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Afroman found not liable in defamation case

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Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#351

Going on the stand and stating that you "don't know" whether the allegedly defamatory statements you are suing over are true or not is a... bold legal strategy.

> Going on the stand and stating that you "don't know" whether the allegedly defamatory statements you are suing over are true or not is a... bold legal strategy. if the statement is true, that's a defense against defamation. if the statement is not believable, that is also a defense against defamation. it actually was legal strategy designed to dance around the legal strategy behind those questions being asked, taki…

I think comment was alleging perjury.

They do know the statement is true (and this is provable). Pretending like they "don't know" is a lie under oath.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#352
post #217
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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No, you ignored evidence presented while failing to provide any of your own. Evidence has no minimum standard in debate, you can only provide more compelling evidence to the contrary.

And to expand on that, this isn’t even a debate. It’s a casual chat about an actual courtroom debate. Here, no one is judging our presentation. We don’t have to meet a high standard of evidence to speak our opinions, lest they be judged invalid.

However, in the actual courtroom where very similar arguments played out with real consequences, Afroman was found not liable for saying more inflammatory versions of the same things. That is, he was judged, for worse, and he won.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#353
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. Try calling a cop a “pig” to their face. Or breaking up with a cop. Or just say no to something they’re asking you to do. “Not all cops” and all that, but enough of them are like that that you have to be really careful how you engage with them.

> Try calling a cop a “pig” to their face. At least where I live in Europe you aren't allowed to insult people and you can get fined for it. Be it a police officer or a any other person.

being fined != physical, possibly fatal violence with body-cam turned off and irrevocable immunity

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#354

I have a potentially silly question, and obviously naive - but why so many drawn guns? Fun music videos aside, what was the background here? Were they coming in on a Massive gang fortress? Or are all the stereotypes of American police forces true and they just come guns a-blazing all the time? I mean, that wasn't even police officers with hand guns, they have army-like guys with massive automatic rifles, and they see…

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Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Police do regularly get shot at when raiding. Got any data? It happens daily? Weekly? Monthly? What is "regularly"?

Doing quick research says about 1 shot at per day, 1-2 fatalities per week, and about 26,000 assaults per year

That’s total officers shot, not specifically for raids.

A NYT investigation indicated there were “at least 13” officer deaths tied to forced entry raids from 2010-2016, so around 2/year. It’s unclear how many other fatalities happen in no knock raids. Given that there are only 50-60 total fatalities/year it’s surprising there isn’t comprehensive data for this.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/18/us/forced-ent...

There are an estimated 20k-80k no-knock warrants in the US every year for context.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal. Oh dear. I have bad news about cops.

Which is, apparently, a strategy you wholly endorse.

People walking around with guns and badges should be held to the highest of standards. Suggesting an equivalence between the burden of proof on a hackernews commenter and individuals authorized by the state to detain, arrest, and potentially deprive citizens of a free country of their life, liberty or property is asinine and shameful.

Cops want the power to do all this, do it incorrectly, be unable to be held accountable, and then cry like babies when someone makes videos and mocks them. He could have just sued them directly to recoup his financial losses from them destroying his house over a bs warrant but cops have qualified immunity. The justice system gives him no recourse. They sued him for videos meanwhile his countersuit was thrown out on this basis.

If you support the cops on this I see no reason why one should not conclude you "wholly endorse" the ongoing "law enforcement" assault on free Americans. What principles do you take the nation to be founded on? You realize red coats coming into people's homes under the color of the law is what instigated the war that bought this country its liberty 250 years ago? I fail to see how this is much different, armed goons with guns and badges invading private property that cannot be held accountable. No election he can take part in will reasonably solve this so he can sue in a timely manner, as the unelected justice system has unilaterally decided you cannot sue cops over this. This is anti-American. Go read the bill of rights and tell me it is consistent with the spirit of those hard fought liberties to support the cops on this. I hope if you actually endorse burdens of proof you will at least support local, state and federal representatives who will codify into law a "repeal" of qualified immunity so that cops who fail to meet that burden can be held personally accountable.

Note a case on that count would still need to prevail on the merits. That is how justice is supposed to work. Instead a carve out for law enforcement has been created where you can't even take them to court. Your case is going to get thrown out. The justice system should not be creating this special class of people, with great power and depriving them of the responsibilities common between neighbors in a free society. What they have done is really not unlike the British sending armed men into American cities to violate rights and then insisting they cannot be held accountable in colonial courts as a matter of principle. This is criminal. People should be able to sue police officers. If that makes the cost of waving guns in people's faces more expensive then so be it.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like observing that we could probably solve the issue of people saying mean things on the internet by requiring ID to access it. You have to consider any expected negative consequences as well as if you'd be violating any rights.

Youre aware that the rest of the planet have stricter gun laws and the American problems are fairly unique? This is even after controlling for things that exacerbate crime like high economic inequality. For instance, Brazil [1] (a much poorer and more unequal country than the USA) has lower murder rate than a lot of cities now than the USA. The murder rate of Rio seems to be about on the level of Houston (17/100k), o…

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Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve seen other highly developed countries operate just fine without arming their citizenry to the teeth.

> We’ve seen other highly developed countries operate just fine without arming their citizenry to the teeth. Good for them. As an American, I'm quite happy with our Second Amendment rights, I'm not looking to roll that back in the slightest. And if anything, with the recent rise of the fascist authoritarian regime that we've seen, I'd think that maybe a whole lot of "anti gun" people here would be well on their way t…

All my life I've heard that an armed populace is to protect us from authoritarian government. Now that we have creeping authoritarians running the country, where are all of those "second amendment solution" people? What trigger are they waiting for, exactly?

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've also seen it go wrong plenty of times. They can do them and we can do us I figure; I'm quite happy with my gun rights thanks. There are highly developed countries that tightly regulate speech and network access relative to most of the west. Does that mean adopting an ID requirement to post on Twitter coupled with anti hate speech laws would be an obviously good thing?

If tweets were a leading cause of death in children we should probably at least consider making it harder to tweet.

It was an arbitrary example. Try to see past the politically charged topic to the actual analogy that I'm attempting to make.

The point of my original reply wasn't about the position being expressed but rather the stated reasoning. If your logic amounts to "Y could solve X therefore we should be doing Y" notice that when applied to other things that line of reasoning doesn't seem to hold up very well.

If you want to have a discussion about child mortality versus tail risks such as elections being suspended or the government murdering protesters a la Iran that's fine but please realize that wasn't the point of my earlier reply.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#360
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try calling a cop a “pig” to their face. At least where I live in Europe you aren't allowed to insult people and you can get fined for it. Be it a police officer or a any other person.

I cannot imagine living in a place where I can't tell someone what I think of them once in a while.

You can tell them they are doing a shameful job or that you disagree with their actions or whatever.

You just can't _insult_ them like a 6 year old on a playground. Why is the ability to do so valuable to you?

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