91–100 of 172 posts
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You can either hand me your wallet, or I shoot you in the face with this gun. This happens every single day for all types of people in the US. Man, mugging and extortion sounds so much better now that I realize how often it happens. Thanks, res0nat0r!
I'm not sure how 6 months of jail time for repeatedly breaking the law is anywhere near "extortion".
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Yeah I love how people keep acting like "oh, his life was ruined so now you need to ruin hers?" NO, we need to make her not have the power to ruin more lives. If because of this, her and her millionaire husband manage to rationalize this as their lives being ruined while not caring about the kid's death they are responsible for than that really tells one everything they would need to know about the content of their c…
Her losing her position would prevent her from having the power to ruin more lives, no?
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>it's a problem we'll never be able to solve if we're blinded by trying to exact vengeance on a prosecutor The two goals are not mutually exclusive. If she's fired that will help bring attention to prosecutorial abuse.
I'm pretty sure she can only be fired by Obama, but unfortunately I'm not confident "prosecutorial abuse" is a strong enough reason for him to do so.
This petition could be a ticket and an opportunity for the administration to begin such a change... Yeah, because we all know how well Obama's "change" went. How's gitmo going? What about those executive orders? Seen any drones in the Middle East or northern Africa lately? Surely there is no more cronyism in the White House or Justice Department. I realize not every promise can be kept, but I've never regretted a vot…
So, in fact, they DO care about change then?
Why is there not this type of outpouring of rage and internet hate the last few days for someone who is seriously being railroaded: Bradley Manning. This is a person who has been locked up into solitary for months now and is being treated very inhumanely. Is it because he hasn't written any Python libraries and isn't visible in Silicon Valley?
So argue that we should help Bradley Manning, or the inner city victims of the drug war, or children starving in Africa. But argue it somewhere else at some other time. Right now we have a cause. There are a large number of good people who want to fix this now. Let them. Help them. Because this needs to be fixed, and having a singular cause gives us focus. It puts success in reach, more than it is at any other time. You are not helping by distracting people with other serious problems -- all you are doing is making it less likely that anything gets done, by disheartening everyone with the scope of the problems we face.
We do not have to fix every problem in the world at the same time. Now is the time to fix this one.
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>it's a problem we'll never be able to solve if we're blinded by trying to exact vengeance on a prosecutor The two goals are not mutually exclusive. If she's fired that will help bring attention to prosecutorial abuse.
I'm pretty sure she can only be fired by Obama, but unfortunately I'm not confident "prosecutorial abuse" is a strong enough reason for him to do so.
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I'm not referring to her losing her job. I'm referring to the threats of vigilante justice that seem to be going around, as mentioned by the linked article.
Vigilante justice is what happens when actual justice is not available. If you don't like vigilante justice, ensure actual justice.
Imagine if he had made open information one of the "Campaigns" at Demand Progress instead of getting caught up with the law?
Even now, what was supposed to be the one issue that motivated Aaron to break the law isn't even listed as one of the Campaigns at Demand Progress:
http://blog.demandprogress.org/campaigns
Where is JSTOR and PACER on that list?
If you want to go and double down on his mistake, fine. Just don't expect a different response from the government when you do so.
Or, perhaps, instead of promoting "vigilante justice", you could make a rational argument and campaign with your local representatives to get these overly generalized laws and overly punitives sentencing guidelines changed.
I think this whole petition is a mistaken diversion. This issue is bigger than Ms. Ortiz. The fact is that she was only doing her job in the way that the Congress and the Administration very much expected her to do. Take this up with those who gave her the weapons: the laws she was using and the common procedures she was using. Take it up with those who very much wanted those weapons ready and used to silence an acti…
But we can do both.
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It was a tragedy, but..... Violence as a cause of death has continued to drop in the US. It is no longer in the top 15 ways people die in the US[1]. The worst year for massacres in the US was 1929 and worst occurred in 1927 (45 dead by explosive). Yet suicide is in the top 10 and mental illness is under funded. Risk factors are what the President should concentrate on, not the incident of the moment. A President comi…
The worst year for massacres in the US was 1929 and worst occurred in 1927 (45 dead by explosive). Citation needed. 2,996 people died in the September 11 hijacking, including the 19 hijackers. That is the worst massacre that I'm aware of in US history. If you just want domestic violence, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing killed 167 people in 1995. Prohibition era violence may have created more massac…
Prohibition era violence had a whole lot of bystanders killed. 1929 had the most in number according to Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has done a lot of research in the area.
He also point out that although there was a rise in mass shootings from 1960 to 1990, a decline started in 2000.
I should also point out that neither incident you cited had guns involved.