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Though it is unconstitutional, this is the sort of crime I think should be punishable by flogging. Say, one lash per human hour wasted--to be administered at medically-safe intervals over his lifetime at a lot less expense than imprisoning him.

2400 * 100 people inconvenienced for four hours a piece per incident (WAG) is almost a million man-hours wasted because of this guy. A year has just 8760 hours, so he took up 109 man-years of human activity.

This strikes me as both fair punishment and strong deterrence, but I won't be debating the point because I'm trying to finish A Clash of Kings this weekend.

Yup that sounds about right, "here is my opinion stated as facts but I won't listen to proof against me"

In the US prison is claimed to be a deterrence, yet everyone placed in prison is a data point against such a claim.

In some middle eastern countries flogging is a standard and common sentence also claimed to be a deterrence, yet with the exact same problem that there are plenty of data points showing it isn't.

The person you were replying to was commenting on the extent of the sentence, not so much the type.
More specifically that the extent (80 years aka life, vs 5-10) not to change any deterrence factor but to have a non-zero chance of getting a functional human being out at the end.

I was originally going to mention that your suggestion of 8760 lashes is in essence a death sentence, something we in the US perform already for two specific crimes, so why all the fucking around with torture too?

But I looked it up, and not only has a Saudi Arabian judge sentence two men to 7000 lashes as recently as 2007 and they didn't die from it, but such insane and extended torture sentences are issued pretty commonly over there. They do 100 every week for months or years and there are thousands of such sentences each and every year.

So I guess I'll limit my response to just the deterrence factor. Let's see.

A 1500 lashing sentence didn't seem to deter a doctor from giving a princess a pain killer for an injury who happened to already be a junky drug addict.

A 200 lashing sentence didn't deter a 19 year old girl from being gang raped by 7 men.

A 7000 lashing sentence didn't deter two men from being gay either.

This is really the type of behavior and treatment you are wanting, all in the name of "it would be a good deterrence"

Why not just take the man up north a couple of states where they still refuse to criminalize burning people alive at the stake? Why not cut his feet off with a saw live on tv?
Why not an actual life sentence in prison? Not agonizing enough for your tastes? Even if you throw in the trope of prison rape?
Why not just say fuck it to any semblance of a legal system and suggest anyone should be allowed to torture and kill anyone else as they deem required?

The very fact a single sheet of paper is, as you have stated, the ONLY thing keeping you from torturing others like this is frankly far more terrifying than the abuses that the US prison system has become.

For one thing, there are a ton of old disused tunnels under Chicago. I'd imagine they're poorly annotated given that many of them were completed over a hundred years ago.

If they unexpectedly run into one of those water-filled tunnels, I'd imagine that would be pretty bad.

Plus it's Chicago, so there's going to be major costs of bribery. That goes on the surface of course, but I'm sure local government will work overtime on how to wring more money out boring under, then bill someone for that overtime.

Governments auction new taxi licenses at the market rate http://www.wbez.org/news/wanna... Nice gravy train which explains why government has kept laws favoring taxi drivers. With Uber the driver and the customer give both the finger.

The advantage of Uber is it lets passengers rate the driver so other passengers can avoid bad ones and will preference good ones. You can't do that with taxis where you get whoever turns up. I've encountered some very dishonest taxi drivers in my time and plenty of media reports about taxi drivers raping passengers. This isn't about taxi drivers in tears they are worried about our safety. It's about them hating competition because people wouldn't be usng Uber if it wasn't better. Best way to solve this: repeal the laws that taxi cartels are using to keep out competition. Licensing should be cheap. Crime checks and insurance don't need to cost the vast fortunes taxi medallions are sold for in many countries. Been nice gravy train for government but the ride is over **Chicago to auction new taxi licenses, starting at $360,000** http://www.wbez.org/news/wanna...

Since I live and drive in Chicago, I can tell you exactly what we all do: we know where the cameras are, and we slow down just below their threshold around them. This is mediated by all the taxi drivers, in my experience. There's a couple areas on Western I see this happen around all the time; the cars are doing 36-40 MPH right before the camera, and about half a block from it, they drop to 34 at the fastest. The cameras trigger at 35. Also, there is a related story about them timing the yellow lights at intersections with stop cameras being timed odd. http://www.wbez.org/news/are-c...

Troll? unfair mod for an opinion. You might be interested in this story from This American Life: Habeas Schmabeas. There is an intereseting segment (at about 32.5 minutes ) about Britain's foray into secret offshore prisons in the 1600s as a response to religiously motivated violent terrorism by fundementalists who believed that by destroying the government, Jesus would come back to earth (e.g., Puritans).

Well, the big difference in US and Chinese censorship is: the US rarely puts their own journalists in jail for what they write.

On the other hand, there are more than a few foreigner journalists in Guantanamo Bay. A recent This American Life episode discusses a case where two satirists were held in Guantanamo for three years, largely based on two parodies they published. (Look about three minutes into the file.)

Also, "Reporters Without Borders said six Iraqi journalists were arrested by U.S. troops and held for months without charges, legal representation or visitors." (from here).

I recall a recent comment on an NPR news program: The United States is currently holding a remarkable number of journalists. Fewer than China, but within the top five nations of jailed journalists, perhaps second or third. Of course, the overwhelming majority of the jailed journalists are not American citizens.

I am sorry that I can't find the article at present and so perhaps you will doubt my claim. I wouldn't blame you and I wish I knew where I heard the claim.

Again, are China and the US moral equals when it comes to censorship? No, certainly not. On this, you and I agree. But you asked for examples of US government censorship. Now, jailing journalists for what they write in other countries is not exactly censorship, but it's troubling nonetheless.

This was discussed on Odyssey a few days ago. I haven't listened to this yet. However, in my opinion media objectivity is tied to the massive size that modern media corporations have grown into. If you are presenting news in a clearly biased manner, then you are going to limit your core audience. So objectivity has become a desirable trait used to sell news to the largest group of consumers possible.

Listen online. Most npr stations have online listening capabilities (Realplayer and Quicktime, respectively, usually both).

Here's one, here's mine, and here's one more.