US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1489

On November 27 2014 04:13 xDaunt wrote:
"Innocent" isn't the right term. "Not guilty" is. The law purposefully avoids the term "innocent" for obvious reasons.

On November 27 2014 08:24 Danglars wrote:
You're starting to convince me self-defense is a privilege extended to unarmed black teens, but denied to armed white police officers.

"Unexamined" in the sense that we only have four centuries of examination, or so. "Intuitions" in the sense that you have to be an expert psychologist to qualify for self preservation. We wouldn't want any primitives to think you don't have the right to kill you and take your stuff, would we?

On November 27 2014 08:26 Defacer wrote:


There should be a plaque of this somewhere whenever discussions like this come up.

On November 27 2014 08:46 oneofthem wrote:

this criticism of self defense is really not sourced from this particular problem, but more from collective agency(self defense as rational in war, for example) . but a subset of problems still apply in the individual context. i don't really care about the race involved, but the range of actions available as well as the decision process. for the decision process, defense is a reflexive, single track one when understood within a rigid territorial rights system. it really is a poor justification by itself.

On November 27 2014 09:34 oneofthem wrote:
i didn't mean literally land territory rights, but the sort of 'sphere of control' framework as exemplified by territory sovereignty claims. the case of self/person is a special case of this more general framework, rather than something unique.

rephrasing it, ...when self defense is invoked by the violation of a certain boundary of control.

A man sitting under a nearby gazebo made a 911 call, telling the dispatcher, “there’s a guy in here with a pistol, pointing it at everybody,” according to audio of the call. The caller said the gun is “probably fake, but you know what, he’s scaring the s— out of people,” and later said, “I don’t know if it’s real or not.” He described Tamir as “probably a juvenile.” He eventually left the park.

But information about the gun possibly being fake wasn’t mentioned to the officers in a call to them about a young black male with a gun in a park.

“Shots fired, male down, um, black male, maybe 20,” one of the officers radioed in. “Black hand gun.”

In addition to his duties as the county prosecutor, Robert McCulloch is also the president of The Backstoppers, Inc., an organization used to fundraise for the men and women in uniform in both Missouri and Illinois. And, in August, his organization was affiliated with a t-shirt drive featuring a picture of Missouri and the statement “I SUPPORT OFFICER D. WILSON” which was set up to raise money for the Darren Wilson Defense Fund as well as The Backstoppers.

Regardless of the situation, there now exists an argument that Prosecutor Robert McCulloch was in a conflict of interest in the case. That he proceeded anyways should tell us of the ethical standards by which he operates, and how valid his prosecution before the grand jury is.

On November 27 2014 10:36 Doublemint wrote:
oh my. sorry for dp, but things just got interesting.





http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/11/25/prosecutor-fundraising-wilson/

On November 27 2014 11:18 wei2coolman wrote:

This would have some merit if the GJ investigation/hearing was held in typical hush hush manner, but since transcripts are released to public, it'll become apparently obvious that the hearing was pretty non-biased.

The National Bar Association put forth reasons why a special prosecutor was needed for this case. This evidence demonstrates clearly that they were right to be concerned. Is this why he failed to actually prosecute before the grand jury, and instead engaged in character assassinations against Michael Brown? Is Bob McCulloch a mere stooge for the police department, enabling them to get away with a wide variety of abuses? Or does he just have so little respect for the position he holds that he sees no issue with shielding those who must uphold the public trust against any accountability for their actions?.....

Now we need to have an investigation on Prosecutor McCulloch to discover if this is an isolated incident, or something more widespread. This might be why the t-shirt sales were done in the first place, to create such a scenario and poison trust in the prosecution’s case as presented. The actual case it turns out did enough of that, but back in August, it may have seemed a good idea to someone seeking to hide the truth. It needs to be uncovered who did this, and to put steps in place to prevent similar incidents in the future. That Prosecutor McCulloch’s organization has already rejected any such investigation leaves open the question – what it is that they are afraid to uncover? Are these ties far deeper than just a random t-shirt sale?

House and Senate negotiators who thought they were close to a deal renewing expired tax breaks have a new factor to worry about: a veto threat from a White House unhappy about helping businesses but not the working poor.

The veto threat comes with Congress on Thanksgiving recess and planning only a couple of work weeks in December before it adjourns.

At issue for President Obama and many congressional Democrats are the Earned Income Tax Credit for lower-income workers and the $1,000-per-child tax credit that benefits both the poor and the middle class. The proposed deal would not extend those credits, and in 2017 both would revert to lower amounts. In the case of the child tax credit, it would fall back to $500 per child.

"The president would veto the proposed deal because it would provide permanent tax breaks to help well-connected corporations while neglecting working families," White House spokeswoman Jennifer Friedman said.

The other tax breaks in the legislation expired at the end of 2013. A failure to extend them would dramatically increase taxes for millions of businesses and individuals for the current tax year. The Internal Revenue Service, meanwhile, has already warned that the uncertainty over their future will likely delay next year's tax filing season.

House Republicans have passed a number of bills this year making permanent some breaks for businesses, such as tax credits for research and development or deductions for new equipment. In the past, these have been temporary but renewed every year or two. The Senate, with its Democratic majority, instead prepared a catch-all bill that extended 55 tax breaks, for both businesses and individuals, for another two years.

On November 27 2014 11:18 wei2coolman wrote:

This would have some merit if the GJ investigation/hearing was held in typical hush hush manner, but since transcripts are released to public, it'll become apparently obvious that the hearing was pretty non-biased.

On November 27 2014 15:42 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
Can we start some sort of push for police bodycams? At the very least, if something like this happens again we'll have substantive evidence.

On November 27 2014 16:16 Yurie wrote:
Even if you added filming you wouldn't get to see the films. They would only show up in court. This is since they wouldn't be bothered going through the entire video and checking if they were allowed to publish all the content in it or not. For example, they might have been on private property marked with no photography without a search warrant in a home altercation scenario.