US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9412

On December 05 2017 04:21 brian wrote:


assuming the bakery serves wedding cakes(it does), not serving wedding cakes to gay couples has no other reason. but i don’t have the time or inclination to tell you how and when discrimination is discrimination. their religious beliefs driving them to this conclusion does not change the conclusion.

i don’t even think this was discrimination in the first place. even though i’d like it to be. that’s just not how the law works.

On December 05 2017 04:27 Danglars wrote:

It sells pre-made wedding cakes to gay couples.

You’re discriminating based on message against religious customers and for gay customers, and content with government privileging certain groups. You’re just lucky the bureaucrats in charge agree with who you think deserve to be discriminated against.

On December 05 2017 04:18 mozoku wrote:

What religion has any remotely defendable interpretation that condemns interracial marriages?

On December 05 2017 04:19 KwarK wrote:

Mormonism.
FLDS for example. But either way the question merits an answer. If the argument works for a gay wedding cake then it must also work for an interracial wedding cake. Either religious beliefs trump protected classes or they don't.

On December 05 2017 04:19 KwarK wrote:

Mormonism.
FLDS for example. But either way the question merits an answer. If the argument works for a gay wedding cake then it must also work for an interracial wedding cake. Either religious beliefs trump protected classes or they don't.

On December 05 2017 04:33 mozoku wrote:

Then I would imagine it comes down to weighing the harms. Neither trumps the other. There are plenty of caterers and wedding cake bakers without legitimate moral/religious qualms that can perform a similar duty for either interracial or same-sex couple. In a different case, the harms might play out differently.

I'm no lawyer though, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

On December 05 2017 04:28 brian wrote:


you again demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the law. that or Kwark’s got you nailed, and you don’t like protected classes.

The smoke is clearing from an explosive Mueller investigation weekend of charges, chattering, and tweets. Before the next aftershock, it might be helpful to make three points about where things stand. In ascending order of importance, they are:

1.) There is a great deal of misinformation in the commentariat about how prosecutors build cases.

2.) For all practical purposes, the collusion probe is over. While the “counterintelligence” cover will continue to be exploited so that no jurisdictional limits are placed on Special Counsel Robert Mueller, this is now an obstruction investigation.

3.) That means it is, as it has always been, an impeachment investigation.

Building a Case

‌
Many analysts are under the misimpression that it is typical for federal prosecutors to accept guilty pleas on minor charges in exchange for cooperation that helps build a case on major charges. From this flawed premise, they reason that Mueller is methodically constructing a major case on Trump by accepting minor guilty pleas from Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos for making false statements, and by indicting Paul Manafort and an associate on charges that have nothing to do with Trump or the 2016 election.

That is simply not how it works, strategically or legally.

As I’ve tried to explain a few times now (see here and here), if a prosecutor has an accomplice cooperator who gives the government incriminating information about the major scheme under investigation, he pressures the accomplice to plead guilty to the major scheme, not to an ancillary process crime — and particularly not to false-statements charges.

Strategically, and for public-relations purposes (which are not inconsequential in a high-profile corruption investigation, just ask Ken Starr), a guilty plea to the major scheme under investigation proves that the major scheme really happened — here, some kind of criminal collusion (i.e., conspiracy) in Russia’s espionage operation against the 2016 election. The guilty-plea allocution, in which the accomplice explains to the court what he and others did to carry out the scheme, puts enormous pressure on other accomplices to come forward and cooperate. In a political corruption case, it can drive public officials out of office.

Justice Department policy calls for ‌prosecutors to indict a defendant on the most serious readily provable charge, not to plead out a case on minor charges to obtain cooperation. The federal sentencing guidelines also encourage this. They allow a judge to sentence the defendant below the often harsh guidelines calculation. This can mean a cooperator gets as little as zero jail time or time-served, no matter how serious the charges. This sentencing leniency happens only if the defendant pleads guilty and provides substantial assistance to the government’s investigation. That is what enables the prosecutor to entice an accomplice to cooperate; the prosecutor does not need to entice cooperation by pleading the case out for a song.


The practice of pressuring a guilty plea to the major charges makes the accomplice a formidable witness at trial. The jury will know that he is facing a potential sentence of perhaps decades in prison unless he discloses everything he knows and tells the truth in his testimony. That is what triggers the prosecutor’s obligation to file the motion that allows the court to sentence under the guidelines-recommended sentence.

Trading a plea on minor charges for cooperation is a foolish gambit that badly damages the prosecutor’s case. It suggests that the cooperator must not have disclosed details about the major scheme. Otherwise the prosecutor would have charged him with it. It implies that the prosecutor is so desperate to make a case on a major target that he gave bad actors a pass on serious charges — something experienced prosecutors know that juries hate.

It is even worse to plead accomplices out on false-statements counts. This establishes that the main thing the jury should know about the accomplice is that he is not to be trusted. That is not how you make someone a strong witness. And unlike the accomplice who pleads guilty to the major scheme, an accomplice who pleads guilty to false statements is looking at a maximum sentence of just five years and a more likely sentence of no time even before he has cooperated — not much of an incentive to disclose everything and tell the truth. A good prosecutor does not front-load the benefits of cooperation; he makes the accomplice earn sentencing leniency by full disclosure and testimony.

The pleas and the indictment have nothing to do with collusion because Mueller has no collusion case.
Bottom line: If the FBI had a collusion case of some kind, after well over a year of intensive investigation, Flynn and Papadopoulos would have been pressured to plead guilty to very serious charges — and those serious offenses would be reflected in the charges lodged against Manafort. Obviously, the pleas and the indictment have nothing to do with collusion because Mueller has no collusion case.

It’s Now an Obstruction Investigation

...

On December 05 2017 04:33 mozoku wrote:

Then I would imagine it comes down to balancing the harms. Neither trumps the other. There are plenty of caterers and wedding cake bakers without legitimate moral/religious qualms that can perform a similar duty for either interracial or same-sex couple. In a different case, the harms might play out differently.

I'm no lawyer though, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

On December 05 2017 04:40 Plansix wrote:

Religious objections was an exuse used by churches and buisnesses to discriminate against interracial couples. This ruling would be limited to baking cakes. It will be all forms of service, including building homes.

On December 05 2017 04:27 Danglars wrote:

It sells pre-made wedding cakes to gay couples.

You’re discriminating based on message against religious customers and for gay customers, and content with government privileging certain groups. You’re just lucky the bureaucrats in charge agree with who you think deserve to be discriminated against.

On December 05 2017 04:28 brian wrote:


you again demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the law. that or Kwark’s got you nailed, and you don’t like protected classes.

On December 05 2017 04:28 brian wrote:


you again demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the law. that or Kwark’s got you nailed, and you don’t like protected classes. tough call on this one.

On December 05 2017 04:31 Logo wrote:


My guess is he's trying to treat gay marriage as a thing that's separate from marriage.

But that's not an actual thing. It's just marriage.

On December 05 2017 04:43 brian wrote:


he’s trying to say if we can say we aren’t baking cakes against gay marriage that we can’t say we must bake cakes for gay marriage.

which is asinine. even if this was remotely the correct argument, in order to make it you’d have to believe homophobia was the exclusive domain of christians, so much so that they are synonymous. ‘Religion and creed is a protected class.’

which is hilarious in its own right. not remotely applicable in the conversation, but hilarious.

On December 05 2017 04:40 KwarK wrote:

I don't know that the existence of other providers is necessarily relevant to the question of protected classes and discrimination. For example, were a company to fire someone for being black I don't think that we would ask about the availability of other employment in the area before condemning it. Therefore when a company refuses to provide services to a protected class we ought not to ask about the availability of alternate providers of the service.

On December 05 2017 04:40 KwarK wrote:

I don't know that the existence of other providers is necessarily relevant to the question of protected classes and discrimination. For example, were a company to fire someone for being black I don't think that we would ask about the availability of other employment in the area before condemning it. Therefore when a company refuses to provide services to a protected class we ought not to ask about the availability of alternate providers of the service.