GeorgiaDon

Russia was desperate for Western aid after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but they were largely rebuffed. Perhaps GHW Bush, Thatcher, et al were too wedded to their personal history of only knowing the Soviet Union as a mortal enemy. I suspect that the USA needed to have an antagonist to justify their giant military, and they couldn't adjust to the disappearance of communist Russia without another enemy at hand to switch to. It would have been too disruptive to the US economy to scale back the military/industrial complex and put their manufacturing strength into making products for the civilian world, not to mention employing all those ex-military personnel. So the opportunity slipped away, Yeltsin was replaced with Putin, and here we are.

Homicide is defined in the law as "when one human being causes the death of another." That's not a liberal definition, it's the legal meaning of the word. Homicide includes justifiable killing, murder, manslaughter, accident, etc without implication as to criminality. Castle doctrine long ago (centuries) established that you have the right to defend yourself, including with lethal force, in your "castle" (home). As lippy so eloquently put it, SYG laws (mostly written by the NRA by the way) extend that to the Denny's parking lot. It has always been legal to defend yourself, even with lethal force, to protect yourself against someone threatening you with lethal force, if that is the only reasonable way to defend yourself. To some people, though, SYG laws extend the concept of "self defense" to include lethal force to protect yourself against people wielding loud music, plastic bags, bags of popcorn, checking your power meter, etc. In some states SYG has been used to acquit defendants who started a confrontation or fight, then resorted to a firearm when the fight didn't go their way. Drug dealers having a gun battle over territory have successfully used SYG to defend themselves in court. Even if the defendant is eventually charged and convicted, the victim is still dead. Georgia is currently a "shall issue" state, meaning that the state must issue a concealed carry permit as long as you pass a background check. No training in firearm proficiency or the law regarding firearm use is required. Legislation has been introduced, and will certainly pass, to make Georgia a "constitutional carry" state with no requirement for a concealed carry permit or a background check. Whatever your opinion of lax training in SC, in Georgia there is no training at all, so people sometimes discover their misunderstanding of who/when the law allows them to kill someone only after it is too late.

I'm fine with most of your criticisms of the paper, but given that it was only published on Jan 13 of this year how many citations do you think would be normal? I don't know about your field, but in mine there would be zero chance that I could cite a paper in a manuscript, submit my manuscript to a journal, get it through the review process, and have it published in just one month.

I agree that his death is tragic and should not have happened. I believe I said as much. Again, you said: Perhaps I misunderstand, but it seems to me you are saying he should not have been stopped, and when he resisted arrest the police should have let him drive away. Is that still your position, knowing that he was being arrested because he had a warrant for aggravated assault with a firearm? Not inviting someone over for dinner is one thing, letting an (accused) violent criminal who assaults people with a firearm just drive away is something else entirely. I cannot agree that letting this person drive away is "safer for everyone involved". Do the police sometimes overreact, with unnecessary tragic consequences? Absolutely! Is there a pressing need for better training, and more rational policies about how to enforce laws, especially laws regarding "nuisance" offenses? Certainly! But I'd also argue that the police are often stuck with "head's you lose, tails you lose" situations. Perhaps the police would be less prone to overreact if they were less likely to be shot and sometimes killed while making traffic stops. Traffic stops are second only to domestic disturbance calls in the number of police shot and killed. It's not unreasonable when they pull someone over to assume the driver or passengers are armed, and willing to resort to violence. If they let someone drive away despite a warrant, and later that person injured or killed someone, you can be sure the public/media would be screaming for that officer to be fired, and not without cause. Here is a real world example of a situation that actually occurred. Maybe you will recognize it. A woman called police to report an incident that resulted in her boyfriend being charged with third degree sexual assault, trespassing, and disorderly conduct involving domestic abuse. A warrant is issued for the boyfriend's arrest, as well as a restraining order. About a month later she calls 911 to report that the boyfriend has come to her house (despite the restraining order), took her car keys and her three children (which he does not have legal custody of), and is putting the kids in the car. Police, who have been informed of the warrant, are dispatched to the scene, where they find several women arguing and yelling at a man. When they attempt to detain the man he fights with police, refuses to drop a knife he is holding in his hand despite being tased twice, and tries to get into the car and drive away with the woman's three kids. At this point, what should the police do?

Firstly, laws that are not enforced are not laws at all. If traffic laws are not enforced, how many more people will die because of drivers behaving recklessly? Some jurisdictions are, I have read, experimenting with having traffic laws enforced by a specialized force that does not carry firearms or have arrest powers, they just write tickets. Secondly, Duante Wright was not being arrested due to an expired tag or an air freshener hanging from his rear view mirror. He was being arrested due to a warrant that was issued when he failed to appear in court to answer charges of assault using a firearm, following an incident where he (allegedly) choked a woman, threatened her with a handgun, and searched her including groping into her bra looking for money he thought he was owed. Should the police not enforce arrest warrants either? Why would anyone show up in court at their arraignment if they know the police won't enforce warrants? It's not clear that Officer Potter was aware of this at the time (and so it might or might not be germane to the incident), but Duante Wright had a firearm in his possession at the time of the stop, which would have resulted in felony charges due to his status as a felon. Likely that played into his decision to resist arrest and flee. Certainly Mr. Wright did not deserve to die for these infractions. However his actions contributed a lot to instigating and inflaming the situation. So again, how are things supposed to work if we adopt a policy that traffic laws and arrest warrants are not to be enforced?

I wonder if he's tired of so much winning?

If he has negotiated immunity in exchange for his testimony it might be a good deal for him. I realize the Jan 6 panel cannot charge anyone with a crime, but he could negotiate a deal where his testimony can't be used against him, and then use that cooperation to argue for leniency, or try the Bill Cosby strategy of using the deal to get charges dismissed.

It's called the military-industrial complex. If they didn't spend so much on the military, they might be able to afford universal health care, or decent schools for everyone, or paid sick leave and maternity leave, like every other economically advanced country. But that would be socialism! Far far better to build a bunch more tanks, or aircraft carriers, or whatever.

Brent employs the old tactic of using the consequences of discrimination to justify continuing that discrimination. For example, it was long argued (especially in the former confederate states) that it would be a waste of money to provide public education to former slaves and their descendants as they were not intelligent enough to make use of that education. As "proof" they pointed to the very low literacy rate amongst those former slaves. Of course they neglected to mention that slave states had strict laws forbidding teaching slaves to read and write, so the very low literacy rate had nothing to do with intelligence. So, we are left with a couple of choices regarding Brent's post. Either he is incapable of understanding that he is perpetuating a practice that has historically excluded half the human race from being recognized as intelligent creative people fully capable of inventing useful products, or else he does understand what he is perpetuating and chooses to do so anyway. Neither option speaks well of him.

I don't think "messing with" is very accurate. They have closed the bridge in both directions for the past two days. Commercial traffic has to divert all the way to Sarnia, at least until they decide to close that as well. What is the plan? To block commercial (and all other) traffic and starve the country into submission? I am starting to think it's time to declare a national emergency and bring in the troops to clear these bozos out, airlift them to the North Pole, and park their trucks on the ice on Lake Huron for several months.

Did you have a hard time when you learned you shouldn't call grown men "boy" or "Nig---"? Why is extending the smallest degree of respect to other people so hard for you?

OK, so you're a conditional socialist. When you benefit socialism is good. If anybody else benefits it's bad. Here are a few other socialist aspects of the USA. Which do you think should be eliminated? Police; fire departments; public education (K-12, state universities); interstate highways; municipal water; water (sewage) treatment plants; municipal/state/national parks; FEMA; air traffic control; etc.

Good to know you're going to refuse your social security and medicare.

Not surprising that you would stoop to using the death of the leader of Isis as a cudgel to beat Biden. Tell you what, since you seem to be so upset about al-Qurayshi's death I will gladly contribute $100 towards your expenses to attend his funeral in person. All you have to do is offer proof that you were physically present (not Zoom or anything like that). Perhaps you could wear your old military uniform, just to show your respect for the man.

I wish there was a way to make everyone who is refusing to get vaccinated due to some perverse notion of "Freedom" read this.

Personally I think he should mingle as much as possible with all those truckers clogging up Ottawa streets and looting soup kitchens. In disguise of course.

News to me too. However, you would still be responsible for the consequences of your speech. If you intentionally cause a panic and people are injured or killed as a result, you will be charged. Don

Attenborough must be 1,000 years old by now. I've seen some other statements he has made recently that are easily disproven, which suggests to me that his cognitive abilities are not what they once were. I suspect he is being used by some groups seeking to take advantage of his reputation and gravitas. And yes, there is propaganda on the left as well as the right, and intelligent consumers of information are aware of that. I don't see much of a moral equivalency though, if we are comparing hyperbole regarding the impact of reckless endangerment of the environment to installing a one-party state where only Republicans can be allowed to win elections.

Lawyers with an agenda, and virtually unlimited money from right-wing supporters. A while ago I read that there was literally millions left over after all his legal expenses, and some of his lawyers wanted to return the balance to donors and some (especially one who he fired, and who is also a big name pushing the Trump lie) wanted to keep it for themselves. It's well known that in the US (and I presume elsewhere) there is one law for the rich, another for people in the middle, and yet another for the poor.

But, that's completely different! Dr Seuss depicted black people as apes, which is just free speech and sort of true. Except that they vote just like Americans do (but we're fixing that). Those smut books depict LGBTQ people as humans, and that's just communism, or woke-ism, or pervert-ism. /sarcasm (just in case anyone doesn't get it). Once again I am reminded that these days Republicanism=rank hypocrisy.

Newt Gingrich is largely responsible for everything that is wrong about Congress and the Republican Party IMO. Even if he didn't start some of the pathology, he gave it a huge shot of steroids. He is a perfect example of the class of politicians who will pursue any course of action, no matter how destructive to the country, to secure his own power, again in my opinion. Trump would probably not have happened if Gingrich hadn't already degraded what used to be the Republican party so thoroughly. He orchestrated the Clinton impeachment, built around Clinton's (exceedingly ill-advised) affair with Lewinsky at the same time he was shagging his own mistress, which illustrates the degree of shameless hypocrisy he is effortlessly capable of. I would not waste piss on him if he was on fire. He is, to my mind, evil incarnate. If I had more time I'd tell you what I really think of him!

Wow! Phished in! Sucker (or moron).

Rank hypocrisy is pretty much a defining feature of Republican politics these days.

It's understandable that people are impatient with the slow pace of "justice". Certainly I feel that way. However the biggest disaster would be a rushed prosecution that results in acquittals. That would allow the crooks to claim that the whole investigation was a politically motivated witch hunt, with some validity in the eyes of many people who are not already rabid Trump groupies. Of course they would also permanently escape having to account for their crimes. Biden was elected to bring back a sense of normalcy to government, and "normal" should mean that the Justice Department operates independently from the White House and only prosecutes based on evidence (sufficient to have a high chance of securing a conviction) not political expediency. I do not know from personal experience how hard it is to put together a really strong case, but I imagine it is very complicated especially in a situation where you are investigating crimes involving many politically powerful people who can muddy the waters, or use credible threats of retaliation if/when Republicans regain control of Congress. For those reasons I am not ready to toss Garland just yet.