Commenter Archive

I didn't really witness anything. I was attacked from behind and repeatedly kicked and punched in the face and stomach while face-down until I was unconscious. A frat house across the street witnessed at least some of what happened and chased down the attackers and called the police. The attackers gave a statement that they had been playing cards and drinking whiskey in their apartment when they decided to go for a walk. They said I said something to antagonize them. There would have been pictures of my blood face, and hospital records from the broken nose surgery.

There was a dispute on the existence of a justification defense, but not as to all of the elements of the offense. I assume the school didn't find the justification adequate or thought the underlying conduct was still unacceptable.

Who do you think left that loophole open?

Which loophole? John Adams went to war with France without a declaration of war. Thomas Jefferson went to war with a non-state entity called the Barbary pirates, initially without legislative approval. Jefferson used the military to capture Aaron Burr, explaining afterwards: “strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country in danger, are of higher obligation.”

Andrew Jackson invades Florida without authority, and was ultimately justified by the conclusion that Spain did not have control over its territories and its natives. When Jackson is questioned about his authority to maintain martial law in New Orleans, he imprisons the judge. James Polk manufactured a war with Mexico on faulty intelligence.

Maybe there is no loophole. Or maybe there is something about human nature or politics that is irrepressible?

FWIW, when I was attending a public university I was the victim of an off-campus aggravated assault (beaten unconscious by three or four students) that resulted in the college starting a process in which they were expelled. I didn't initiate anything, I assume the police reported the incident and the results of their investigation to the school.

I remember the lawyer that interviewed me had a last name like Law or Justice, and he told me with a smile that we don't have to give no due process here. But there was some sort of process since I was asked to attend a meeting with probably about 20-30 people around the table, where I was going to be asked one question: "Have you seen any of these students before?" Me: "No." I don't recall being put under oath; certainly no cross-examination or other questions. One student had dropped out already; the others were expelled. I cannot remember the timing in respect to the criminal case, but the prosecutor pled the case down to simple assault.

I won't take it personal if you think the college should not have involved itself, but I guess I'm not surprised they were expelled.

Technically, the Civil War was an armed insurgency, but the SCOTUS ruled in the Prize Cases that it was a de facto war upon the firing on Fort Sumter, regardless of whether or not the belligerents were a nation or whether a formal declaration of war had been made. The war powers are limited by the laws of war, a long-standing one is that one cannot attack a person who has surrendered. There are very few limits to war powers in the Constitution.

I believe a family brought one of these drone cases, which was dismissed on political question grounds and not appealed. That raises a central paradox -- the courts will say this is a political matter, but the discussion quickly goes to Constitutional norms, and such rulings appear to hold that there are no set Constitutional expectations.

I saw this blurb:

One elector in Minnesota attempted to vote for no Vermont Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, but the state invalidated his vote and swore in an alternate, who voted along with the rest of the electors to deliver all of the 10 electoral votes to Clinton. A similar situation occurred in Colorado and Maine.

The Hill

So some states have gongs available for when the elector fails to amuse?

You said that the U.S. government denied the South "certain representation in Congress." For the most part they forsook representation. They gave speeches withdrawing and their seats were declared vacant. Andrew Johnson retained his seat in the Senate. John C. Breckinridge retained his seat until he enlisted in the Confederate army and was expelled. States were not denied representation, members who supported an armed insurgency against the U.S. government were expelled. Expulsion has happened before and since the Civil War and it does not mean the state has seceded.

While there certainly was a well of sympathy for Japan, particularly following the Russo-Japanese war, as a beacon for anti-colonialism, support cooled with reports of the atrocities committed by the Japanese in Burma and Malaya, initially publicized widely by the British, but confirmed with personal accounts from Indian prisoners-of-war returning home.

I'm kind of skeptical of the linked piece. I can understand that Hitler is a bit distant from India, and that he is often treated these days as a figure of comedy, but 100,000 copies of Main Kampf sold in ten years or so in a country the size of India does not seem that noteworthy -- people are curious. And I have no idea what that book tells a modern businessman. If Protocols of the Elders of Zion are widely sold, it probably has little to do with WWII.

Domestically, the Civil War was an insurrection, an armed uprising that interrupted the functions of civil government. While it was going on, at least for a while, Representatives and Senators from Southern states cast votes in Congress. Most of the issues involving logical discrepancies in the Union position involved international law and the threat of Britain and France intervening to secure commercial rights.

I am not aware that the CSA ever signed a surrender treaty. Generals surrendered, some governors directed their militias to go home. Jefferson Davis and his cabinet dissolved the CSA and fled.

The point of Reconstruction was that civil government had been disrupted by wide-scale insurrection, and there needed to be some process to bring the country back into a normal condition. There were a lot of theories about how to go about this, but the solution was largely to recognize civil government restored when indigenous movements (or the fiction thereof) had been created by sufficient people who had sworn oaths to the federal government and agreed with the 13th Amendment.

Any realistic discussion about agreed separation would most likely involve dividing California any way, probably with San Diego anchoring an inland region. Not that any of this is realistic anyway. Any agreement that got close to 38 state support would more easily be resolved by negotiating anything that would reduce the underlying concerns, such as creating more limits on federal power.

Bonus: Knowledge of Aleppo, no longer a qualification.

If the State of Sangamon is representative, medical marijuana is mostly a political matter, not a medical one. The legislature has designated a list of ailments which makes a person eligible to purchase a 2.5 ounces of pot every two weeks. The role of the physician, if he/she accepts, is to fill out the paperwork that the patient indeed has a listed condition. Most physicians in Capitol City refuse to participate as it is non-medical work. Once the illness is certified, it's good for three years, the physician cannot seek to revoke it. Its taxed as if it is a recreational drug.

Edit: As originally advertised, the sense was that these were people dying anyway and this was a measure of comfort. The list suggests otherwise, but in theory the people given a license to kill themselves are dying. Aren't we all?

I'm not arguing for my preferred definition here. Will just linked to an article that describes evangelicals differently than he does, and I've pointed out that polls tend to use two very different approaches to the term, and I probably should have added a third, which asks a magic question, such as are you born again? A lot of people don't experience religion with a high detail to some distinctions, so this has its ambiguities as well.

A word without accepted meaning is not a useful communication tool. And some of the people using the word in a political context are leveraging the various meanings as a tool of misinformation.

Pew could get to the distinctions it wishes to study without forcing denominations into mainstream and non-mainstream categories, particularly given that a lot of Protestant denominations differ from location to location anyway. A church might be "high church" here, but "low church" there, and what are high and low church distinctions other than proxies for education and income levels?

Thanks for pointing out that Marinol was reclassified, I was confused about that.

R4: The term "evangelical" is a pet peeve of mine. If you're surprised when polls show that one-third of evangelicals are pro-choice, you might also be surprised that about a quarter of Catholics identify as evangelical.

If the poll is based on self-identification, its not clear who evangelicals are. There will be Catholics, there will be African-Americans, but not most Mormons. It appears that some embrace the term who wear their religion on their sleeve. Mormons appear to be self-conscience that they are allied with some group that identifies as "evangelical," which includes a lots of members who pass out flyers complaining that they are a Satanic cult.

Pew likes to classify evangelicals by its made-up list of denominations that keeps Catholics and blacks out. Pew also excludes mainstream Protestant churches, like the Methodists, which in religious terms are the epitome of American evangelicalism. IOW, a person attending a non-denominational church with the same socio-economic background and religious views as someone attending the United Methodist Church will be labeled evangelical.

In any event, the problem as I see it is that a lot of the people professing themselves to be leaders in the evangelical movement, are actually Christian fundamentalists, a movement that arose in opposition to evangelicalism, claiming support from the largest definition of evangelical, and expressing shock and surprise when the broad definition shows a lot of political variation.

I don't know that those delays are unusual for any agency. Just as an example, the EPA is constantly late, even when Congress sets specific deadlines:

84 percent of the EPA’s Clean Air Act deadlines are either performed late or are currently outstanding. . . . Overall, the EPA’s actions are late by an average of 4.3 years. For industrial sector-wide regulations like New Source Performance Standards and National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, the EPA was late on average by 7.8 years. For reviewing State Implementation Plans, the agency was late on average by 1.9 years.

The EPA’s Dereliction of Duty (pdf)

These are the tasks that Congress has prioritized over those without deadlines. The link blames the EPA, but I think Congress tends to frame public policy issues in the form of technical questions for agencies to resolve and then subjects their work to the embarrassment of judicial review.

To A. and B. I would add:

C. When Congress delegates decisionmaking power to an agency, its policy priorities can be observed in the agency chosen. If Congress wants to pass regulations on genetically modified crops, all other things equal, it makes a big difference if it selects the EPA or the Department of Agriculture to implement it. Here, Congress delegated power to the Attorney General, not HHS.

I haven't followed this, but is this the reason?

The Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act requires that before a new drug is allowed to enter the U.S. market, it must be demonstrated through adequate and well-controlled clinical trials to be both safe and effective for its intended uses. Congress long ago established this process, recognizing that it was essential to protect the health and welfare of the American people.

Although no drug product made from marijuana has yet been shown to be safe and effective in such clinical trials, DEA – along with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – fully supports expanding research into the potential medical utility of marijuana and its chemical constituents.

Federal Register notice approving more marijuana for research purposes.

1491 has a section on Cahokia. Charles Mann wrote the book with the generalist in mind based upon more specialized reading that he found wasn't breaking into public awareness: specifically on issues of Indian demography, Indian origins, and Indian technology. And I like that he gives different points-of-view when there are reasonable differences.

How would we distinguish what she posted from a conspiracy theory? She posted three facts that might be true, but the conclusion she wants the reader to infer still may not be true.

I've not heard a lot about disease, but certainly decline could have multiple contributing factors. It was larger than London, which had disease problems, but the impression I have is that Cahokia was nowhere near as dense. There are large open spaces/ promenades that may have served ritual purposes, some parts of Cahokia might be characterized as suburbs, and there were farms and orchards nearby. This may have led to less sanitation-originating diseases.

Whatever happened at Fort Pitt, and it is disputed, it had nothing to do with Native American demographic collapse. Most likely this was due to disease spread before the first European settlement.

I live 100 miles from the site and have been there multiple times. Interestingly, but not surprising, relatively few people visit from Illinois; the usual visitor comes from afar or other countries. One of the things I like about the interpretive center is that at the end of the exhibits it gives the visitors to select what they believe happened.

My two cents. Last year findings were published from analysis of nearby lake sediment cores, showing that the depopulation of Cahokia corresponded with a major flood event. The site was within a flood plain, and as the city and its suburbs grew and the intensity of maize agriculture increased (through burning of the river valley vegetation), the limitations of the bottomland were vulnerable to such a flood. (It could have been made worse if it is true as some believe that the Cahokians diverted a creek to the central area, a significant engineering feat).

The opposing view given mention in the piece is that correlation does not equal causation, and someone dug some holes and couldn't find flood debris. That doesn't refute the evidence preserved in the nearby lake of major flooding; it merely indicates that either flooding did not occur in those spots or the evidence of flooding was not preserved there.

I suppose that means Wang is an example of a left-wing source that lost credibility w/ the election. Looking back at his last pre-election posting, Is 99% a reasonable probability?, (answer: Yes), he does seem overconfident in the numbers and giving bad advise to Democrats:

As I said at the top, my motivation in doing these calculations is to help readers allocate their activism properly. Whether the Presidential win probability is 91% or 99%, it is basically settled. Therefore it is a more worthwhile proposition to work in Senate or House campaigns. Get on over to IN/MO/NC/NH/WI, or find a good House district using the District Finder tool in the left sidebar.

Since I understand Wang has some semi-official status here at OT, I hasten to comment that I don't recall him piling on. Its one thing to believe in one's model, and it's another to call a competing model hackery. HuffoPost writer: “If [Silver]’s right, though, it was just a good guess -- a fortunate ‘trend line adjustment’ -- not a mathematical forecast. If you want to put your faith in the numbers, you can relax. She’s got this.”