Lobowolf

I agree! Partly because I need the drink, and partly because this thread is amusing and amazing enough in parts to make me feel as though I've already had 10.

What would Barry do?

Ever since she saw Psycho, my mom won't shower at night if she's home alone.

"Agricultural"?! I like it. Have I been missing some new lingo in TBW, or is this a Phil C. Special?

Small club. Wait, what was the question?

Does that include the pregnant girl and her boyfriend? When the kids studying in the library get their Lexuses washed by the kids going skateborad tricks in the library parking lot 10 years from now, after growing up in the same neighborhood and going to the same schools, do you tell them that the other group never had a chance?

You might be on to something, as far as recruitment ideas.

Padilla was transferred from being in the criminal justice system to the military tribunals as an "enemy" combattant and then back again. And that is the entire point of the article - a person or a government does not have the right to chose whether or not a person should be a criminal or an enemy combattant. Conspiracy was probably a bad example for the most problematic cases (though I wasn't aware of this provision, which obviously does extend jurisdiction). The most problematic are the ones where people get training by organizations, then return to the USA without a specific terrorist act planned, but are basically awaiting further orders, i.e. the "sleeper cell" situation. They haven't committed any crime. Maybe the answer to that is that they should just be left alone, or surveilled.

I didn't cite it for the proposition that it was right; I cited it for the proposition that it predated 9-11 by about 60 years.

Unless and until we reestablish the Bill of Rights as they were before 9-11 then we can no longer claim to reside in the same country as before - the country that the framers envisioned where the rule of law superceded the law of man is not the country in which we now live. And that pisses me off. This perspective sort of reminds me of a professor's comment on Mel Gibson's Hamlet - "They should have called it 'My Favorite Scenes from Hamlet, in No Particular Order'." Firstly, neither Padilla nor Moussaoui was charged with terrorism; they were charged various counts of conspiracy. And we should be grateful to the flight instructor who tipped off the FBI to Moussaoui, while we're at it. The Padilla case is significant for the material witness detention (keeping him locked up an awfully long time without charging him). The desire to classify his activities as "criminal," as is apparent from the article, is based on an interest in simply letting the criminal justice system take care of him (and thereby relieve him from another agencies' jurisdictions). Legally, it's a bit of an oversimplification (although they did manage to convict Padilla). The basic idea is that it wasn't clear what, if anything, he did HERE (meaning on American soil and therefore clearly subject to American criminal courts jurisdiction). He was recognized as a dangerous guy with bad intentions, but the worrisome stuff (i.e. training with Al Qaeda) wasn't done here. Padilla was treated as an enemy combatant (a phrase that's hard to leave out of a discussion of Jose Padilla, but unsurprisingly was left out of Hornberger's article, probably for an obvious reason -- the precedent for treating people as enemy combatants didn't come from the post 9-11 era; it came from an early 1942 court case (Quirin)). Even when people's activities are minimal on American soil (like Padilla's and Moussaoui, and is often the case in conspiracy matters, where the "bad act" requirement is pretty minimal; it's generally bad plans + ANY act), the criminal justice system can usually handle them fairly adequately. It's when those activities are carried out on the battlefield, or at least in the battle theater, that they're more problematic. In those situations, there are distinctions (and reasonable ones) between lawful and unlawful combatants. Lawful combatants are treated much better, at least in principle; but they're supposed to follow some rules. They wear a uniform or other identifying garb, they carry their weapons openly (i.e. they're recognizable), they conduct themselves in acccordance with some generally accepted military rules, etc. When people NOT in that category take up arms, they're not accorded POW treatment. But they're not subject to American criminal court jurisdiction, because American criminal courts don't have jurisdiction over them. So they're sort of in a no-man's land, wherein we're not going to ignore them, we're not going to arrest them the way we'd arrest a guy robbing a 7-11, and we're pretty surely not going to let them go, either. And that doesn't go back to 2001; it goes back to 1942, where it was Germans, not Middle Easterners, who receieved, essentially, terrorist training and snuck into the USA. And guess what? They didn't get American criminal court hearings; they got a secret military tribunal backed by a unanimous Supreme Court that said the President could do it as Commander in Chief.

This is a serious Post of the Year contender to challenge "It's a good thing I'm not political."

I thought the generic standard agreement was that the double means "lead my suit" first. If we haven't bid, then second in the heirarchy is "Lead dummy's suit." I think an exception should be made when the partner of the leader could have doubled the suit for the lead in the auction, though.

I disagree, at least with respect to whether the "victimization" is inherent, which is the key question, IMO. Because some people drink a fifth of Jack Daniel's and beat their kids three times a week is not a sufficient justification to criminalize the people who drink alcohol in moderation. Similarly, you qualify the problematic aspects of drug use by saying if Mom is drunk/high "all the time," or if Dad is using crack "often." That's not to say that those excesses don't happen (often, even) and cause problems. But I don't favor criminalization of risk creation, with very few exceptions (drunk driving, making convicted pedophiles stay away from schools upon their release, etc.) Analyzing use by thinking in terms of abuse has its own problems. The next thing you know, you're banning strip clubs because some people might lose their jobs because they don't go to work, they get addicted to the strip club and hang out there all day. Or banning table salt, because it leads to heart disease, which causes financial hardship to the family when Dad has a heart attack at 50, or can't work.

It partly depends on the question, too... Prison in general? Prison for drug offenses? Prison for offenses related to drug use (e.g. stealing to pay for a drug habit)? It also depends on what function you're primarily looking at prison to serve; there are many theories on punishment, and most of them are compatible. For instance, if you put someone in prison for murder, you could have different people think that that's appropriate for fundamentally different reason, e.g. 1. It's good, because he deserves to go to prison (retributivism) 2. It's good, because he won't like the experience, so if and when he's released, he'll be less likely to do it again(specific deterrence) 3. It's good, because people hearing about his sentence will be less likely to kill someone (general deterrence) 4. It's good, because he'll be separated from society and unable to kill anyone else (incapacitation). And yes...there are others (e.g. reinforcing soicetal norms, i.e. "people shouldn't take drugs") Because the rationales are largely compatible (i.e. the examples above all start with "It's good"), you don't really have to spend much time thinking about WHY people "should" get locked up (unless you're in a criminal law or moral philosophy class). With respect to drug crimes, though, I think separating out the rationales is more relevant. Someone (the drug user) who is either a recreational user, or an addict who is only harming himself doesn't really "deserve" punishment. Moreover, incapacitation doesn't seem too important for someone who's only directly harming himself. IMO, not only don't we have the right to lock him up, we don't have the responsibility to do so, at the expense of taxpayers who aren't threatened by his actions. So to the extent that we're talking about drug crimes, I strongly agree that it's not the answer. This doesn't include, in my view, non-drug crimes that are "drug-related" e.g. I don't really care whether the guy who broke into my house was doing it to help him buy heroin, or doing it to help him buy an X-Box. With respect to "non-victimless crimes" (primarily crimes of violence and property acquisition crimes), I'm most strongly moved by the incapacitation argument. If you can't play nicely (particularly if you have a history of not playing nicely), you get a timeout. A long timeout. With respect to those types of crimes, I think prison IS, if not "the" answer then "an" answer. If prison needs to be reformed such that the recidivism rate will be drastically reduced, I'm all for it. But while you're teaching him whatever he needs to learn in the interim, I want him separated from those of us who don't steal cars or break into houses.

I agree. It might also show, as Helene suggests, that there are some atypical characteristics of the USA (large coastline and borders, wide income disparity, etc.) that may contribute. And it could also be that Mr. Webb's suggestion is correct - that we're doing something wrong, either in prison, or outside of prison. It's also partly a matter not of pragmatics, but of value judgments, i.e. having a joint in your pocket in Omaha vs. having one in your pocket in Amsterdam isn't quite seen the same way. I just have issue with the "Things are different here, so obviously we're doing something wrong" spot analysis, especially with respect to incarceration rates. I mean, you could compare a country that has 0.1% of its citizenry locked up to one that has 0.5% of its citizenry locked up and say, "What's wrong with Country B? They have 5 times as many people locked up!" or you could say, "What's wrong with Country A? THey have 5 times as many criminals walking the streets!" To clarify, I think that either comment is superficial to the point of being not useful. I don't think that anyone should be in jail (let alone prison) merely for drug offenses; however, I think that comparing incarceration rates of different countries is a pretty poor way to make that point.

I don't know enough about criminal law in other countries to know that it's not "worth considering" whether underincarceration exists in those countries. Frankly, I'd have thought a dig like this to be beneath you. My own belief with respect to American criminal law is that we both underincarcerate and overincarcerate, depending on the offense. Overincarcerate with respect to so-called "victimless crimes," including drug offenses, including, in my view, distribution. However, with respect to a number of other crimes, I think we certainly underincarcerate (or at least under-punish). My house was broken into last year, with a few thousand dollars' worth of things stolen (and a couple of other items destroyed, not out of malice, but in the rush to find more stuff to steal); I find it pretty disgusting that the people who did it were able to make that choice against the backdrop of possibly probation, or a setence of less than a year. More strikingly, thousands of people are killed each year in drunk driving accidents, many by drivers with previous arrests & convictions who received slaps on the wrist. I'd call it "catch and release" for you fishermen out there, when a guy in his 20s with a handful of priors is still out there driving until he kills someone. "But gee...how could he have been driving? We suspended his license." When your car gets stolen, or your house gets broken into, or your loved one gets killed by a drunk driver, and the person who did it has multiple prior convictions, I think it's a perfectly natural (and valid) response to say, "Geez, why was this guy walking free among members of polite (ok, rude, but not criminally so) society?!" But I have no idea what they do in France, or England, or Germany with multiple offenders.

Interesting that Mr. Webb assumes that the "only" possibilities are America-based. Perhaps it's the rest of the world that is underincarcerating.

I just wanted to bump this thread lest I be said that I never agree with Winston. I also like his thread on the nature of time.

It's good to know you don't allow facts to interfere with your biases. :P Don't let the context undermine your point...talk about letting the facts interfere with your biases. I notice you conveniently leave out the second half of that statement -- again you ignore (I can't say overlook, since I brought it up in the last post, but you cut and pasted around it) the fact that some children NOT born to Muslim parents will convert to Islam; unless that number is less than the number of children born to Muslim parents who do not become Muslim, the numbers won't be exaggerated but UNDERSTATED.

So Werner Heisenberg gets pulled over for speeding...the cop comes and taps on his window and says, "Excuse me, Sir, but do you know how fast you were going?" Heisenberg says, "No, but I know where I am!"

Get a clue, Winston. This is completely false. You might be able to argue that in theory it's not, but in practice your assertion is LOL. Amen. The evils of Islam are to be defeated at whatever cost to our souls. Uhhhhh yeah...Kevin's comment about religious affiliation of descendants is clearly connected to Islam's being evil, or needing to be defeated. STR_WM_N. I'd like to buy a vowel. It's absolutely true that fewer than 100% of children born to Muslim parents will become Muslims, and in that sense, the number is overstated; on the other hand, a number of children born to non-Muslim parents will convert, and in that respect, the number is understated. It's called "rounding" or "generalizing." I guess we can never say what the population of any country is, either, since we never know exactly whether someone has died or been born, and if it's not 100%, it's false or inaccurate. And let's throw out most physics, too...we don't know EXACTLY how far the sun is from the earth, or the speed of light. "LOL" was a gross underbid.

It's both. Studies of twins separated at birth have suggested strongly that there's an inherited component entirely separate from inculcation. Surely you are not saying that Christians inherit Christianity from their parents and Muslims likewise? I think you must mean instead that people have a propensity for religious belief of an unspecific nature, which then accepts the particular religious teachings that children absorb. Am I right? It's been a while, so I may be misremembering; however, my recollection is that there was a positive correlation for both (though a bigger one for the "degree" of religiosity than for the tendency toward a specific belief).

It's both. Studies of twins separated at birth have suggested strongly that there's an inherited component entirely separate from inculcation. So which of your two sentences should I take seriously, is it suggested or a fact? Scientific studies have margins of error. It's not proven in the sense that the conclusion of a syllogism is proven, but studies have shown it to be true.

Bridge World Standard, for what it's worth, when holding a minimum hand with 4-5 in the minors, is "use your judgment."

What's your preferred rebid for novice/intermediate players after 1C-1S when holding mediocre clubs and a 1-3-4-5 hand?