And yet!, the judge apparently viewed those claims as having merit.
He decided to ignore basic morality in order to keep his kid out of prison. It may have worked, but now he is facing the natural consequences of behaving so despicably.
Stillwater:
I’m curious if there was any pushback on the sentencing prior to the victim’s letter to the defendant going viral? For some reason, that strikes me as an important aspect to the politics of the case. How many other rape cases have gone down just like this one without a bright light being shown on the actions of the court?
It's an interesting and depressing question.
And for the record, I completely understand the arguments for leniency presented to the court by Brock’s father. That he’s being personally attacked for making them seems like another level of injustice here. I mean, what’s a father to do in a situation like this? Advocate that his son spend more time in jail? His job is to defend his son, not determine legal guilt or length of the sentence when found guilty.
His job may be to defend his son, but no one said he had to display such profound moral idiocy in doing so. "20 minutes of action"?
I think there's a lot of precedent that suggests that when people lack a sensible course of action to control the risks they face, they will pursue a senseless course of action to control the risks they face.
Yeah. Even there are better examples of slides down that particular slippery slope, like the VanderSloot lawsuit against Mother Jones in Idaho from about a year back. It's less lurid, and the nutjob billionaire with a vendetta isn't a Silicon Valley quasi-celebrity[1], so it doesn't get the same kind of attention.
[1] Also, I gotta say, Thiel's a nutjob, but that doesn't mean his beef with Gawker isn't totally legit.
It may be; it may also be that we are simply more aware of people letting their own fears get out of hand, as @francis suggested. Then again, it may actually be that people are more scared and feel less safe because of the immediacy provided by social media. There are, among other things, a number[1] of very loud and proud neo-Nazis on Twitter, who get in people's face[2], and then those incidents are further signal-boosted by the whole viral process where people who see something awful screenshot it so their friends can also see that awful thing, and you can see why people might start thinking there are Klansmen coming through the walls.
[1] Probably thousands, which is tiny fraction of the system's user base, but even a few dozen committed buttheads yammering away at you feels like "a lot".
It's not just that. We now have "active shooter training" in schools and workplaces and weirdo lunatics shooting up public places--including college campuses--happens from time to time, and when it does it gets wall-to-wall media coverage. This all despite the fact that such shootings are really rare, in an absolute sense and even compared to other examples of lethal, criminal violence.
It's hard for me to fault "kids these days" for overreacting when they really don't seem to be overreacting particularly more than anybody else. I had to sit through a few hours of training on what to do when some dipstick shows up at my office with a gun, which really isn't a whole lot more useful than deciding that a Dominican is actually a Klansman.
Conservatives have often criticized left-wingers for boycotting Chick-fil-A in the wake of the company’s donations to anti-same-sex marriage groups and comments made by its CEO.
Money is speech, unless it's a liberal's money!
The rest of the article is actually not so bad, but the inability to distinguish between state action and private consumer choice, and reminding us of the flagrant hypocrisy of this little right-wing shibboleth, seriously didn't help it.
I don't think it's victim blaming. The people who get attacked at Trump rallies are victims, no matter whether they support him, oppose him or are neutral. The people who attack them are malefactors.
Trump is not a victim of the violence. Criticizing for contributing to an atmosphere where violence is acceptable is, thus, not victim blaming. It's possible to argue that protestors directing violence at Trump supporters at his rallies are "playing into his hands", but more importantly they aren't defending the norms of liberal democracy that he's threatening, they're attacking them even more directly than he is.
What they're doing cannot possibly work, any more than copulating for virginity can.
Often times, rules remain unwritten not because they are unimportant, but because nobody thought that it ever needed to be written down.
Other times, people make bad decisions on the spot and then make dishonest post hoc justifications in order to avoid admitting they made a mistake. Catholic heteronormativity aside, I don't think it's remotely hard to imagine Bishop McDevitt High School on Earth Prime admitting Aniya King in her tux, on the grounds that it violates neither the letter or spirt of the rules, because they're self-evidently there to enforce notions of formality and modesty that aren't violated.
I think it's probably clear from my other posts that I don't think the process-based argument is particularly interesting[1], but the assumption that the school here is acting transparently and in self-evident good faith is just that, an assumption, and not, IMO, the most plausible one.
[1] The high school on Earth Prime could be ignoring their well-known but unwritten rule, and that would be pretty cool!
It's just another piece of proof that social conservatism is all about hypocritical in-group signaling that has no basis in reality. It hardly merits refutation, substantive or otherwise.
The point was that any suggested change, anywhere, will result in pushback.
The pushback being described isn't so much against change as it is against some fraction of liberals being complete assholes. Some fraction of liberals being complete assholes is, well, not a change.
Just to be clear, I am taking no position on the relative merits of either side’s culture war beefs.
I'm not really, either. I just don't think the fact that some TV liberals are allegedly smug dicks, or the fact some liberal websites undeniably run clickbait garbage, makes the right-wing culture war response inevitable, let alone actually helpful for obtaining policies that conservatives want to see enacted.
The defense the DOJ is offering is that the failure to comply with the judge's orders resulted from a misunderstanding of those orders, rather than a deliberate attempt to disobey them or mislead the court. Ibid:
Hanen claims that the Justice Department attorneys intentionally deceived him by not mentioning the fact that the amount of time afforded to DACA beneficiaries had changed. The Justice Department claims that, at most, they misunderstood what Hanen was asking for. They believed that Hanen was only asking about the dates when DAPA and expanded DACA would be implemented, and not about the shift from two to three years. This distinction matters because, while deliberately misleading a court is a very serious ethical breach, misunderstanding a question is not.
I have nothing more than partisan bias to determine which side has the more plausible argument, so I'll refrain from debating that point.
It's very much not the impression that I get from them. If you look at the policy proposals he calls out, they're almost all silly nonsense like blocking the "Ground Zero Mosque", not longstanding conservative priorities like tax cuts, restricting abortion or protecting private gun ownership, or even new ones like rolling back Obamacare.
You could just as easily paint Mitt Romney as the face of the desired GOP based on what he said.
Jaybird: Conservatism as a brake, as a voice that says “let’s do things the way my parents did them (but not my grandparents, because that’s crazy talk)”. A conservatism whose job it is to lose every battle, but lose it slowly, and with dignity.
I can see why we’d want those people to be like that.
I just don’t see why they’d agree to it.
Well, I'm not sure why they'd agree to it either, but one way or another, they often do--at least rhetorically.
Especially when the alternative so often seems to boil down to losing slowly and without dignity.
aaron david: It isn’t that not holding the presidency is cool, it is that both sides have serious problems with how they are conducting business, and it shows up ticked for R’s and down ticket for D’s. But only one party is broken?
Yes, because Ds are a helluva lot more willing to content themselves with losing down-ticket than Rs are with losing up-ticket. When the roles were reversed, as they were not so long ago, so were the attitudes.
Michael Cain:
So, there’s no room for a conservative party that, for example, believes that the government shouldn’t be involved in paying for health care? Or that, at least, the federal government shouldn’t be involved in paying for health care?
If you're using @tod-kelly 's understanding of the word "conservative", as being opposed to radical change--then the answer seems to be, "Yes."
Whether this indicates a problem with the belief, or instead indicates a problem with @tod-kelly 's definition, is another matter entirely.
Political parties don't really work like that in our system. The Presidency actually does have a lot of importance in our system, and it's not like the Democrats contented themselves with their control of Congress after Dukakis went down in flames in '88. If nothing else, you will have elected Republican officials--Senators and Governors, mostly--who want a shot at stepping into the Oval Office, or at least serving as senior officials in a Republican Administration.
Finally, losing Presidential elections is just plain upsetting for most partisans. They really, really don't like it, and they don't want to do it. Maybe everybody should have more perspective on this sort of thing, but they don't. I'm skeptical that @tod-kelly 's set of proposals could be implemented, and if they were, that they would result in a viable party that many #NeverTrumpeters would be happy with, but they're a lot more plausible than large numbers of Republicans saying, "Hey, letting Democrats hold the White House indefinitely actually isn't a problem!"
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Brock Allen Turner: The Sort of Defendant Who is Spared “Severe Impact””
And yet!, the judge apparently viewed those claims as having merit.
He decided to ignore basic morality in order to keep his kid out of prison. It may have worked, but now he is facing the natural consequences of behaving so despicably.
"
It's an interesting and depressing question.
His job may be to defend his son, but no one said he had to display such profound moral idiocy in doing so. "20 minutes of action"?
On “Who is Afraid of the Ku Klux Klan?”
I think there's a lot of precedent that suggests that when people lack a sensible course of action to control the risks they face, they will pursue a senseless course of action to control the risks they face.
On “Morning Ed: United States {2016.06.08.W}”
Yeah. Even there are better examples of slides down that particular slippery slope, like the VanderSloot lawsuit against Mother Jones in Idaho from about a year back. It's less lurid, and the nutjob billionaire with a vendetta isn't a Silicon Valley quasi-celebrity[1], so it doesn't get the same kind of attention.
[1] Also, I gotta say, Thiel's a nutjob, but that doesn't mean his beef with Gawker isn't totally legit.
On “Who is Afraid of the Ku Klux Klan?”
"If you see something, say something."
"
It may be; it may also be that we are simply more aware of people letting their own fears get out of hand, as @francis suggested. Then again, it may actually be that people are more scared and feel less safe because of the immediacy provided by social media. There are, among other things, a number[1] of very loud and proud neo-Nazis on Twitter, who get in people's face[2], and then those incidents are further signal-boosted by the whole viral process where people who see something awful screenshot it so their friends can also see that awful thing, and you can see why people might start thinking there are Klansmen coming through the walls.
[1] Probably thousands, which is tiny fraction of the system's user base, but even a few dozen committed buttheads yammering away at you feels like "a lot".
[2] Often to the point of threats, doxxing, et c.
"
It's not just that. We now have "active shooter training" in schools and workplaces and weirdo lunatics shooting up public places--including college campuses--happens from time to time, and when it does it gets wall-to-wall media coverage. This all despite the fact that such shootings are really rare, in an absolute sense and even compared to other examples of lethal, criminal violence.
It's hard for me to fault "kids these days" for overreacting when they really don't seem to be overreacting particularly more than anybody else. I had to sit through a few hours of training on what to do when some dipstick shows up at my office with a gun, which really isn't a whole lot more useful than deciding that a Dominican is actually a Klansman.
On “Andrew Cuomo’s Anti-BDS Order: New York Agencies Must Divest from Companies Boycotting Israel | National Review”
Conservatives have often criticized left-wingers for boycotting Chick-fil-A in the wake of the company’s donations to anti-same-sex marriage groups and comments made by its CEO.
Money is speech, unless it's a liberal's money!
The rest of the article is actually not so bad, but the inability to distinguish between state action and private consumer choice, and reminding us of the flagrant hypocrisy of this little right-wing shibboleth, seriously didn't help it.
On “The Ethics of Political Violence”
I don't think it's victim blaming. The people who get attacked at Trump rallies are victims, no matter whether they support him, oppose him or are neutral. The people who attack them are malefactors.
Trump is not a victim of the violence. Criticizing for contributing to an atmosphere where violence is acceptable is, thus, not victim blaming. It's possible to argue that protestors directing violence at Trump supporters at his rallies are "playing into his hands", but more importantly they aren't defending the norms of liberal democracy that he's threatening, they're attacking them even more directly than he is.
What they're doing cannot possibly work, any more than copulating for virginity can.
On “A Wolf In A Penguin’s Clothing”
Often times, rules remain unwritten not because they are unimportant, but because nobody thought that it ever needed to be written down.
Other times, people make bad decisions on the spot and then make dishonest post hoc justifications in order to avoid admitting they made a mistake. Catholic heteronormativity aside, I don't think it's remotely hard to imagine Bishop McDevitt High School on Earth Prime admitting Aniya King in her tux, on the grounds that it violates neither the letter or spirt of the rules, because they're self-evidently there to enforce notions of formality and modesty that aren't violated.
I think it's probably clear from my other posts that I don't think the process-based argument is particularly interesting[1], but the assumption that the school here is acting transparently and in self-evident good faith is just that, an assumption, and not, IMO, the most plausible one.
[1] The high school on Earth Prime could be ignoring their well-known but unwritten rule, and that would be pretty cool!
On “Judge orders ‘intentionally deceptive’ DOJ lawyers to take remedial ethics classes – Washington Times”
I think if they deliberately lied or mislead the court (which is the judge's contention), then yes, they acted unethically.
I think if they misunderstood the judge's order and accidentally mislead the court (which is their contention), then no, they did not act unethically.
On “How To Fix a Broken Elephant: A Recipe for Electoral Health In Six Incredibly Difficult Steps”
OK, everybody who was talking about tit-for-tat culture war clearly has a point. This is way more fun then I expected.
Stopping was like trying to eat just one potato chip.
"
You wouldn't understand the point, because you're too emotionally invested in not understanding it.
"
Bernie Sanders?
"
It's just another piece of proof that social conservatism is all about hypocritical in-group signaling that has no basis in reality. It hardly merits refutation, substantive or otherwise.
"
The point was that any suggested change, anywhere, will result in pushback.
The pushback being described isn't so much against change as it is against some fraction of liberals being complete assholes. Some fraction of liberals being complete assholes is, well, not a change.
"
I... don't remember that, actually, and it sounds like I'm better off that way.
"
Just to be clear, I am taking no position on the relative merits of either side’s culture war beefs.
I'm not really, either. I just don't think the fact that some TV liberals are allegedly smug dicks, or the fact some liberal websites undeniably run clickbait garbage, makes the right-wing culture war response inevitable, let alone actually helpful for obtaining policies that conservatives want to see enacted.
"
Small, time-delimited controversies are ‘silly nonsense’?
No. Maybe you should put down the crack pipe and try again.
On “Judge orders ‘intentionally deceptive’ DOJ lawyers to take remedial ethics classes – Washington Times”
The defense the DOJ is offering is that the failure to comply with the judge's orders resulted from a misunderstanding of those orders, rather than a deliberate attempt to disobey them or mislead the court. Ibid:
I have nothing more than partisan bias to determine which side has the more plausible argument, so I'll refrain from debating that point.
On “How To Fix a Broken Elephant: A Recipe for Electoral Health In Six Incredibly Difficult Steps”
It's very much not the impression that I get from them. If you look at the policy proposals he calls out, they're almost all silly nonsense like blocking the "Ground Zero Mosque", not longstanding conservative priorities like tax cuts, restricting abortion or protecting private gun ownership, or even new ones like rolling back Obamacare.
You could just as easily paint Mitt Romney as the face of the desired GOP based on what he said.
"
Well, I'm not sure why they'd agree to it either, but one way or another, they often do--at least rhetorically.
Especially when the alternative so often seems to boil down to losing slowly and without dignity.
"
Yes, because Ds are a helluva lot more willing to content themselves with losing down-ticket than Rs are with losing up-ticket. When the roles were reversed, as they were not so long ago, so were the attitudes.
"
If you're using @tod-kelly 's understanding of the word "conservative", as being opposed to radical change--then the answer seems to be, "Yes."
Whether this indicates a problem with the belief, or instead indicates a problem with @tod-kelly 's definition, is another matter entirely.
"
Political parties don't really work like that in our system. The Presidency actually does have a lot of importance in our system, and it's not like the Democrats contented themselves with their control of Congress after Dukakis went down in flames in '88. If nothing else, you will have elected Republican officials--Senators and Governors, mostly--who want a shot at stepping into the Oval Office, or at least serving as senior officials in a Republican Administration.
Finally, losing Presidential elections is just plain upsetting for most partisans. They really, really don't like it, and they don't want to do it. Maybe everybody should have more perspective on this sort of thing, but they don't. I'm skeptical that @tod-kelly 's set of proposals could be implemented, and if they were, that they would result in a viable party that many #NeverTrumpeters would be happy with, but they're a lot more plausible than large numbers of Republicans saying, "Hey, letting Democrats hold the White House indefinitely actually isn't a problem!"
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.