Commenter Archive

Oh no, hours of nudity. Because Lord knows that nobody looking at life in prison has ever managed to hang themselves with their pants before.

"There is nothing logically inconsistent in the least between these two statements."

BlaiseP: "The military wants Bradley Manning dead."
Mike Schilling: "No, they're going to put him in jail for life."
BlaiseP: "Oh YEAH, well, that's WORSE than being dead!"

*sigh*

You charge 'em for what you can make stick; it's like getting Capone for tax evasion.

Or those music-industry trials where someone is "only" charged with copyright infringement of six music tracks. It's not that the person wasn't copying and redistributing dozens or hundreds of music tracks; it's that the industry lawyers didn't feel it was necessary to submit the jury to repeated depositions (and defense challenges) about the rights status of more than that.

CD-ROM. And he was seen doing it, and he said "it's cool bro, this is my Lady Gaga mixtape", and the people in charge decided to give him a break and not bust his ass over having brought a CD-ROM into a secure area.

CD-ROMs being, in fact, about the second thing they tell you that you aren't allowed to have in a secure area, right after "cell phone".

"The military have accused him of a death penalty crime..."

twenty minutes later

"I’d argue there are things worse than death."

MAKE UP YOUR FUCKING MIND.

"He leaked classified information to a website knowing that all of it would eventually be published."

Yeah, and before he was allowed to look at that information, he signed a paper saying "if I leak this then I go to jail FOREVER".

I thought you libertarians were big fans of binding contracts?

True. But I'm not talking about whether the suggested reform will actually do anything--I'm responding to the "cut this but don't cut it, LOL" snarking in the top post.

But it's possible to encourage students to engage in physical activity without spending superfluously.

"we have a football team" is good. "we are spending school money to send the football team to the other side of the country so they can play in some kind of National Championship" is less good.

Okay, so let me get this straight. You don't know enough about teaching to criticise teachers, but you think that parents should take a larger role in the education of their children.

So you don't know how to do it, but it's important that you do it?

"When it comes time to balance the budget, majorities want...To cut Social Security for the wealthy. But no cuts to Social Security."

Well, no, they don't want to cut Social Security for the wealthy without cutting Social Security.

They answer "yes" to the question "do you think that the wealthy should receive fewer benefits from the government?" And they answer "no" to the question "do you think Social Security should be cut?"

What poll responders are saying, here, is that they do favor cuts to Social Security--for a certain group of people. They don't favor across-the-board cuts in the entire thing; and the question, as presented, looks like that's what it's asking. (The asked question is "Do you think it will be necessary to cut spending on Social Security in order to significantly reduce the federal budget deficit?")

It looks like you missed this post.

"Markets often yield results that are contrary to fundamental tenets of how we should treat other human beings."

Yep. And market participants--consumers, that is, meaning you and me--are permitted to not buy things from people who we don't like.

"Oh, but I need my cell phone, I need my shoes, I need gas to drive my car." Well. Then I guess we've learned how much your principles are worth to you.

"Red cedar was once the preferred wood for pencils, which was almost brought the red cedar to extinction."

And it's a good thing the government stepped in, because there's absolutely no way that private industry would have decided, all on its own, to make pencils out of some other kind of wood.

"At least now there is something more tangible to change, reverse, or improve upon."

Ah-heh. Laws are not code. You don't release the beta version of a law and patch in the rest of the features later.

Thanks!

"We don’t need to audit the cops for everything that they do."

You assume that everything cops do is on the up-and-up, and that nobody has ever successfully played the race card against the cops. Pervasive video isn't a "wasteful audit", it's a defense mechanism.

OH SHIT UNCLOSED TAG, AAAARRRGH

"[W]hat I’m trying to get at is that I think one can support free market policies without having to support every page in the libertarian playbook."

It would be so nice if everyone on the progressive side thought that way.

What exactly do military bases have to do with regulatory bureaucracy?

"Human beings have moral duties..."

Like *what*, exactly?

What's your justification for those "moral duties"? Where's your objectively-supported derivation of how they exist and why they apply?

"Thanks to James Madison and the Division of Powers, it’s awfully hard to corner the market on power in the USA. "

The Federal regulatory bureaucracy seems to have managed pretty well.

Are we to believe that the professor honestly had no idea how to find porn on the internet?

"I think discretion for cops is fine, probably a good thing even."

'Driving While Black' is an exercise of discretion. So is arresting drunk Mexicans while telling their equally-drunk white dates to go home.

"How are you going to ensure that every cop who pulls over a hot drunk blond arrests the blond for a DUI instead of letting them go..."

Well, there's the radio record where the cop reported the situation and ran the car's plates, to make sure that it wasn't a stolen car being driven by a thief.

There's also the camera record of the cop getting out of the cruiser and walking up to the stopped car.

You're right, I don't think that it's a valid reason; unfortunately, until courts are more willing to declare lawsuits unfounded (and until potential defendants have more confidence that unfounded lawsuits will be resolved in their favor) it's where we are.