Pangloss

I got an interesting civics lesson today from an unlikely source -- a circuit court judge in a criminal proceeding. No, thankfully, I was not sitting at the defenant's table. I was sitting in the jury box. One of the more interesting statements from the judge was (and I'm paraphrasing here, because I didn't want to be "the wierdo in the back row who's taking notes") that there are only five countries in the world in which citizens have the right to a trial by jury. The Wikipedia article on jury trials seems to support this assertion, if not the judge's specific statistic. I didn't realize there were so many differences in other legal systems. Some of the specific points in that article are fascinating. What do you all think of this? Does the lack of a jury mean inferior justice? Or does it mean better justice?

I've heard it used in that context as well (to mean "a vote to have a vote"), but I just don't know if that's the case here. My sense of context from the story was that the referendum was about whether to overturn the law against abortion. But I don't want to fault the reporter for bias if I'm wrong about the context. I know that when it came up recently here in South Florida, it was used in the sense of a specific up-or-down vote on whether to do the project in question (a high speed rail line). The referendum was worded to disallow, and it passed, so high speed rail is dead. In all likelyhood I'm putting too fine a point on this, but never let it be said that I'm not capable of splitting hairs. =^>

Peculiar? Isn't it the reporter's job to be objective in reporting the news? Why is this okay when the BBC does it, but not when Fox News does it?

But you see my point here, right? So maybe the referendum was to end abortion restrictions, and maybe it wasn't, but shouldn't that information be clear from the story? Why should a reader be forced to read between the lines just because they happen to have a viewpoint that's different from the reporter's? Is the reporter so convinced that any reader could not possibly oppose abortion, and therefore any reader will automatically assume the correct position of the referendum? Why doesn't the reporter just go ahead and shove a middle finger in the politically incorrect reader's face?

Can't it be a responsibility without making it a legal obligation?

Yeah I know, here goes ol' Pangloss looking for bias in the media again. Believe me, I'll understand if you think that about me -- I wonder it about myself sometimes. (Hopefully it's at least a good sign that I recognize that predispotion in my thinking.) Here's the story, and the quote I'm curious about: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4673421.stm Ok.... um.... am I the only one who sees a problem here? Are they saying that a referendum to hold a referendum on abortion laws was defeatred, are they saying that a referendum to overturn abortion laws was defeated, or are they saying that a referendum to maintain abortion laws was defeated? Maybe there's just a different usage for the word "referendum" over there that I'm not familiar with, but it seems to me that a referendum can ask people to take either side of an issue. Can it not? So is the problem here that the writer simply forgot to include the phrase "... on the overturning of anti-abortion laws..." between the words "referendum" and "on"? (Note that the writer went on to do the same thing later in the story.) Or is the problem here that the writer simply is unable to comprehend that anybody could possibly want abortion to remain illegal?

That's interesting, I've never heard of compulsory voting. Is that a common thing?

Interesting. It's hard to say if that's definitive one way or the other, but it's food for thought. I've read that the subject of federal mandatory sentencing guidelines may be tested by the Supreme Court this fall, which will be an interesting issue to follow. Certainly if that happens then the 8th would presumably be in play. At any rate, I think there's enough there to support the opinion that it might not constitute an 8th violation, but not enough to declare it to be factual. In other words, it's your opinion that the placing of this individual would not be ruled cruel and unusual because it's not part of his sentence, but we don't know that for a fact. We don't have sufficient information here to make a declarative statement on it. I also suspect that ultimately it would be up to a judge to determine. Interestingly, this would seem to bear relevence to your point about judges making decisions based on strict guidelines, something I was considering taking issue with you over earlier. I agree that, in the case of some mandatory sentencing guidelines (such as the federal ones, which are not relevent here), the judges have very little leeway. But this is not always the case, and as we've seen in recent years, it's not all that unusual for a judge to make a determination that's broader in scope than was anticipated. The point being that just because the law required that the man be placed into the database does not actually mean that the appeals court was required to do so. In fact I suspect that if you were to read the appellete judges opinions closely, you would find it implicit in their statements that they had the authority to decide the case the other way. After all, you can't have a concept of judicial review without that ability. (Edit: BTW, I'm going to be out of touch for 24 hours or so.)

In thinking about this a bit more, I suspect that the reason he wouldn't be criminally liable might have something to do with the fact that he wasn't yet employed by the White House at the time. He worked for the Committee to Reelect at the time, I imagine, but that's not a public office.

Newsweek is now reporting that Rove was the source that let Cooper off the hook. ABC News had some lawyer types on tonight saying that Rove wasn't criminally liable, but I didn't catch what their reasoning was. The Newsweek story (their source is Rove's attorney) can be found here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/site/newsweek/ I wish I'd caught the whole story on ABC, but the only thing that leaps to my mind is that Rove might have simply confirmed what Cooper had already learned, and thus his statement that he didn't give out the name might be legit. But while that may take things out of the Watergate realm, it does seem to more or less, finally, for the history books, confirm Rove's opportunistic, sneaky, underhanded methods. There seems little doubt now, from a completely non-partisan perspective, that Rove was the ultimate source of all the dirty tricks that were played against Bush opponents in his presidential and gubernatorial elections. Since much of that input came in the past from Bush's opponents, it was difficult to be objective about it. That objectivity seems to be present now. A minor point, perhaps, but it says a lot about the state of election politics in this country, and it's something we need to have a national debate about before 2008. It's more important than, say, 527 orgs, or campaign contribution levels.

Interesting points. It's too easy to blame it all on the left. That's just more ideology getting in the way. I have quite a bit of sympathy (as you all know) for the concept of liberal bias and political correctness in the media, and if there's one thing I LIVE for it's to point out hypocrisy wherever I can root it out (grin), but we seem a bit too caught up in that sometimes. It's two wrongs making a right, and as we all know that's just another kind of hypocrisy. (My biggest problem these days is defining a middle ground wide enough to catch a foothold on!)

The Iraqis want us out, the insurgents are winning the fight by sheer sadism, and the entire world is angry at us. If we pull out now it will cost thousands of lives, billions of dollars, and we will encourage the worldwide anti-American xenophobia thus increasing the chances of further attacks. We must stay the course.

I realize this poll is overly restricted, but what I'm looking for here is a sense of which option you would choose if these were your only available options. Because of the restriction, nobody should hold any respondant responsible for claiming to advocate the position of their response in this poll. Thanks. The question here is, which of these choices would you most favor?

In my view' date=' terrorism is caused by [i']terrorists[/i]. Leave them alone, and they blow you up. Give 'em what they want, and they blow you up more. There's no other blame to pass around. Not one bit. I understand the frustration of being on the losing side of a socio-political debate, and being upset about it. But I think it's unfair to place blame where it doesn't belong. I didn't vote for Bush (this time) either, but you don't see me blaming him for Hurricane Dennis just because he didn't sign Kyoto, which makes exactly as much sense. Terrorism is just wrong. There is no other side of the equation. No second half of the sentence. No "if we only had..." to contemplate. The only people at fault are the terrorists.

Just as a side note, has anyone ever seen "Absence of Malice", with Paul Newman and Sally Field? It's interesting how they tackled the meat of this issue 24 years ago and I think the resolution of that movie (the scene with Wilford Brimley near the end) is fascinating from a socio-political perspective. (There's y'all's Politics Board Homework Assignment for the weekend, lol.) =^D

Ok, that's a good answer. Let me expand the discussion a bit. What if the reporter lies? How do we know he hasn't invented the anonymous source out of thin air? This is a real problem when there's no clear and objective answer for a simple "cui bono" test. And it's aggravated by the elevated partisan atmosphere of current politics. Haven't we already seen examples of the corruption of this power at the highest levels of the media already? Jayson Blair of the New York Times. Stephen Glass of The New Republic. Jack Kelley of USA Today. The BBC scandal of last year. Of course, we found out about all of those, and there's something to be said for that. But still, it doesn't bode well for the reliability of individual anonymously-tipped stories, does it? Bear in mind that fact checkers and ombudsmen are powerless to deal with anonymous sources. What if Jayson Blair had left the paper after reporting some of his earlier stories, before it was discovered that he was a fraud? Also, don't we have to evaluate the quality of a source? Why should we assume that, even if a reporter is being honest and truthful about his or her anonymous source, that the source is actually correct and accurate? What if they're acting at the behest of the opposition party? What if they're simply... mistaken? Sure, with whistleblowers maybe you can just look at it as a warning -- check and see if what they're saying is true, and if not, proceed. But in politics, it's not generally so clear.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news.php?id=10308 Time to break out the tin foil hats.

Yes, I think that's a fair description. Would you like to take a crack at my question to dave? You quoted it but then you stopped short with some background information. Did you lose your train of thought?

Yes, that's certainly a good thing. That's the service they provide that's valuable. Where I take issue is when they look at only one side of the argument. For example, one might say that free speech is an absolute, but clearly we make an exception for something like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. Special interest groups are inherently incapable of making such distinctions. This sort of problem is common in EFF positions on electronic privacy and other tech-oriented civil liberties issues (which is their focus, and what makes them distinct from groups like the ACLU). Just to give a brief (and extremely oversimplified) example of this, the EFF promotes the removal of all restrictions against downloading music, regardless of copyright. They try to paint the file sharing issue as a simple matter of consumer rights, ignoring the issue of artist rights and the vast implications of that kind of position.

Best wishes to our British friends here on the board. After such a happy day yesterday, to have this happen, must be devastating. I'm so sorry for you guys, and I hope you and yours are all well.

At risk of sounding argumentative (which is not my intent), their way of doing what? In general I think special interest groups have become too powerful in our country. That's not really the fault of special interest groups, it's the fault of the media, which is prone to reporting press releases of certain special interest groups (especially the environmental ones) as if they were news, and the fault of human behavior in general. That having been said, they still play an important role in the political landscape, and can serve a valuable function. In my opinion EFF does some good work, but as with any special interest group, they have to be taken with a grain of salt. By definition, no special interest group which relies upon money to function can ever be objective about any subject related to their work. Period. They will always spin any issue in the same direction. It's not their job, after all, to give you objective information. It's their job to stay in business and win converts to their cause. As such, they will always present issues in black-and-white clarity, even when the issues under discussion could not be more gray in nature. So long as people understand that, there's no problem really. The minute people start defending them with statements like "well xyz.org isn't like that," there's a problem. Always.

Their general purpose or their specific actions? I think it's too broad a question. Can you narrow it a bit? It's like asking if one agrees with the ACLU. The EFF takes positions on a broad variety of issues. Many of them I agree with, some of them I do not. (I was a charter/founding/original member, by the way, and am presently helping with the Tor project.)

Just to kinda prod the discussion a bit, how far would you extend that right, dave? For example, what about a reporter shielding a source who tells him or her the identity of an individual who cried "Fire!" in a crowded theater (just to pick a well-known exception to freedom of speech)?