the situation ended up is a bit ridiculous too (maximum security solitary is a bit crazy for someone who overstayed a visitor's visa).
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26400035
So...Russia is invading the Ukraine?
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Basically, yes. Crimea (the peninsula near the Russia/Ukraine border that the Russians have invaded) is strategically valuable because so much of Russia's natural gas exports go through it to get to the west, and after rebels overthrew the country's Russia-backed president/dictator last week, Putin apparently decided that the risk of the new government aligning itself with the EU was too great. Militarily there is fuck-all anybody can do about this because (a) the Ukrainian government has been in power for all of a week and doesn't have nearly the legitimacy/unity to go toe-to-toe with Russia; (b) the Crimean population has enough Russians in it to mean the invasion isn't entirely unpopular, which opens a whole other can of worms including the possibility of civil war; and (c) it's motherfucking Russia, they're huge, nuclear and noticeably crazy, nobody wants to actually go to war with them.
The best weapon the EU (and Obama) has against this is the threat of medium-term economic sanctions; Russia depends on those natural-gas exports for a lot of its economy now. And with the fracking boom in full swing, the US could pick up some of the slack caused by cutting them out of the market. We'll see how it plays out.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/03/05/alabama-abortion-bills/6073883/
"The other bill, sponsored by GOP Rep. Kurt Wallace of Maplesville, Ala., would have the same 48-hour waiting period requirement but also would require that a woman seeking abortion because of a defect that would cause death shortly after birth be counseled on hospice options for the baby if the mother were to carried the fetus to term."
ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?? Pre-natal hospice counselling and 48 hour waiting period for non-viable fetuses? Fuck ya'll and the horse you rode on.
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http://news.yahoo.com/high-court-voids-overall-contribution-limits-141339263--finance.html
Just gonna put this here.
On the one hand, it's just the overall maximum, not the maximum per candidate, but these things move along with baby steps. But it's not like people weren't finding ways around this anyway. Still. Run>fuck.dat
Also, why does Clarence Thomas look like Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man in the court drawing?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest.html
The second picture is mostly what I find interesting here.
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http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/exclusive-obama-defends-taliban-swap-says-hed-do-it-again-n124736
The article isn't really important as much as a placeholder, as it's related. So what do you all think about Obama deciding to do a prisoner swap with the Taliban? It's definitely a marked shift in US policy, if nothing else.
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To me this is not a big deal. Should have been done with less fanfare, but it was the right decision. I don't believe this will give added incentive to groups hostile to the US to try and kidnap soldiers, because that incentive has always been there. That they haven't been able to do so is a result of the tactics of the US' mideast war and occupation.
Regarding whether this is a change in policy...well that really depends whether you think of the Taliban as a terrorist organization or run-of-the-mill enemy combatants. Well, we started the war in Afghanistan to oust them from their legitimate (as far as these things go) hold on Afghani government. We did that in retaliation for them backing honest-to-god terrorists. To me that puts them in essentially the same category as the Iranian government. I think this exchange, then, has to be considered more like a run-of-the-mill swap of prisoners of war (which the US has done in the past) than like negotiating a hostage from a terrorist group.
Regarding Congress' role in the matter, and the fact that the executive branch seems to have violated US law by failing to give them their 30-day notice...well, Congress has a point there. To me, this is exactly the kind of thing Congress should threaten impeachment over. Impeachment is Congress' most important tool against executive overreach. I hope there aren't any members of Congress who are stupid enough to think following through with a threat of impeachment is a remotely good idea, but it doesn't bother me a bit that there have been threats.
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Here's something that's not getting much press yet: the federal budget is probably fucked again. Democrats pulled two appropriations bills (http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/reid-shelves-minibus-spending-bill-in-amendment-dispute/?dcz=) (i.e. the ones that actually say to the executive, "you get $1 billion for this program, $200 million for that one, etc.") because they don't have the votes to stop Republicans from attaching whatever amendments they want. Yes, there's technically a Democratic majority, but you may have heard of this election thing coming up in a few months, and enough of the red-state incumbents are so scared of getting railroaded out if they look like they care about the environment or income gaps or any of that other communist stuff that they'll vote with the GOP to kill things like the new greenhouse gas rules.
So what that means is that we're likely to get another budget standoff that gets resolved either with a "continuing resolution" where they extend this year's budget for another few months, or a shutdown. Joy.
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Surprised there's no discussion on this yet:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/30/politics/scotus-obamacare-analysis/
Supreme court ruled on the Hobby Lobby thing (where certain companies objected to having birth control pills in their healthcare plan). Sided with the companies.
So...a few notes.
1. Women get perscribed to take birth control pills for various non-contraceptive reasons. For instance, if you have an irregular period, you might be advised to take pills for a few months to help it normalize.
2. My favourite response to this was "welcome to America, where corporations are people and women are not."
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I've been trying not to think about it. Expect SCOTUS to side with big business in all circumstances, but good lord.
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I have a lot to say about it, and I'll say it when I can get it all down on paper without swearing and punching things.
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The logic behind the decision has a lot to do with consistency, in that the kinds of acknowledgements and concessions made for nonprofits and religious organizations might also need to apply to for-profits, yes?
The greater argument for why this is even a conversation we're having -- whether the <5 majority owners of a corporation can decide what's available to their thousands of employees, despite the law -- ... back to healthcare.
You would think the part where there are two third-parties involved in this process in between companies and employees (insurance and the government), plus the interests of public health, would have some impact on how much control a corporation would have on deciding what can and can't be done.
But you know, this whole thing makes me angry and irrational.
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The logic behind the decision has a lot to do with consistency, in that the kinds of acknowledgements and concessions made for nonprofits and religious organizations might also need to apply to for-profits, yes?
Oh well...
I go to church sometimes. Can I get tax exemptions now?
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So I was thinking I would probably throw out the results of the Scotland dealio when it popped up, but this bubbled to the surface on Reddit today.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/17/pf/college/occupy-wall-street-student-loan-debt/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
This is exactly the kind of subversive modern counter culture response that I was hoping to see out of Occupy, but it is very differently than I had expected.
So from years ago when it started and people were asking what they hope to achieve? Here is the kind of thing that it is.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oqyrflOQFc
Saw this link, had to unfriend a dude. Like holy shit for starters those two things are not mutually exclusive. Argh. Angry. Grefter come be angry at it for me, can't be angry enough.
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(http://fox.mmgn.com/Lib/Images/News/normal/tim-cahill-returns-on-the-aussie-fifa-14-cover-1100356.jpg)
These are the pooping faces this video made me have.
Allude to well researched data figures. Dismiss them without showing any evidence. Quote personal research without showing figures or showing proof of peer review.
Clearly this data I haven't presented and first wave feminism shows that there is nothing socially pressuring or trending women towards roles that are lower paying or under appreciated. Also lol but otherwise why would capitalism????.?.? The invisible hand would make everyone hire females because it 100% ignores personal biases and hiring patterns. #merica #landofthefee #youcannevertakemyfeifdom #thisishowmyFreedomWorks
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Also lol but otherwise why would capitalism????.?.? The invisible hand would make everyone hire females because it 100% ignores personal biases and hiring patterns.
It's been a while but I think that did happen too! Like, when the unemployment numbers started to fall again after their peak in 2010, most of the people who didn't get jobs again were dudes.
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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/supreme-court-pregnancy-discrimination-peggy-young-ups
More evidence of feminism's final victory. Don't make me talk about it. It makes me angry.
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http://www.okcfox.com/story/26714783/oklahoma-county-waiting-on-official-mandate-for-same-sex-marriage
Welp. We'll see what happens!
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http://newsok.com/same-sex-marriage-now-legal-in-oklahoma/article/5349007
And thus did Oklahoma & Utah get gay marriage before Michigan. The US is weird sometimes.
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Virginia's governors are not covering themselves in glory, but seriously now. What did people expect from Terry fuckin Mcauliffe?
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So...this editorial does border on "crazy liberal" at points, especially in the second half, but the part about the civil war issues bleeding into the reconstruction are pretty interesting.
http://weeklysift.com/2014/08/11/not-a-tea-party-a-confederate-party/
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So...Ferguson.
They have decided not to press charges; there will not be a trial against the police officer.
Meanwhile, people donated $400k to the police officer.
http://www.khou.com/story/news/2014/08/27/nearly-400k-raised-online-for-ferguson-cop-who-fatally-shot-teen/14667573/
EDIT: and apparently it's pretty rare for a grand jury to do what it did in this case (refuse to bring a case to trial)
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ferguson-michael-brown-indictment-darren-wilson/
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It's very strange not to bring charges against him. Even reading his testimony, it seems like there's enough to question to warrant bringing the question to trial.
He's still under investigation at the federal level, however, and I can only hope they can be impartial enough to escape state/local politics and move forward with the formal trial.
I do, of course, acknowledge that I know next to nothing about the case at hand. I've read the transcripts of yesterday's proceedings as well as the medical reports, but I don't know nearly enough to parse it with any certainty.
I do know that I'm getting really annoyed with the partisan politics drawing a straight line between conservatives and liberals on issues of race, guns, and the police force. It's especially alarming how many people who self-identify as conservative are crowing about the victory and the police officer being judged innocent which... just... I don't even.
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Yeah. This was just a horribly disappointing (but completely predictable) outcome. Been feeling a lot of burn out on political stuff lately myself because it just seems like no real good anywhere lately.
ETA: Really dislike the "Prosecutor" in this case. There's a reason that 70,000 people in the area surrounding Ferguson signed a petition asking him to recuse himself. Just based on his own familial history should have been enough of a disqualifier, but there so many questionable things he said that made it clear whom he was really fighting for.
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This is why I am hoping (in vain) that federal inquiry can make headway where local courts can't.
I would dearly like to know what inside interpretations came about to mean that conflicting medical reports and inconsistent witness testimony don't qualify for indictment.
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Yeah, hoping against hope that the DOJ doesn't fail yet again, but man they have a horrendous track record overall.
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http://www.swoknews.com/local/questions-raised-after-jail-inmates-death
My friend from high school posted on Facebook about her cousin being tasered (and subsequently dying) while singing traditional Native hymns in a jail cell in the local jail. The lying Lawton police of course say nothing of the sort happened.
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Welcome to club of killing natives in custody via abuse! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_deaths_in_custody) Locally we stick to less technological methods though, less tazers and more beatings.
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Let's distract ourselves from the utter horribleness of the American "intelligence" and "law enforcement" communities with the knowledge that Ted Cruz is still a whiny little baby. (http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/ted-cruz-does-it-again-113560.html)
Short version: He couldn't handle the fact that the budget Congress passed over the weekend doesn't block Obama's dastardly plan to not deport millions of people, and refused to let the vote proceed on an expedited schedule (which requires consent from the entire Senate, without objection). That forced them to stay in DC for an extra day before adjourning for the rest of 2014, in order to go through the full list of procedural votes necessary to pass a major spending bill. Harry Reid decided that as long as they were in town, the Democrats might as well pass a bunch of Obama's nominees that they hadn't had time for in the past few weeks. Nominees that the Republicans were planning to block once they took over the Senate in January. Whoops.
And of course he still couldn't attach a single word on immigration. Dipshit.
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/justice-department-announces-reversal-on-litigating-transgen?utm_term=.huEXWgzqM#.jjvLneA9W
Now you can fire people for being LGBT. One down.
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Yeah. This was just a horribly disappointing (but completely predictable) outcome. Been feeling a lot of burn out on political stuff lately myself because it just seems like no real good anywhere lately.
ETA: Really dislike the "Prosecutor" in this case. There's a reason that 70,000 people in the area surrounding Ferguson signed a petition asking him to recuse himself. Just based on his own familial history should have been enough of a disqualifier, but there so many questionable things he said that made it clear whom he was really fighting for.
And let's follow up with today's facepalming news. Witness number 40 (aka the super racist one that was the big backer of the cop's testimony) has been revealed to have been a complete fraud. This was known prior to her testifying (twice!). The super questionable DA is saying that he is not planning on pressing charges at the moment.
"McCulloch said that he wanted "anyone who claimed to have witnessed anything... presented to the grand jury," and that he didn't have regrets about calling non-credible witnesses, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch."
This seems like it just be slam dunk for the DOJ (I'm...would also think that this at this point seems like a really obvious disbarment for McCulloch? A prosecutor calling a witness that is known to have completely lied and whose testimony hurts the side that he is supposed to be working on? I would hope that given everything else, it's would be blatantly clear that this attorney is actually working against his elected purpose).
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It's very, very rare for anyone to be prosecuted for perjury, and frankly, it's just as well. Eyewitness testimony is inherently very unreliable, and prosecuting someone for giving an account that is obviously wrong could have a serious chilling effect on witnesses, especially in a high profile case like this one. Even a person who actually witnessed an event could be convinced by reading intervening news accounts that it had played out differently than what they had thought.
What has bothered me about McCulloch from the start isn't his personal bias - it's that he has completely abdicated his job. He didn't want to prosecute. Well that's his call to make. So he should have just made it, and taken his lumps. Let the state appoint a special prosecutor over his objections, if they don't like his decision. And if they don't have the political will to do so, well, too bad. Instead, he decided he'd cover his own ass, inflamed the situation, and gave the whole world a front row seat to a biased process.
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I certainly disagree with the fact the perjury should not be prosecuted. Certainly the line should be drawn at this point (claiming to have seen something, been in a complete separate location, actually saw literally nothing, made a fake journal to attempt to prove that she was actually there). The key with the other eyewitnesses was that they were actually witnesses. If someone's testimony is 100% complete and utter fabrication (which this was), they should not be let off the hook.
I agree that McCulloch is the bigger problem, but juror 40 has done extreme amounts of damage.
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http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/12/16/witness_40_michael_brown_football_player_witness_unreliability_history_of.html
Looking at how Witness 40 was treated, the damage is in shaping the Fox News account of the shooting, probably not the grand jury's. But it certainly may have had some impact.
That said, I'm particularly hesitant about prosecuting for perjury in this instance, because this person really, really should not have been called in front of the grand jury in the first place. Once it became clear that this person had not seen the incident, was not remotely credible (and, possibly, has untreated bipolar disorder), and could only serve to inflame the situation or prejudice the process, McCulloch should have smiled and nodded and sent her on her way. He knew all that in advance of bringing her before the grand jury to testify under oath, of course. Prosecuting her would have the whiff of entrapment.
Of course, this reinforces my complaint about McCulloch's abdication of his job.
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I'm with NotMiki here. Prosecution for perjury should be uber-rare. Since prosecutors control who gets prosecuted, if perjury was prosecuted a lot, it'd likely be for defense witnesses anyway. Think of all the cases where one plucky side said something that seemed totally crazy at the time, and they were proven right 10-20 years later by new evidence. Let's not make people worry overmuch that they'll be prosecuted for saying what sounds false but is their genuine recollection that might get someone off, for the cases where rather than a police officer on trial, it's the reverse.
I'm down for perjury prosecution in the extremely rare case where there's clear evidence of a conspiracy to frame someone, or otherwise "I'm gonna lie in court" level stuff.
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Plus, we have to be practical here. If we're serious about prosecuting for perjury, we have to imprison every single cop who ever testified that shot an unarmed defendant/victim/whoever after they appeared to "reach for their waistband." Look for the phrase, cops use that specific language while testifying all the time. It's something cops say after they shot someone out of a completely irrational impulse, to make it seem like they had an objectively reasonable fear that the defendant/victim/whoever was about to pull out a gun. Even Darren Wilson said Michael Brown reached for his waistband...after being shot, running from the car, and presumably before reaching his hands out, or something. That doesn't even make sense! Actually, find me a cop who shot someone and DOESN'T use that exact phrase and I'll be shocked. It sounds so much better than "I freaked out and unloaded a clip."
Relatedly, wow does Darren Wilson's version of events sound like lies from front to back. I can accept that he may have acted in legitimate self-defense - much more likely, in my opinion, is that he shot Brown in objectively unreasonable self-defense, which would work out to something like voluntary manslaughter - but if it actually happened the way Wilson testified it did? I will eat my hat.
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I'm down for perjury prosecution in the extremely rare case where there's clear evidence of a conspiracy to frame someone, or otherwise "I'm gonna lie in court" level stuff.
I think you are actually agreeing with me! I'm not saying that perjury should often be taken to trial, but this is as straight up blatantly lying as you can get (And no, I'm not interested in mental state. You live in society, you play by the rules)
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/08/29/when-unarmed-men-reach-for-their-waistbands/
Apparently a lot of attention has been paid to the "reached for his waistband" testimony.
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Note to self: When travelling in the US always wear pants that fit or a good belt.
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As long as you don't get a very deep tan, you don't have to worry about that much.
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http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/olivier-tonneau/110115/charlie-hebdo-letter-my-british-friends
Interesting blog, not sure how much it can be trusted, but argues a few things about France's culture that apparently outsiders are missing in the whole Charlie Hebdo thing.
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http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/marissa-alexander-may-be-released
Marissa Alexander, who Stand Your Ground apparently never applied to, is finally released from jail.
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Awesome. Florida's judicial system is a cesspit. Hopefully this will lead to some reform.
And by reform I mean firing the judge in her initial trial.
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Alexander was prosecuted by Angela Corey
Clownshow alert.