peacefuljeffrey

I guess I should post this again, since no one seems to have opted to respond to a direct, open question: Is that why they keep murder defendants handcuffed and chained throughout their trials, even when they appear before the jury? Why would you shackle a defendant who is not yet a convict, if you must treat him like any other free person? And where in the U.S. Constitution is it stipulated that people will be treated as "innocent until proven guilty"? I see stuff about due process, public and speedy trial, impartial jury... but nothing about presumption of innocence until guilt is proven. Read the bold part. Please answer to the best of your knowledge. People KEEP THROWING THIS AROUND. It should therefore be very easy to clarify where this premise exists in U.S. jurisprudence. Right? Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

It might offend HIM if he's not guilty. If you were wrongly accused tomorrow of child molestation and immediately shunned by all skydivers would it bother you? We are supposed to treat the accused as innocent until proven guilty. Where is this written? Honest question, really. WHERE is this established? And even if it is, it pertains to what the judicial system may or may not do -- not individuals. If you come over to my house and start badmouthing my favorite band, Rush, and I tell you to shut up or you can't stay, I have not violated your first amendment rights. I am not the government. And in likewise manner, if I hold you "guilty" in my mind despite the fact that you have not yet been convicted, tough shit. We all, every day, make personal decisions based on the input information and our mental filters and processors, and often it serves us a hell of a lot better than the legal system does as far as helping us determine who we trust or not. Case in point: the legal system exonerated O.J. Simpson. Does that mean you would trust him, and believe that he's not a murderer? Remember, he was found "not guilty." Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

As the mother of three daughters aged 15, 12, and 10 I have a hard time believing that a 14 year old has the mental capacity to decide that it is an okay decision to have sex with a man two or three times her age. I don't care what the law is in those states-- a 14 year old is a child.. To a reasonable person, yes. But our laws are in such a shambles that in some places, that's the age where it's legal to have sex with them. What do you want -- we live in a country where an 18-year-old can join the military, learn to fire rifles, TOW-missiles, and mortars, fly helicopter gunships, and F-16s, but is not allowed to legally purchase a handgun until age 21. Everything's all fucked up. EDIT: Oh, and he can do all that, and also can't buy himself a beer. Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I have one of those "hard to see" ones, where you have to focus on the negative space or else you'll just see abstract black shapes. It says "FLY" I also have one that my sister gave me after I did my first few skydives. It says, "Skydivers R Good To The Last Drop" Heehee. Kind of like a triple entendre! Ya got dropping from the sky... Ya got the Maxwell House thing... Ya got the sem... er, you know... Blue skies, -Jeffrey -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

More bizarrre is leaving the keys in it! Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Dude, Red Meat used to appear in a local offbeat news tabloid here (I think it was New Times) but I haven't seen the strip in a while. Thanks for the link. Red Meat is about the craziest funniest most offbeat comic I've ever seen. Just totally oddball whacko eccentric, and funny as hell! Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

My day just got worse: I just noticed you replaced that crazy-cutepic of your face that you were using as an avatar! Well, a head-down shot is commendable, anyway. Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Maybe one day we'll hear of someone getting run-through with just the barrel of a post-'94-ban AR-15, just to prove that keeping the bayonet off the gun did no good. Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

See my next one. And I've made way more rational posts than that... usually against gun control. Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Is that why they keep murder defendants handcuffed and chained throughout their trials, even when they appear before the jury? Why would you shackle a defendant who is not yet a convict, if you must treat him like any other free person? And where in the U.S. Constitution is it stipulated that people will be treated as "innocent until proven guilty"? I see stuff about due process, public and speedy trial, impartial jury... but nothing about presumption of innocence until guilt is proven. Are you saying that you think a person has not committed a crime until the very moment a verdict of "guilty" is read aloud in court? What if you were a woman, raped by a man you knew. You unequivocally were raped by "Gus." Gus goes to court, charged with rape, and let's make it interesting -- attempted murder. He tried to strangle you but got interrupted and fled the scene. Do you feel that Gus truly IS innocent of the crime, because the jury has just sat down and has not even heard the opening arguments, let alone rendered a verdict based on the evidence and testimony? What of the fact that you actually felt and suffered the rape at Gus's hands, and you know there is no equivocation about that fact? So now your girlfriends come to you and say, "Ohh, he's guilty. I know you and I know him, and I saw on the news how his semen was found on your panties. I'm never gonna allow him near me again, I'm never gonna hang with him again, out on bail or not." Do you instruct your friends that no, they're wrong, there is no justification YET, because he has not yet been convicted, to treat Gus as a rapist who should not be trusted? Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That is the most revealing question, indeed. A person may say that they treat people as innocent until proven guilty, but that doesn't mean they believe the person is truly innocent of the crime. If I know that someone is accused of, and out on bail for, molesting children, I am not going to allow him to be anywhere near my (figurative) children. Period. And I am not abrogating some "innocent until proven guilty" tenet at law, because I am not the judicial establishment. The courts must treat him as innocent until proven guilty. But even they allow for him to be shackled in court appearances... Why would you shackle, say, an accused murderer in court if you must treat him as "innocent"? You cannot ignore the weight of the charge, and of the evidence arrayed against a suspect. We would like to believe that a person does not get hauled before a judge and jury to answer for a serious crime unless there is ample, reasonable cause to think he committed it. I know this is not always the case... but people these days are overdoing the "innocent until proven guilty" thing in much the same way as they overstate the supposed "separation of church and state" that they claim is found in the First Amendment... Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Sept 11 united this country in a way I, as a foreigner, was blown away by. I've never seen anything like it and I was impressed. The subsequent war in Iraq has succeeded in destroying that unity in a way I've never seen either. The unity was short lived, the division appears much more rife. Blues, Ian I think it's because while the Right marched on in a logical progression of that unity and went out into the world to fight the terrorists who threaten us, the Left went flaccid and shirked away from that obligation -- causing the rift of which you speak. THEY failed to follow along with the sensible offensive against our terrorist enemies. Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That is utterly false. We have cells in us that were with us when we were born. Are we to believe that the atoms swapped out, but left the cells exactly as they were? Think about nerve cells and brain cells, which are said to not regenerate... Here is a link to the story of Phineas Gage, whose "self" or "I-ness" was totally changed by a traumatic brain injury. It calls into question the validity of the claim that our souls make up who we are, and that our sense of self identity is unchanging. Also, think about Alzheimer's Disease victims, who come to not recognize spouses with whom they've lived for 50, 60 years! People who don't know who they are, where they are, where they come from... When the brain degenerates, so it seems does the "self." I'd love to believe there's an immortal, invulnerable soul that exists independent of the body, but I see so much more evidence for that not being the case. Here's the link: The true story of Phineas Gage Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That's funny I say the same thing about pot

God is only as almighty as the people who created him are able to conceptualize. As people's knowledge grows, so they have to revise what God is able to know and do. Funny how no one mentioned in the bible how God created germs and other microscopic things... If only they'd written the bible after mankind discovered that stuff! Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Leftist pansy ninnies in the U.S. have made clear what gun control in the U.S. is about, and the motivation is spreading to Brazil, apparently. See, leftist pansy ninnies are too cowardly to fight for themselves, so they pay to empower a police force to do it for them (even though that police force has no obligation to protect any individual, and generally fails to). So the leftist pansy ninnies see others -- gun owners in particular -- who have the fortitude to arm themselves and learn how to defend themselves against violent criminals, and stand read to do so, and these ninnies get antsy and self-conscious about their own inability and unwillingness to have that kind of courage. It makes them feel inadequate -- and justifiably so! Since it makes them feel bad about themselves, they seek to prohibit anyone else from being empowered to fight violent criminals on his own behalf. If you make everyone else no better than you, you don't have to feel bad about not measuring up to them. Where crime control is concerned, that means taking away the guns that the courageous people would use to fight criminals. "If I can't do it, no one should be able to do it." That's their operating principle. Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That Simpsons line is largely why I said "912."

What good is it to gain lots of friends, money, and power at the expense of your own soul? How important are material things and shallow acquaintances in the long term? If he/she is going to be a true friend, he/she will accept you for who you are and will be tolerant of what you believe. My Dad told me when I was young that, when I grew up, I should be able to count the number of "true friends" that I had on one hand. Of course, I didn't believe him at the time but he was right!

Actually the bible states that nobody, not even Christ knows the time when the end will occur. Those that claim to know are getting that information not by the words in the bible, but by their own twisted interpretations. Whether or not the date of the end falls in line with these interpretations neither proves nor disproves this religion. Here's another part of the problem: According to WHOM does the "bible state" that nobody, not even Christ, knows the time when the end will occur? See, YOU claim that in YOUR interpretation of the bible, it's not known. But how does that account for the scads of people who CLAIM that based on THEIR bible, they KNOW when it is, and they even make predictions of certain YEARS or certain DATES?! SEE?? I think it is FOOLISH to go believing in all this shit when it's so CLEARLY a bunch of "whatever I want to say is so is so" crap! You can't have so many people all claiming to be right, and all disagreeing with each other, and say that this is a valid system of belief based on TRUTH from GOD. Blue skies, -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

How about one I just made up?: "These Johns are nothing but Whores." -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Are you planning on making a coherent post any time soon? -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

From MSNBC: Bus full of Brazilian Policemen Robbed" I mean, that country is a laughing stock when it comes to crime. Their murder rate is through the roof. Cops kill innocent people living in poverty on the street. Organized gangs contract out to break people out of prison for a fee! Carjackings got so bad at intersections that they decriminalized running stop signs and lights during nighttime hours -- if you don't stop, you can't get accosted and jacked! And now a busload of cops gets robbed, and are helpless to do anything about it. No suspects yet apprehended! Should they have called "912"?! Blue skies, -Jeffrey -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Is this a PMS-related thing? -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Nope. Jonathan topped out around 300 mph... that is, until he learned to will himself places at the speed of thought. -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Like they could be any worse than the MoveONmorons. If they want to bitch about the untaxed rich, maybe they should repudiate funding by George Soros? You know, the BILLIONAIRE AMERICA-HATER who made his fortune exploiting American-style capitalism?! -Jeffrey - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"