Rov_Scam
14d ago
This only applies to involuntary commitments. If you're feeling suicidal and check yourself into a mental hospital for treatment, it's not going to affect your ability to buy a gun. On the other hand, if you attempt suicide and get 302'd (in PA), it will. The way the law is set up now actually encourages people to seek voluntary treatment before it becomes enough of a problem that the state has to intervene.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
Considering the same people aren't in charge, having declined to continue their leadership due to what you just posted, I don't think that's a possibility. It's also worth pointing out that Democratic leadership doesn't pick the candidate, the voters do.
Rov_Scam
5mo ago
The second and third hospital were the same hospital, just at different time. I agree that nothing in the case itself indicates that the law played a factor in her lack of treatment and subsequent demise, but I did notice this tidbit from the end of the article:
Last November, Fails reached out to medical malpractice lawyers to see about getting justice through the courts. A different legal barrier now stood in her way.
If Crain had experienced these same delays as an inpatient, Fails would have needed to establish that the hospital violated medical standards. That, she believed, she could do. But because the delays and discharges occurred in an area of the hospital classified as an emergency room, lawyers said that Texas law set a much higher burden of proof: “willful and wanton negligence.”
No lawyer has agreed to take the case.
Under the guise of tort reform, the Texas Legislature passed the Texas Medical Liability Act which, among other things, capped noneconomic damages at $250,000 and imposed a much stricter standard on plaintiffs in cases involving emergency room treatment. In this light, the hospital's actions look completely rational. If they admit a pregnant woman with sepsis they run the risk that she may need an abortion and then they face the dilemma of either exposing themselves to criminal liability on the one hand and a malpractice suit on the other. As it says in the article, she wasn't diagnosed with sepsis, it was merely suspected that she had sepsis. Either way, if they send her home with antibiotics they can just avoid the whole hornet's nest and not have to worry about a malpractice suit. This is all merely speculation but it makes sense in context: She comes to the ER, they suspect she's septic, they check the fetal heartbeat, they know what they have to do but they can't do it, they know that if they admit her for further observation their liability increases exponentially, so they send her home. When she comes back a few hours later, they don't find a heartbeat and still know what they have to do but need a sonogram so they can meet documentation standards and they fuck that up, which probably isn't related to any liability concerns but it's unclear if the two hour delay would have made any difference. Either way, all that happened before she was admitted, and there's no indication that any malpractice took place while she was in the ICU, so they're in the clear. They avoided dealing with the law and they avoided a malpractice suit, so it's a win-win. The only loser is the dead woman.
A physician who tells a patient, “Your life is threatened by a complication that has arisen during your pregnancy, and you may die, or there is a serious risk you will suffer substantial physical impairment unless an abortion is performed,” and in the same breath states “but the law won’t allow me to provide an abortion in these circumstances” is simply wrong in that legal assessment.
They can say whatever they want to in dicta, but the actual opinion tells a different story. A physician telling a patient that isn't magic language that shields him from criminal liability. Not only that, but a physician with a good-faith belief that an abortion is necessary isn't shielded from liability. you can point to whatever snippets of language you want to, but the court made it crystal clear that it's an objective test based on what a reasonable physician would have done. And, as I said in my first post, that means it's a question of fact for a jury and you're expert will battle it out with their expert, and you hope they believe your expert. And if you lose, the consequences are similar to those of being convicted of non-capital murder. Unless there's a well-recognized, bright line exception, I don't understand how you can argue with a straight fact that doctors should get within 200 miles of a case like that. Would you commit a crime that came with serious jail time if your boss thought you'd have a good defense?
Rov_Scam
5mo ago
So what's the problem? Where is the historical inaccuracy? Yes, it's a work of fiction, but works of fiction are often based on real historical facts. The producers probably included it because it elucidates their point better than some dry as dust historical tract about how raw materials from The Congo were often used to produce military equipment. They didn't alert you that it was a work of fiction, but is this really necessary? If a documentary about WWI were done in the same style but quoted "For Whom the Bell Tolls" instead, would you insist that they flash "Work of Fiction" in yellow Impact font on the screen just to remove any ambiguity? And who are they supposed to be propagandizing, anyway? You can't stream it without paying extra, unless you have Kanopy, which most people technically have access to for free but don't know about and probably wouldn't be interested in. I'd be more concerned about historical movies that clean up the plot for narrative convenience and leave the viewer with an incorrect impression. These aren't even trying to pretend to be documentaries, but the fictionalized movie version ends up being cultural canon.
Rov_Scam
5mo ago
What do you think of Critical Theory and do you believe it has impacted K-12 curriculum in a significant way?
I'm not a fan of it personally, but I haven't seen evidence that it has affected the curriculum of the average school in any significant way. I've heard a lot of accusations that it has, but there's a difference between news reports and actual substance to the allegations. I don't doubt that critical theory is part of school curriculum somewhere, but I also don't doubt that there's some district or classroom that's teaching a far-right version of American History. The question is whether this is something the average student in the average suburban district is being taught, and while I've heard plenty of rumors, none of those have been substantiated with any evidence. Pulling something off the internet may be evidence that it exists, but it isn't evidence that it exists where people say it does, let alone that it's the dominant method of instruction.
Second question, what do you think of this toolkit for teachers and would you accept it as evidence for the kind of "woke" people are talking about?
Having downloaded some of the modules and looked at the FAQ, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. It uses a lot of cringeworthy language to explain how math instruction is secretly racist, but when you drill down to the core of what it's saying and, more importantly, what it's actually recommending, there isn't really anything objectionable in it. The idea that different students may benefit from different instruction styles isn't exactly a new idea, and the changes they're proposing aren't even that substantive. It reminds me of the whole Ebonics debate from 30 years ago. The media made it sound like students were going to be instructed in jive talk and given English tests based on different grammar, when the reality was that they wanted to do additional instruction relating formal English concepts to the vernacular the kids were already speaking. If what the documents are recommending was quietly slipped into the curriculum without all the woke verbiage few people would even notice, let alone care.
Rov_Scam
6mo ago
How is it being abused? I'm not aware that any significant number of applicants are being approved who aren't in compliance with the statutory language. To wit:
For purposes of the E-3 and H-1B programs (but not the H-1B1 program), specialty occupation means an occupation that requires theoretical and practical application of a body of specialized knowledge, and attainment of a bachelor's or higher degree (or its equivalent) in the specific specialty as a minimum for entry into the occupation in the United States.
I get the impression from some of the comments here that some may interpret this as being for the kinds of highly specialized work where you might not be able to find someone available to do in America and thus need to look abroad. Abuse, then, would be hiring H-1Bs for run-of-the-mill coding work for which American universities graduate thousands each year. The problem with this argument is there's nothing in the law supporting it. The way I'd interpret "specialized knowledge" as an attorney is as knowledge distinct from general knowledge, i.e., not the kind of knowledge the average person would have, even the average educated person. Knowing how to code may not be the rarest skill, but it's not so common that the average person can be hired to do it with no experience and be productive in a few weeks. If you're hiring someone with a bachelor's in computer science to do the job, then you've met the requirement.
Rov_Scam
6mo ago
To be fair, Biden still has a month left in office, and he could very well commute the other three sentences at a later date. It would actually make political sense to do it this way, assuming the following is true:
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Republicans wouldn't have given him credit for ideological consistency if he had indeed commuted the other three sentences.
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Bowers, Tsarnaev, and Roof are the only three people on this list the average American has ever heard of.
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Accordingly, the commutation of any of these three sentences would, on its own, be bigger news than the commutation of all of the others.
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Biden's critics will revel in pointing out the lack of consistency.
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Commuting the three biggest names on their own, at a later date, will generate bigger headlines than if they were part of a blanket commutation.
So, commute the death sentences of 37 people no one has ever heard of and see what the fallout is. Then wait a few weeks and commute the remaining three on the eve of the inauguration. If the story gets lost in the shuffle then it's proof that nobody really cares much and that the political fallout from the other 37 commutations will be minimal, and that they were only really a story due to a lack of other news in the run-up to Christmas. On the other hand, if the story becomes a big deal, it will take some of the wind out of Trump's sails at a time when his inauguration would otherwise be dominating the headlines. Especially since he'd theoretically be responding to Republican criticism about his own lack of consistency, and this probably wasn't the kind of consistency that they had in mind. Not saying this will actually happen, just idle speculation on how Biden could play this to his advantage.
Rov_Scam
7mo ago
I commented about this above, but to reiterate: The lawyers accepted the case on a contingency basis. Since the lawyers take on a considerable amount of risk by working on contingency, they're entitled to compensation beyond what they would get for time and effort expended, defined in terms of a percentage of the settlement. Delaware law provides guidelines for how attorney's fees are to be calculated in these kinds of cases, but attorney's fees are always subject to court approval for reasonableness. A strict reading of one test entitles the attorneys to get (roughly, I'm going from memory) 10% of the amount saved if the case is settled early, 20% if the case is settled after discovery, and the full third if the case goes to trial. By that test, the attorneys in this case would theoretically be entitled to something like 18 billion, but they knew there was no way in hell the judge would ever agree to that, so instead they asked for something like 6 billion, based on some byzantine calculation where they used various discount rates to claim they were entitled to 11% of the total. The judge still disagreed, saying they were nuts to assume that kind of windfall based solely on the unusually high value of the case. The judge did agree that the number was going to be high: She pointed to the fact that the litigation took 6 years and was disrupted numerous times (most notably by COVID and Musk's acquisition of Twitter), that they billed 20,000 hours, that numerous experts were required, numerous people had to be deposed, an inordinate amount of records had to be examined, and the issues involved were incredibly complicated. She then looked at the counterproposal from the defendants, which suggested that they should instead get 15% of some lower number I'm not entirely sure how they arrived that. The judge accepted that proposal.
Rov_Scam
7mo ago
It depends on how you define hysteria. Most left-leaning people in my neck of the woods were pretty much done worrying about COVID as soon as they were fully vaccinated. There was still some residual level of concern, which I will agree largely ended with Omicron, but by Memorial Day 2021 very few people were doing anything beyond possibly masking up in busy areas.
Rov_Scam
8mo ago
I think you misunderstand my point. The police will make arrests for retail theft. District attorneys will prosecute. There's no reluctance whatsoever on the part of those who are tasked with enforcing the law. These are, on paper, some of the easiest cases to prosecute. The problem is that the victims of these crimes are unwilling to make a minimal effort to engage in necessary participation. Police and prosecutors aren't going to waste their time and the taxpayer's money pursing cases where they can't get a conviction because the victim won't participate. I have no interest in upending centuries of well-established constitutional protections because of the apathy of those the laws are designed to protect.
Rov_Scam
8mo ago
You can come up with any number of scenarios that are theoretically plausible, but they're all just conjecture, not evidence. Suppose I have an argument with Smith on Tuesday night. The next morning, I get up to go to work and my car won't start. I sue Smith alleging that he broke into my garage when I was asleep and damaged my car so it wouldn't start. I don't produce any evidence of a break-in. I don't produce any evidence that Smith was anywhere near my house in the relevant time frame. I don't produce any evidence that the vehicle's failure to start was the result of tampering. I don't specify what is preventing the car from starting (battery, fuel system, electrical system, starter, etc.) How seriously should my allegations be taken? I've outlined a plausible scenario, but I haven't provided any but the most general details and I haven't provided any evidence. This is the level the Trump fraud allegations were operating on. Actually, this is above that level, because here there's at least an identifiable person I'm making allegations against. The Trump situation is closer to me getting into an argument with an unidentified Home Depot employee and alleging that someone who works for the company must have done it.
Also the Dem discussion on red mirage can equally be explained as the Dems planned on potentially gaming the vote so they told everyone about the red mirage so that when they cheated they could say “we told you about the red mirage.”
Except this makes little sense. If this were planned months in advance, one would think they wouldn't need to stop counting. Fake ballots could have been ready to go from the outset, not manufactured over the course of a week following the election.
Rov_Scam
9mo ago
Oh, it's totally strawmanning. But in court I'm not giving you the benefit of the doubt in any argument; if you say something, I'm going to run with it. Unfortunately you won't get to point out my illogic to the jury because you've already taken your turn, and I doubt your client will take too much comfort in the fact that his guilty verdict may rest on a fallacious argument.
It seems to me that you're simply arguing a policy position; namely, that lethal force is an appropriate response to any attack. And while that's a perfectly fine position to take from a policy perspective, it doesn't get around the fact that the state criminal statutes are pretty clear that this isn't the case — lethal force is an appropriate response to some attacks but not to others. If you don't like this then what you're looking for is a political solution, not jury nullification.
Rov_Scam
9mo ago
No, not really. As I said in another comment, the legal standard is whether there's a reasonable likelihood of death or serious bodily injury, not the worst-case scenario. If the person is carrying a concealed weapon, and there's no evidence that the attacker either knows or has reason to know that his victim is armed, there's no way the victim could form a reasonable belief that the attacker is going to take his weapon and shoot him with it. Especially consider that the vast majority of fights, even one sided fights, don't result in death or permanent disability.
Rov_Scam
10mo ago
Do you seriously not know, or are you just looking for me to name the usual suspects so you can tell me why they were totally railroaded and did nothing wrong, or at least why they weren't Russian agents? Because that's not my argument. I'm not saying that there was any Trump–Russia connection, or that Trump himself did anything his critics accused him of, simply that the information available at the time warranted opening an investigation. If we had a tradition of strict standards regarding these kinds of things I could understand arguments to the contrary, but the Republicans had just spend 2 and a half years looking into Obama's comments after the Benghazi attack. The fact that people who seemed passionate about that at the time couldn't even adequately explain to me what the scandal even was tells you all you need to know. If anyone wants to investigate the New York State government further for possible CCP influence, I'm not going to complain.
Rov_Scam
10mo ago
If the Trump–Russia allegations were limited to Manafort and only Manafort, then you might have an argument. But there were several more people in Trump's circle who were indicted in connection with the Mueller investigation, and several more who were implicated due to having ties with Russia but committed no actual crimes. There ended up not being any fire, but there sure was a lot of smoke; it's certainly unusual for so many people in a presidential campaign to have connections to a country the US isn't exactly on great terms with. Combine that with Trump making statements about Russia that weren't exactly in line with what anyone on either side of the political aisle was saying at the time, and suspicion is understandable. If there were evidence that the conduct in question went beyond Sun and deeper into the Governor's office, I would expect there to be an investigation.
otherwise, frankly, I would have to chalk such a position up to pure partisanship.
I don't think Democrats have any qualms about hanging even more shit on Andrew Cuomo.
Rov_Scam
10mo ago
I would add that a disturbing number of the so-called "solutions" suggested in that thread involved imposing additional burdens on women that they would never tolerate themselves. These people would never tolerate a society where men were the ones required to make all the sacrifices. Suppose the tradeoff was that the woman bears all the physical risk of bearing the child, and in exchange the man gives up his career, financial independence, and political rights to become a full-time caregiver? And they should also be more willing to date low status women as well. You don't want to support five kids in the salary of an obese trailer trash hairdresser? Well, your only other option is to live with your parents and push a cash register until they're old enough that you need to stay home and change their diapers. If that were the necessary tradeoff for solving the "fertility crisis", I imagine that fertility rates would suddenly seem unimportant.
Rov_Scam
11mo ago
In some states, Pennsylvania included, if the victim is younger than 13 the offense is Rape of a Child and it doesn't matter whether it was coerced or not.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
My argument wasn't that crashing the wedding was morally justified because of the level of trust involved, just that the lack of trust on the part of the hosts meant that my actions didn't contribute to the erosion of trust in the same way they would if they were simply operating on the honor system. You could live in a zero trust society where every box of tic-tacs was sold from behind 4 inches of lucite and two armed guards, and you wouldn't be justified in stealing it. It would just be disingenuous for someone to caution you that your successful theft is contributing to an erosion of trust.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
Fistful of Dollars is the weakest entry in the trilogy, and Red Harvest is an overrated novel that I quit reading as soon as I figured out where it was going. I haven't seen Yojimbo, but I have no interest in watching it if it's just another "guy plays two gangs off of one another for personal reasons with a big showdown at the end* film. I mean, seriously, you don't need to be a clairvoyant to see how obvious these plotlines are and how at a certain point you're just waiting for the whole thing to play out.
Rov_Scam
23d ago
That's a pretty misleading description of what's going on. Most of the outrage seems focused on the attempt to prosecute the doctor, which requires that New York extradite her to Louisiana. The rest of it centers around the hypocrisy that Louisiana had a pre-Dobbs parental consent law, which would suggest that parents have the authority to determine whether their children carry a child to term. If a parent can veto the decision to abort, they would presumable also be able to veto the decision to have the baby. I haven't seen any commentary suggesting that the mother was right to surrepetitiously abort the fetus.
Rov_Scam
29d ago
There is a farm near me that a lot of kids wanted to work at because they hired 14 year olds. Few lasted. You don't get paid by the hour, you get paid by the bushel, and it's well under a dollar per bushel. You aren't chatting with your friends because no talking is allowed. Sunup to sundown every day, and you can forget about taking a vacation. And this was a family farm with a grocery store and a pumpkin patch with hayrides, not some agribusiness with thousands of acres.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
They aren't awful at all if you think of them as a way to meet people you wouldn't otherwise meet. They come with a whole different set of incentives in that the sheer amount of availability leads to an expectation of instant chemistry, but I don't know that that's necessarily a bad thing. You can go on a date with someone and think it went well, only to find that the person isn't interested in going out again. A lot of people complain about that, but the complaint is entirely one-sided in that these people almost never talk about how they didn't feel anything special about someone but decided to give a second or third chance in hopes their opinion would change. People are more likely to stick it out for a few dates in a market where potential partners are scarce, but that comes at the expense of a greater emotional toll. Imagine a situation where two people go out a few times. A is genuinely excited and views B's willingness to go on additional dates as evidence that the feeling is mutual, while B isn't that excited and is only going on additional dates because they think they should give things some time. When the truth inevitably comes out, it's going to be much harder on A than if B never let things get past date number one. And it's much harder if A doesn't have scores of potential matches just waiting in an app on their phone.
All that being said, if a woman was being as aggressive to me as in the OP's example, I probably wouldn't let it get that far. I've used the apps and everyone I've met has been normal, or at least seemed normal.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
It was in the news briefly when it happened, and there wasn't a lot of ongoing action to keep it in the news for an extended period. But a year or two after it happened it turned into a cause celebre among libertarians and progressives about the excesses in the war on terror that the Obama administration wasn't backing down from, and it was discussed more frequently on magazine shows, in op-eds, and on so-called alternative media. And it wasn't so much an onslaught as it was that it would come up every couple weeks (Oh, Amy Goodman is having Glenn Greenwald on again, etc.). If this guy had died I suspect we'd see something similar here, but since there's ongoing action in the story, it's going to be in the news more.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
I wonder why that is?
Two reasons:
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You may think that killing someone is the worst thing someone can do to them, but as a litigator, I can assure you that is not the case. Any case with a live victim who can testify and enjoy the proceeds of the suit directly will collect more than a wrongful death action where the injury is determined by extrinsic evidence and the proceeds go to the family. Garcia is currently in jail and the administration (presumably) has the power to get him out, and there is action in the court system almost daily. It has implications for the administration's policies going forward. Alaki wasn't in the news until several years after his death, and while the surrounding circumstances certainly had implications for policy, they weren't as salient.
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Criticism of the Obama administration came mostly from Democrats, and internecine wars aren't going to make the news as much as wars that have cross-party intrigue. The media outlet furthest to the right condemning the attack was the New York Times editorial board. Fox News, on the other hand, was going so far in the other direction that even the administration was telling them to stop. If the country is roughly split half and half R/D, and only half the Ds are making a controversy about something, it's not going to catch on, especially if see No. 1.
I don't know how old you are or the social circles you run in, but among left-of-center people at the time there was definitely a fatigue about Obama setting in. The whole Clinton–Kerry foreign policy machine seemed like a continuation of the failed Bush policies, or for that matter the 20th Century foreign spook shit writ large. And then on the other side, you had Republicans who said he wasn't being aggressive enough. I'm beginning to suspect that the whole turn toward what would become wokeness in late 2014 was largely an attempt to reconnect with a leftist base who had largely become frustrated with his schtick.
I hate to break it to you, but the same applies to any other area of the law, including whether the state can revoke your own liberty for a period of years. Yes, there's the added protection in that case that you will be entitled to an attorney if you can't afford to pay for one, which attorney will probably do an adequate job but might not, but in any event, all the other concerns you raise still apply. If you have suggestions on how we can idiot proof the legal system so that any moron can act pro se and get similar results to those that lawyers get now, I'm all ears, but a more realistic approach is to do more to ensure access to legal services for those who can't afford them.
As a side note, while that attorney was on record for the appeal, it isn't clear that the guy was represented at the initial hearing. Based on the available record, I'm inclined to believe that he wasn't. It's clear from the appellate record that the guy wasn't prepped to testify, probably hadn't looked at the records he was using to make his case, and relied on the report of a regular treating psychiatrist rather than a forensic psychiatrist who would have testified in court. There are attorneys in Pennsylvania who specialize in this sort of thing and no, it isn't cheap, but it's what you have to do.
The main point I want to make, though, is that you're treating this as though these hearings are prerequisite to exercising one's Second Amendment rights. But they're not; this is the case of someone who was already adjudicated ineligible to purchase firearms based on a separate proceeding, at which the right to own firearms was collateral to the determination. To the extent that he has any right to the expungement of that record, the burden of proof is on him, as the state already met theirs. The procedural posture here is no different than that of a convicted felon petitioning the court for an expungement so he can buy a gun legally. The judge denying that petition isn't revoking any right, she's merely declining to reinstate a right that was already revoked in a prior proceeding.
There is no right to an expungement; it's entirely a creature of statute. New Jersey could just as easily make expungement unavailable in any circumstances, or have a process to restore some disabilities involuntary commitment results in but retain the prohibition on owning a gun, or only allow expungement in circumstances that don't apply here, and the guy would have been SOL from the start, and this case wouldn't exist, and no one would be bitching about how his rights are being violated.
This whole matter is complicated by the fact that we are dealing here with expungement and not an alternative process for restoration of gun rights. Most other states have some process for this, but an expungement is much easier to get in New Jersey than in other states, the standards are similar to those the Feds use, and it's ultimately a stronger system since an expungement's ability to remove the disability isn't reliant on whether the process is compliant with the Federal guidelines. Whether or not there's a constitutional right for there to be some mechanism to restore gun rights to those with a history of involuntary commitment is an open question. The Sixth Circuit ruled that the Second Amendment prohibited the permanent revocation of rights just because someone was committed at one point in his life, but it didn't elaborate with regard to what was necessary to restore those rights.
In any event, it's hard to see what the court did wrong here. The guy has the burden of proof to show he should get an expungement, and he provided very little evidence beyond "I'm not nuts and you should take my work for it". He lied to the court about the circumstances surrounding the commitment. He admitted to intentionally misrepresenting his mental health to the doctor whose opinion he was relying on. How is the court supposed to base a determination on a bare-bones statement made by a doctor whom the applicant admits didn't get an accurate assessment? The applicant's testimony lacked credibility, the doctor's report lacked credibility, so what's left? Even if you can pick your way through the weeds and offer some basis upon which she could have granted the expungement, that's a long way from saying that she made the kind of error that the appellate court would reverse, and the two Republican judges who wrote the opinion seemed to understand that.
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