Exactly. Especially considering the well-known history of gangsta rap and actual gangsters and gang violence, all too often involving actual murders, it seems to me that a reasonable juror should think that trying to hide behind "it was a rap" actually hurts his case rather than improving it!
But that has to be decided in court. And since the Supreme Court is the defendant here, they would have to recuse themselves, so what happens when it gets appealed high enough? :P
That's kind of dumb of this officer, actually. If the players' acts looked like an act of solidarity with a violent thug, that's probably because that's literally exactly what it was.
Football players are violent thugs, hired to commit acts of violence in a well-regulated setting. There's a long and well-documented culture of omerta that the football industry has built up of sweeping under the rug incidents where their violence strays off the field and they end up committing acts that would get people without the NFL's lawyers at their back put away for serious felony charges. It happens often enough that I'm a bit surprised a law enforcement officer would want to try to identify as being on their side!
What makes you think that what happened there was either 1) victimless or 2) consensual? Most prostitution is not the first by reason of not being the second.
That's a high bar to clear, but they're certainly making a valiant effort.
Yeah, this is what happens when you let an Objectivist run a company and then it gains some measure of success. It's what happens every time, and you'd think people would have learned by now.
Remember, kids, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Lately? Uber's been getting horrible press since Sandy tore up New York at the very least. Those regulations they're making such a big deal of flouting exist for a reason, and people have been catching on for quite a while now. Techdirt, unfortunately, has been way behind the curve on this one.
But let's just keep pretending they're awesome and 'disruptive' and actually improving things, and let them go on their merry way. What could possibly go wrong?
That didn't make sense in the 1980s; it makes even less sense today with all the pertinent records in digital form. There is no good reason why it should take even six days. Heck, if it wasn't for the need to physically connect various equipment, I would say six minutes is too long. But how in the world can anyone consider it reasonable for it to take a month and a half to set up an Internet account?!?
This doesn't sound like someone willing to accept the fact that the law is badly and broadly written, but more like someone who thinks the ACLU's demands are impossible to satisfy
Well, to be fair, that's not an unreasonable assumption given their history. They've gotten a lot better in the last few years, taking on a bunch of cases where they actually try to fix problems rather than making them worse, but when a good deal of their existence before the turn of the millennium was devoted to the sort of horrible stuff they're infamous for, like using a bad interpretation of the First Amendment to chip away at religious freedom at every turn, you can see why people in a conservative state like Arizona might be suspicious of their involvement.
"I can't believe that would happen," [antitrust expert Mark] Patterson told me on Monday. "I don't think there have been cases of anyone being broken up in years."
Patterson says that "there's never been a smoking gun" showing that Google has abused its dominance in the search or advertising markets to harm competitors
I know it's completely separate jurisdictions and legal systems, but even so, my first reaction to that was the same as The Economist's: if Microsoft couldn't be broken up, there's no way that Google clears the bar.
thus proving you are inhuman and inhumane and have fallen victim to the propaganda which values profit uber alles: you have lost your soul to mammon...
another capitalist pig who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing...
Seriously? Have you read anything at all that I've posted on here on that particular subject?!?
I didn't say he copied off of Church's work (ie. used it for inspiration); I said that he duplicated it (ie. did essentially the same thing.) Whether or not he knew about Alonzo Church's work already doesn't change that simple fact, so what exactly is it that you're finding fault with in my posting?
Yes, thank you! That's the thing that the people instigating all this don't understand. When you try to turn a violent thug into a martyr, it does not improve things no matter which way things turn out. It didn't work with Trayvon Martin, and it doesn't work now. Yes, there are some problems with policing in this country, but the people trying to call attention to it are exacerbating the problems instead of trying to fix them in a civilized way!
Re: "these police who did this are part of the 'us'"-- Are you sure?
...which of course would see no ill effects if a major riot broke out a few miles away. Because chaotic societal disturbances always stay neatly confined to the arbitrary divisions we created in more peaceful times, right?
The state will always and ever be the greatest threat to mankind. This is the primary principle our founding fathers of the United States built our system of government on.
You lose all credibility when you pull out a line like that.
Yes, the Founding Fathers established a highly minimalist state. Do you remember what happened then? It failed miserably, very quickly, because they were too clever for their own good and ended up creating a government that was incapable of governing. It was called the Articles of Confederation, and it ended up being nothing more than a footnote in history.
So they went back to the drawing board and greatly increased the power of the state for their second version. That one, American Government v2.0, was the Constitution, and it ended up as perhaps the single greatest success in the history of governance.
History tells us that there is a far worse threat to mankind than the state, and that is the absence of the state. It seems I have to keep repeating this because people who can't see past one degree of cause and effect keep making the same mistakes, so here I go again:
Power Exists. Period. Power is derived from resources, including people, money, natural resources, military might, and social influence, but in the end, it's all different forms of power, and it exists one way or another.
Power always ends up getting concentrated in the hands of a few people at the top. Whether we're talking about a nation, a social club, a business, a family, or a church, there are decision makers at the top, and people below them. Beyond a certain level of size, intermediate levels of decision makers get added, and the whole thing replicates itself on a smaller scale. It's the fundamental social pattern of human nature, as inviolable as the laws of physics.
When that doesn't happen, the organization falls apart. Perhaps the most notable example in recent memory is the Occupy movement, which is remarkable for having so much in the way of resources available to them, and yet utterly failing to accomplish anything of significance. A good deal of the blame for that lies in their conscious attempt to buck the fundamental pattern of human nature and be a "leaderless organization". That doesn't work, never has, never will.
And when that doesn't happen on a large scale (city to nation size) and whoever was in power is no longer in power, that power doesn't simply vanish into happy sparkles, rainbows and more liberty for everyone, no matter what idealistic nonsense the libertarians fill your head with. What you get in the real world is a power vacuum, and if you think that makes for a better society than you'd get under even the very worst of tyrants, I invite you to spend some time in Somalia.
Only two types of people claim otherwise: those who don't understand this principle, and those who do, and want to create one. It's hard to say which is a greater threat.
Does it? The flow of the sentences clearly connects "Police taunting and talking smack to the protestors" to "police brutality." What takes effort is forcibly disconnecting them once the implications of what was just said are pointed out.
It about the fact that the price tag associated with preventing such a riot is far more costly than the loss it will prevent.
Not to the police, it isn't.
Bear in mind, it was the Ferguson police doing this. Not Feds, not even the State of Missouri, not outsiders. The rabble-rousers have been trying to paint this as some sort of "us vs. them" scenario, but these police who did this are part of the "us"! They're people who live there, whose families and friends live there, and they would all be in danger if rioting broke out.
If it was your judgment call to make, given the same understanding of those simple facts, can you honestly say you'd have made it differently?
It's nothing like saying that, and I'm not sure what leap of logic leads you to that conclusion. What I said was that making sure a riot with immense costs to both property and life does not break out is better than letting it happen.
On the post: Supreme Court Quotes Eminem As It Explores The Difference Between Free Speech And 'True Threats'
Re: We don't need to get into mindset
On the post: Supreme Court Quotes Eminem As It Explores The Difference Between Free Speech And 'True Threats'
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: St. Louis Police Claim It's Their 'First Amendment' Rights Not To Protect Football Players Who Supported Protestors
Football players are violent thugs, hired to commit acts of violence in a well-regulated setting. There's a long and well-documented culture of omerta that the football industry has built up of sweeping under the rug incidents where their violence strays off the field and they end up committing acts that would get people without the NFL's lawyers at their back put away for serious felony charges. It happens often enough that I'm a bit surprised a law enforcement officer would want to try to identify as being on their side!
On the post: Brazen Young Facebook Pimpette Nabbed By Police After She Bragged About Her Crimes On Facebook
Re: Victimless crime
On the post: Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Arizona's Revenge Porn Law Over First Amendment Concerns
Re: Re:
On the post: If You Don't Mind A Little Perjury, You Can Convict Two People For The Same Crime
Re:
On the post: Ride Sharing Services Lead Taxi Medallion Values To Plummet (And That's A Good Thing)
Re: Uber's earned that bad press
Yeah, this is what happens when you let an Objectivist run a company and then it gains some measure of success. It's what happens every time, and you'd think people would have learned by now.
Remember, kids, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
On the post: Ride Sharing Services Lead Taxi Medallion Values To Plummet (And That's A Good Thing)
But let's just keep pretending they're awesome and 'disruptive' and actually improving things, and let them go on their merry way. What could possibly go wrong?
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: To go along with the Title II idea...
Are you kidding me?
That didn't make sense in the 1980s; it makes even less sense today with all the pertinent records in digital form. There is no good reason why it should take even six days. Heck, if it wasn't for the need to physically connect various equipment, I would say six minutes is too long. But how in the world can anyone consider it reasonable for it to take a month and a half to set up an Internet account?!?
On the post: Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Arizona's Revenge Porn Law Over First Amendment Concerns
Well, to be fair, that's not an unreasonable assumption given their history. They've gotten a lot better in the last few years, taking on a bunch of cases where they actually try to fix problems rather than making them worse, but when a good deal of their existence before the turn of the millennium was devoted to the sort of horrible stuff they're infamous for, like using a bad interpretation of the First Amendment to chip away at religious freedom at every turn, you can see why people in a conservative state like Arizona might be suspicious of their involvement.
On the post: Forget EU's Toothless Vote To 'Break Up' Google; Be Worried About Nonsensical 'Unbiased Search' Proposal
I know it's completely separate jurisdictions and legal systems, but even so, my first reaction to that was the same as The Economist's: if Microsoft couldn't be broken up, there's no way that Google clears the bar.
On the post: Prosecutor Lays The Blame For The Ferguson Debacle At The Feet Of 'Social Media'
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Seriously? Have you read anything at all that I've posted on here on that particular subject?!?
On the post: EU Parliament Wants To Break Up Google... Because It's Big & American Or Something
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
On the post: The Ferguson Grand Jury Decision Proves 'The System' Still 'Works'
Re: Re: Re: Re: 280 lb man charging at a cop
On the post: Prosecutor Lays The Blame For The Ferguson Debacle At The Feet Of 'Social Media'
Re: "these police who did this are part of the 'us'"-- Are you sure?
On the post: Prosecutor Lays The Blame For The Ferguson Debacle At The Feet Of 'Social Media'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
You lose all credibility when you pull out a line like that.
Yes, the Founding Fathers established a highly minimalist state. Do you remember what happened then? It failed miserably, very quickly, because they were too clever for their own good and ended up creating a government that was incapable of governing. It was called the Articles of Confederation, and it ended up being nothing more than a footnote in history.
So they went back to the drawing board and greatly increased the power of the state for their second version. That one, American Government v2.0, was the Constitution, and it ended up as perhaps the single greatest success in the history of governance.
History tells us that there is a far worse threat to mankind than the state, and that is the absence of the state. It seems I have to keep repeating this because people who can't see past one degree of cause and effect keep making the same mistakes, so here I go again:
Power Exists. Period. Power is derived from resources, including people, money, natural resources, military might, and social influence, but in the end, it's all different forms of power, and it exists one way or another.
Power always ends up getting concentrated in the hands of a few people at the top. Whether we're talking about a nation, a social club, a business, a family, or a church, there are decision makers at the top, and people below them. Beyond a certain level of size, intermediate levels of decision makers get added, and the whole thing replicates itself on a smaller scale. It's the fundamental social pattern of human nature, as inviolable as the laws of physics.
When that doesn't happen, the organization falls apart. Perhaps the most notable example in recent memory is the Occupy movement, which is remarkable for having so much in the way of resources available to them, and yet utterly failing to accomplish anything of significance. A good deal of the blame for that lies in their conscious attempt to buck the fundamental pattern of human nature and be a "leaderless organization". That doesn't work, never has, never will.
And when that doesn't happen on a large scale (city to nation size) and whoever was in power is no longer in power, that power doesn't simply vanish into happy sparkles, rainbows and more liberty for everyone, no matter what idealistic nonsense the libertarians fill your head with. What you get in the real world is a power vacuum, and if you think that makes for a better society than you'd get under even the very worst of tyrants, I invite you to spend some time in Somalia.
Only two types of people claim otherwise: those who don't understand this principle, and those who do, and want to create one. It's hard to say which is a greater threat.
On the post: Prosecutor Lays The Blame For The Ferguson Debacle At The Feet Of 'Social Media'
Re: Re: Re: More BS
On the post: Prosecutor Lays The Blame For The Ferguson Debacle At The Feet Of 'Social Media'
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Not to the police, it isn't.
Bear in mind, it was the Ferguson police doing this. Not Feds, not even the State of Missouri, not outsiders. The rabble-rousers have been trying to paint this as some sort of "us vs. them" scenario, but these police who did this are part of the "us"! They're people who live there, whose families and friends live there, and they would all be in danger if rioting broke out.
If it was your judgment call to make, given the same understanding of those simple facts, can you honestly say you'd have made it differently?
On the post: Prosecutor Lays The Blame For The Ferguson Debacle At The Feet Of 'Social Media'
Re: Re:
As I keep saying in posts on here, you have to think beyond a single degree of cause and effect.
On the post: Prosecutor Lays The Blame For The Ferguson Debacle At The Feet Of 'Social Media'
Re: Re:
Are you saying it's not?
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