domain:cspicenter.com
anti_dan
2m ago
Attempt crimes always have allowed for mistake of fact and are not given the same sentence as the crime itself. Not only is this set of facts enough to prove burglary, it also would prove attempted murder.
This is not akin to the Trump case, because in your case we would know that the alleged felony that the burglar had the mens rea to commit was murder. But in the current case, we do have an exact crime. Instead the prosecution waved at a bunch of statutes and said its possible that Trump committed those crimes (while they and the judge didn't let Trump put on an expert witness who would have said he, in fact, did not violate those laws). This is a novel application of the law in many ways, so its not really serious to compare it to burglary.
Nor even something else like criminal conspiracy, where again you need not succeed in robbing the bank, but it is enough for your gang to buy guns and masks and bags with money signs on them, then drive to the bank, go into the bank, and if you get arrested at the front door, you still are guilty of conspiracy to rob the bank. Again, totally unlike the current situation.
TracingWoodgrains
2m ago
I do relate, honestly, to being a believer in a space full of nonbelievers and the sense of isolation it can provide as people attack your deeply held beliefs. The particular reply you link is obnoxious, low-quality, certainly unpleasant to receive—and downvoted, with no meaningful support from others. And it’s true—you were staking out a minority viewpoint difficult to defend in a forum like this, and receiving harsh responses for doing so.
You very badly misunderstand the situation and the comparison at hand, though. I’ve been in heated conversations before. I’ve had slapfights, I’ve had controversial posts that get a lot of pushback. That’s all well within the norm.
What is extremely far from the norm is having people en masse accuse you of being a shill, tell you your reputation has been destroyed, tell you you don’t belong in the forum, and receive mass support (see eg upvote totals) for doing so. You’re fixating on one person who respects me—and was still calling me a shill—and a handful of supportive replies, in the middle of a flood of vitriol. I didn’t link the worst ones—I linked some of the ones with the most support and one drive-by potshot in the middle of the flood. At the end of your conversation, nobody was threatening any longstanding impact or indicating that they would treat you differently moving forward. There were no spiraling ramifications, no deep-felt expressions of hatred. It’s apples and oranges.
Dismissal isn’t comparable, either. People weren’t coming around en masse to tell Kulak he didn’t belong in the community after the article. They just disagreed with it!
Like, you can see in the links—note particularly the one mentioning it was clearly costing me a lot of goodwill. People there were extremely well aware at the time that it was an extraordinary reaction in an extraordinary situation; to treat it otherwise is to badly misread it. I’m not going to act like nobody on this forum has ever faced worse—particularly around flameout posts—but I can emphatically tell you that the reaction here was uniquely ugly, of all the places that took note of the event.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
4m ago
Bit of a quick one:
The Victorian state government (Australian) has failed in its 4 year bid to halt the processing of a Freedom of Information release of documents related to the reasoning behind the Covid lockdowns. The documents were to brief the state's chief public health officer and Minister for Health prior to lockdown public orders.
The court involved noted there was a large public interest in the justifications for the lockdowns and that it would not be an undue burden on department resources to process the FOI request. It should be noted the same political party (Labor) is still in continuous power since the time of the lockdowns.
Hopefully the public can get some answers for why Melbourne suffered the longest Covid lockdowns in the world.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
12m ago
I would vastly prefer to be in Trump's shoes in New York than in Georgia. The bar for proving RICO is so low there and it comes with a 5 year minimum sentence.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
17m ago
but it doesnt seem like it was orchestrated by people with leftist goals.
Since Fidel Castro figures as the person who ordered it in some of the theories, I don't think that's necessarily true. The (Soviet) KGB is also a common suspect.
Flippant response: Then you won't mind publishing reporting all of your personal expenditures, right? I mean, you can still spend unlimited amounts of money on whatever you want; you just have to report what you spent. No one could possibly see how an obligation to document your expenditures counts as an imposition on free speech, right?
Slightly less flippant response: It's kind of amazing, but the Court in Citizens United managed to not talk about reporting requirements at all. Like, they introduce the history of the case and say that CU was challenging the disclaimer, disclosure, and reporting requirements as well, but they literally never talk about the reporting requirements. It just disappears entirely. Almost like they were dodging the issue, so they didn't feel political pressure to falsely say that they were okay, instead perhaps coyly preserving an openness to address the issue later in a follow-on case. Diffusing the hits over time is tried-and-true Court Stuff.
Perhaps more concrete: Surely there are some bounds which contain these requirements. See McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n, for example. Perhaps the Court has to date avoided addressing the issue in context of campaign finance laws (again, hilariously coincidental that CU magically disappeared any discussion of reporting requirements), but this smells to me like it's just begging for a case. Let's say you and I got together, we conspired, hacked the source code of the universe, but only just a little. I, a totally random individual, but still presumably subject to independent expenditure reporting requirements, pulled some money out of my pocket and bought the most YUGEASS sign for my teeny tiny front lawn. Like, my lawn is so friggin' small, it can barely hold this sign. The sign definitely cost a few hundred dollars, triggering the reporting requirement. You got to pick the candidate that this sign supports. Together, our source code hack accomplishes one thing: it gets the FEC to bring an enforcement action against me, and that enforcement action is now in front of the Supreme Court. How do you think it goes? Does McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n figure into the picture somehow? How so?
(FYI, note very briefly that I currently rent, and do not own, the teeny tiny yard in front of the house that I rent. Passersby may be able to surmise, "Someone who lives there must really like this guy that Ashlael picked," but they wouldn't be able to use any public records to figure out who I am, unlike what would be the case were I required to publicly report it.)
Changing directions a bit, but bringing us back closer to Trump: the good news is that those reporting requirements, whether ultimately constitutional or not, are only attached to things that "expressly advocate" the election/defeat of a clearly identified candidate. But of course, what Trump did was very much not "express advocacy". So now, on top of that other bundle of issues with reporting requirements generally, we're going to have a slew of killer hypos pulling on this thread, too. Suppose Trump pulls two crisp Benjamins out, which happens to be just enough cash to place a "Blue Lives Matter" sign, not on his own lawn, but on a patch of land that cannot be connected to him, personally. He happens to think that this message will implicitly bolster support among people who are likely to vote for him in addition to just personally believing/liking the message and wanting to support the police. Reporting requirement? Criminal?
EDIT: Hell, we don't actually need to go all the way to Trump doing it. Could again just say that I, a random ass-individual, spent a few hundred dollars on a "Blue Lives Matter" sign (presumably because you picked it out; I don't think I'd ever do that otherwise), but let's immediately forget that parenthetical and assume that I did it because I thought it would implicitly bolster support for Trump and help Trump's election campaign. Reporting requirement? Criminal?
SophisticatedHillbilly
26m ago
I’ll continue following the law, but to place the onus of “don’t be suspicious” while following the law onto the citizenry is exactly the sort of infringement on rights that I’m talking about. The state has no right to arrest citizens for doing things that aren’t illegal, even if they look bad. If staring through a wall is arrestable, make it a crime.
There’s so much low hanging fruit for police to deal with it’s absurd that this should even be an issue. This was in a major city where I saw shoplifting on a daily basis! A car in front of me got shot up in a drive-by shooting! Entire sections of the city were defacto no-go zones! The fact they took time to arrest me, at the time college student working two jobs, was absurd.
I live my life in an upstanding manner and do not involve myself in situations that could lead to me being suspected of criminal activity.
Sounds terrible. I’ve been ticketed for things as simple as picking up a rock in the wrong jurisdiction. I can’t imagine how little you must do for this to be possible.
Tenaz
30m ago
vehemence/forum support
Your first example starts with "I like you," and everyone responding disagrees with their point. Your second was immediately banned and the only other comment disagreed with it. In your third, again, most of its replies disagree with it. In the fifth link, most commenters disagree with their take. The fourth link does, admittedly, seem to have some support.
Overall it looks like your reception was neutral to positive in terms of vehemence and support, i.e. there wasn't all that much vehemence and there was some net positive support. You had more defenders than attackers, especially if these are the worst examples you can find, and some of your attackers were very kind and even-handed.
Even the comments on the piece itself look fairly negative, so it really doesn't look to me like TheMotte is exceptional at all in that regard. I think if we conducted a sentiment analysis we'd find TheMotte to be very similar to your reception among your dedicated fans.
Scale
Sorry, can't compete there, because TheMotte is about 1/4 as big as it was back then, and I haven't been involved in any comparable scandals, nor am I a founder of this community, nor am I a semi-professional semi-journalist (I'd feel comfortable calling you a journalist, but I don't mean much by the term, and I'm not sure you'd agree). But after a certain point the scale really isn't important--what matters is whether an acceptable fraction of the community has seen the post, and what their average sentiment towards the post is.
Give one example
I'm hesitant to even bring it up, because you're obviously still pretty affected by the response to your own writing, and my own unpopular post was both low-quality and something more likely than most things to be something you have your own strong negative feelings towards. Still, fair is fair, here's the post I had in mind.
It's an admittedly low-quality comment that generated a startling amount of disagreement (perhaps even "vehemence"). In particular, consider this comment, which is more vehement, lower quality, and less charitable than any of your linked un-modded replies.
Look at any of the responses to my original post. I had essentially no defenders. Everyone disagreed with me, many did so in quite rude terms, no mods stepped in at any point. I'm not too bothered by any of this because on a level I deserved it. My original comment was pretty much just drive-by sneering with very little substance to back up very substantial claims, and my follow-up replies were not much better. I don't think that justifies all the replies but it does explain them and very much prevents me from taking it personally. If I thought it had been a good post, I might have been more upset by the reception.
A better example (iirc) would be the reception to KulakRevolt's "banned books" piece, which I can find if you're interested. People were universally very dismissive of it. You can argue (and I'd agree) that that piece was lower quality than the fake furry curriculum piece, but the fact remains that your reception was nowhere near unique or exceptional and there are right-leaning commenters here who have faced worse.
NewCharlesInCharge
31m ago
They're red and they really don't like Biden after he bought into the dumb "border patrol agents on horseback whipping refugees at the border" media narrative, and then promised to hold people accountable.
Wave_Existence
37m ago
I wouldn't know, but its always fair to ask Cui Bono. In the case of LBJ getting to decide what to do in Vietnam, warhawks got prettymuch exactly what they wanted, and the resulting political unrest provided a solid tentpole for Nixon.
Obviously the assassination of kennedy has enough question marks that an entire cottage industry spawned around explaining it, but it doesnt seem like it was orchestrated by people with leftist goals.
sweet
37m ago
It baffles you because none of the politicians you support are likable, they're nakedly predatory and contemptuous of the plebs. Blues are struggling against the fact that they're squares and stiffs. Tomato's screed reads as "dear subhuman filth" does. The online right have been using the sentiment as a recruiting tool for years.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
39m ago
National review has basically said this is BS (but Trump did himself no favor with bad legal counsel)
Nothing before the "but" matters.
The Wall Street Journal thinks everything is fine.
[Trump] adding, “I don’t know if Biden knows too much about it because I don’t know if he knows about anything.” There is no evidence that the Biden administration was involved in New York prosecutors’ decision to charge Trump in the case.
Emphasis mine. Not only is this blatant editorializing in a news story by the Wall Street Journal, it's blatantly false, because the involvement of a former Biden DOJ official is evidence.
Rov_Scam
42m ago
This is the part that bugs me the most. How can a crime be asserted as a predicate fact in court when that crime has never been charged, tried or convicted?
Would you feel any better if you found out that the referenced crime need not even have occurred? And that this has been the case for hundreds of years? Look at common law burglary, for example (modern statutes usually expand the definition, but we'll keep things simple). Unauthorized breaking and entering of a dwelling in the nighttime with the intent to commit a felony therein. Say Bill breaks into Tom's house at night. A neighbor sees him break in and calls the police. The police apprehend him and he's carrying a gun. Tom was not home at the time. A witness testified that Bill told him he was going to kill Tom. There's sufficient intent to prove burglary. The fact that he can't be convicted of murder is irrelevant. The fact that he can't even be convicted of attempted murder is irrelevant. The fact that it would have been impossible for him to even commit the intended murder is irrelevant. He's not getting this reduced to criminal trespass.
NewCharlesInCharge
47m ago
Had they paid for the story and then published it would it have been a contribution for Trump's opponent?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
52m ago
Because wide latitude for states to prosecute presidential candidates is going to be extremely chaotic and destabilizing.
Only if both sides are allowed to use it. If it's restricted solely to the Left prosecuting right-wing candidates, then it would be stabilizing, because we'd get nice, stable single-party rule.
to acknowlege that state party operatives are going to abuse this newly validated tool in cynical and destructive ways.
I acknowledge that one side's operatives are going to abuse this newly validated tool in cynical and destructive ways, even as they successfully shut down any attempt by the other side to do the same. When the refs are all siding with one team, the outcome of the game is a foregone conclusion. Bambi Meets Godzilla can only have one outcome.
"Do I want a candidate/party/official I don't like or trust to have this power?" If the answer is "No," then I don't want it for my team, either.
Whereas other people, when they answer the question "no," see the way to deal with that is to make sure only their own side's candidate/party/official can use that power, while forbidding it to those they "don't like or trust". "Rules for thee, not for me," quod licet Jovi non licet bovi, nobles can do what is forbidden to peasants — this has, historically, been a common system. Look up the origins of the term "privilege."
dasfoo
55m ago
The parties should be better gatekeepers, but they seem to be broken now in a desparate race to the bottom.
NewCharlesInCharge
56m ago
I was curious how the prosecutor even came to get those private books. He convened a grand jury that subpoenaed Trump's accountants for tax and business records, Trump sought to quash the subpoena with assertions of Presidential immunity, and it was adjudicated by the Supreme Court and not squashed. Aside: the decision here has some interesting history I'd never heard of before, with President Jefferson apparently engaging in a bit of lawfare against Aaron Burr.
Not being a lawyer, I was surprised that apparently the bar is very low for what a grand jury can subpoena, just about anything short of a "fishing expedition" is allowed. Do they even need to call their shots like in billiards, or can they start with the idea that there's one specific crime, and end up charging something completely different? Or do they even need a specific crime to investigate?
I've tried to find the reason that this grand jury was convened and can't find anything official. I found one report on a Manhattan grand jury that said "It is unclear what assets Manhattan District Attorney’s office will be investigating specifically," but I don't know if that's even the same grand jury that led to the falsifying business records charge. The indictment itself doesn't have any identifier like date the grand jury was convened.
So, how is one to judge whether the subpoena was a fishing expedition or not?
dasfoo
57m ago
There was a Hollywood movie in the wake of the Clinton scandal, The Contender, about a woman who is chosen to replace a deceased Vice President. However, her confirmation becomes controversial when rumors of a college orgy surface. The Democrat-led argument 25 years ago was this private sexual conduct was wholly irrelevant.
Of course, the movie also pulls its punches by ultimately revealing the rumors to be baseless, drummed up by an Arlen Specter-like Senator played by Gary Oldman.
These are always arguments as kamikaze soldiers, to be used when convenient for maximum shock but with no real ideological committment to using them faithfully and responsibly.
ZorbaTHut
59m ago
(whoops sorry this took a while to see)
So, the janitor system is actually working, mostly as hints to existing mods - I've never rigged it up to actually take actions, but it does give ratings on whether a comment is good or bad. It's pretty dang accurate! If it's uncertain, the comment is usually borderline, but there's a lot of comments that have extreme "this is good" or "this is bad" ratings and it's quite rare to disagree with them.
It will surprise nobody to learn that there are random janitor assistants who are actually more consistent than the mods. I did use this as a tiebreaker during the Doge process.
I've wanted to rig this up to be more automatic - and also to do quality contributions - but life is unfortunately pretty packed right now for various reasons and haven't had time :/
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Is this how other people have been watching videos all this time?
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