The mistake was mine, I called them to ask what could be done, and they made the promise of a near total (minus my cost of return shipping) refund. I never asked for this treatment, I expected to eat the S/H charges in both directions at the very least. Hell, I hadn't even read their return policy when I made the call, it was simply a good faith attempt to resolve an honest mistake with minimal disruption to both parties. Regardless, the point of my sad sob story is they made a commitment and refused to honor it. It does not matter if the CSR "exceeded" his authority, that's an issue for their HR department to worry about, not their customers.
BTW, I'm going to nitpick you on two points:
They have every right to charge that 15% restocking fee
They might have the "right", I'm all about the free market, but it's piss poor customer service to charge a restocking fee for an unopened item, never mind the promise that their CSR made. What were their actual economic damages? Shipping and handling, which I expected to pay, and credit card interchange fees, nothing more. There's precious little opportunity cost here, it wasn't a rare item that they missed a sale on or anything of that sort. It went back into inventory, and was doubtless sold to another customer.
I'm glad my purchases aren't subsidizing your inability to make a sound decision.
Their refusal to honor the commitment they made and I never asked for cost them more than the restocking fee. I don't know the particulars of their merchant agreement, but charge-backs come with a penalty, both a one-time fee (per charge-back) and a percentage penalty towards their transaction totals that will be reflected when they renew their merchant account agreement.
Perhaps you should e-mail them and ask that they invest some monies in employee training, since my CSR clearly promised more than he has authorized to deliver. In Top Gun prose, he wrote a check that his body couldn't cash.....
I vaugely recall arguing with you in the past, but you're my new friend with this post. I wish Assange's defenders here would stop and ask themselves what their opinion of this matter would be if the accused's name was "Smith" instead of "Assange". Something tells me the rightous indigination would be replaced with a range of emotion somewhere between "Hang the rapist!" and "Let justice run its course", but of course it's Assange, and he's a hero of the internet community. He's essentially no different than the star athlete that gets a pass for the very same crime from soceity at large, because, gosh, our hero couldn't have done these horrible things....
Moot point I suppose. I've been around the block enough times to know that justice is rarely obtained once the media feeding frenzy begins, for neither the accused nor victim.:(
The only gripe I would make about Arial is that it isn't fixed space. That's not a deal-breaker for me, depending on the document in question (personal letter good, code snippet bad....), but it's worth noting that the Rules of Civil/Criminal procedure in a lot of jurisdictions mandate fixed space fonts.
Final thesis & each year's "mini-dissertation" had to be typed. Everything else just had to be legible; if your handwriting was neat enough that was acceptable.
You're either really old or live in a unique part of the United States. The middle schools around these parts won't even accept handwritten book reports, everything is expected to be typed. Personally, I think that's rather unfair for low income students that may not have a PC at home, but that's neither here nor there.....
My point is that there is no way in hell that any country other than Sweden would try to prosecute anyone for any kind of rape based on these kinds of claims.
Your original point, and the one that I replied to was (emphasis mine):
That's pretty much up in the air, and pointedly that kind sexual misconduct that is in question doesn't even exist in laws... well anywhere outside Sweden really.
I disproved that assertion. The rest of your latest post is a simple attempt at redirection. The alleged behaviors that I've discussed would be illegal in numerous jurisdictions, not just Sweden, and are actions that most every human being would consider morally reprehensible. Of course, I'm dealing with someone that uses sophisticated terms like 'feminazi' (Rush Limbaugh called, he wants his meme back), so perhaps my expectations of you were unrealistic.
It was an allegation of the fact that he did not use a condom.
My understanding is that she agreed to have sex with him, provided he use a condom, a condition he complied with, then at some later point he dove in for round two unprotected. If that is indeed what happened then it would be considered rape within the jurisdiction I call home, and I suspect many others as well.
Here's my post from the other conversation. Before you get high and mighty, stop and consider the fact that I've never said he's actually done these things, only that his alleged actions as I understand them would be considered rape in my jurisdiction. You don't get to ignore someone who tells you "only with a condom", "no anal", "no rough play", or any one of the millions of limitations normal human beings choose to apply to the sexual act. Such an action is both legally wrong and morally reprehensible.
As far as this specific case, with this specific person, I doubt we'll ever know what really happened. That's par for the course with most rape accusations, even those without media involvement and grandstanding politicians.
Amazon.com charges a restocking fee under exactly the same circumstances that Newegg does
No they don't, unopened items returned within the return window are refunded in full, minus the return shipping cost if the return was a result of an error made by the customer. You only eat a percentage of the product if it's returned outside of the usual 30 day return window, which is certainly fair.
In Newegg's case, they attempted to tried to ding me 15% of an unopened $600 video card, despite their CSRs claim that they would waive the fee. The return was completely my fault, I ordered the wrong card, and was open about that fact during my communication with them. I initially reached out to them in the hope that they would simply recall the shipment, since I hadn't received it, but they claimed this was impossible. They also told me that I could not refuse delivery (an option with Amazon, FYI), because that would be a return without an RMA, and suggested I go through the standard RMA process. I asked what would happen, they said I would get a total refund and only be on the hook for return shipping, which was more than I expected (eating the S/H charges in both directions would have been fair, since the mistake was mine), but I assumed they were being nice since I had placed an order for the correct card prior to calling on the bad one.
Imagine my surprise when I got my credit card statement and found the restocking fee. Numerous phone calls ensued, wherein every single person that I talked to refused to honor the deal. Escalated to supervisors, who also refused to honor the deal, escalated again to people that never returned phone calls. Offered to provide a recording of the original call, but was told that it would be "irrelevant", because the CSR "exceeded his authority", as if that's my problem. I ultimately had to dispute the charge with my credit card company, and the only reason I prevailed there was because of the aforementioned recording.
The best part? A few weeks later I get an e-mail telling me that I'm prohibited from doing business with them, because of the chargeback. Their prerogative I suppose, but none of it would have happened if they had simply honored their CSRs original promise.
Newegg doesn't carry much that you can't find on Amazon for the same price, and Amazon has a more consumer-oriented return policy. 15% restocking fee for an unopened product? Fuck you Newegg, and the horse you rode in on....
Readability. The same reason they usually mandate double spacing, the numbering of paragraphs, and so on.
You'd appreciate the same if your job primarily consisted of reading documents on paper. Didn't your professors/instructors at school have similar requirements?
To the best of my knowledge, the courts never had to deal with it. The Clerk of Court office would simply refuse them, and instruct the person filing of why they were refused. Like "Really, you can't use Comic Sans. Use Arial, Helvetica, or Times New Roman.
I guess it depends on the court, when I did the pleadings in my divorce the Prothonotary didn't even look at them. They had my address wrong, I corrected it in the first page of my answer, asked her to make sure this was reflected in their system, at which point she goes "Is that in here?" All those hours wasted reading pleadings from other cases, the PA Rules of Civil Procedure, and tweaking the formatting of my documents until they were proper..... Heck, they didn't ask me for ID, not for the filing or when I asked them to notarize something. Gotta love small town America....
Another point to consider, a lot of courts also have electronic filing nowadays, so the Clerk may not even see your pleadings at all. Unless of course they have to print them for a technically challenged Judge.:)
I hope you're right that it was something he was required to write for the proceeding, because if he's trying to wing it without a lawyer he's already screwed up. Letters from litigants carry very little weight with most courts, even those (small claims/traffic court) that primarily deal with matters that aren't usually worth hiring a lawyer for. Litigants are expected to know how to draft a pleading and obey the rules of procedure.
.... most American legal jurisdictions have Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure, that specify the format legal pleadings are supposed to take. They're usually quite specific on the allowable fonts, font sizes, line spacing, the format they expect for the numbering of paragraphs, and so on. Lawyers and pro-say litigants ignore these rules at their own peril, as doing so is liable to get your case dismissed outright and at the very least will seriously annoy the Judge. Of course, most Judges don't take this annoyance, combine it with a bunch of other rants, then post it on Facebook....
It does amuse me that so-called higher educated professionals just as liable to open mouth and insert foot on Facebook as the immature uneducated brats (I was, like, at work, and like, you know that patient, like, from the other day? He's, like, a total asshole.) I have the misfortune of calling co-workers.
you do understand that what you quoted supports what I said
"TSA officers do not search for marijuana or other drugs; however, if an item is found that may violate federal law during security screening, TSA will refer the matter to law enforcement. Whether or not marijuana is considered medical marijuana federal law provides no basis to treat medical marijuana differently than non-medical marijuana."
You're rolling the dice every single time you pass through a TSA checkpoint with marijuana, unless the DEA rescheduled it while I wasn't looking, or Congress managed to do something useful, both of which I seriously doubt.:)
I don't know what your underlying aliment is, but I would highly recommend that you find an alternative to flying with marijuana on your person. Have a friend procure some at the other end of the trip, take alternate transportation, or just stay at home. That's just my two cents, perhaps you're braver than I am, personally I can think of a million things I'd rather do than risk my liberty and/or become a cause celebre. It sucks, and I'd really like to see the law changed, but until that happens it's best to keep your head down.
and pointedly that kind sexual misconduct that is in question doesn't even exist in laws... well anywhere outside Sweden really
You're wrong. His alleged actions would be Rape in the Third Degree (a Class E felony) in New York State. I cited the actual statutes the last time this conversation occurred, and can dig them up again if you doubt me.
In a nutshell, if someone gives qualified consent for sexual intercourse, you commit a crime when you engage in behaviors that you know they haven't consented to. You can't stick it up a woman's ass if she tells you "no anal", or dive in without a condom if she tells you that's the only way she'll have sex. Doing these things is not nearly as serious as forcible rape, legally speaking (morally I think it's nearly as repugnant), but it's still rape. If convicted you would earn a lifetime ban from gun ownership, a loss of your voting rights, and the requirement to register as a sex offender. You'd probably avoid jail time, assuming it was your first offense, but you'd be on probation for many years, which means no alcohol, no drugs, random tests for each, random searches of your residence, weekly meetings with your probation officer, travel restrictions, etc.
In short, it's nothing to sneeze at, nor is this alleged behavior only criminalized in Sweden.
You can **board airlines** with medicinal marijuana with your proof...the TSA doesn't bother you for small ammounts
Huh? Their own webpage suggests otherwise. It does say that they don't specifically look for it (nor should they), but will refer the matter to law enforcement. "*Screening procedures are governed by federal law and designed to detect threats to aviation security. TSA officers do not search for marijuana or other drugs; however, if an item is found that may violate federal law during security screening, TSA will refer the matter to law enforcement. Whether or not marijuana is considered medical marijuana federal law provides no basis to treat medical marijuana differently than non-medical marijuana."
Local LEOs might let you get away with it in a state with legalized and/or medical pot, but I personally wouldn't be brave enough to test that theory.
The Sixth Amendment doesn't apply to Guantanamo Bay.
Let's just ignore the inconvenient truth that nobody new has been admitted to Gitmo in years, those who are there were all captured on foreign battlefields and received the due process entitled to them under the Geneva conventions, and the titanic P/R disaster that would ensue if any American administration (never mind this administration) were to send him there.
If the United States wanted Assange badly enough to resort to extra-judicial measures we'd already have him. He's not that important. He hasn't killed any American citizens, or done anything that American journalists haven't been doing for years. If left to his own devices he would probably make a complete ass out of himself, sooner rather than later if the comments from his Wikileaks colleagues are any indication.
Not to mention that he would be held in solitary the moment he lands in Sweden
He hasn't even been charged in Sweden, they simply want to talk to him about the case in question. I don't know much about the Swedish justice system, but I find it hard to believe that a Social Democracy throws people in solitary before formal charges have been brought. The most serious reading of the allegations against him wouldn't get him remanded without bail in the United States (at least before he demonstrated himself to be a flight risk), with our supposedly draconian justice system, let alone tossed into solitary. Are you seriously claiming that the Social Nirvana that is Sweden treats defendants worse than the United States?
Lost in all of this are his alleged victims, whom are supposed to actually receive some measure of justice. Their allegations may be completely bogus, totally legitimate, or lie somewhere in between, we'll never know as long as he keeps ducking the judicial system.
Put your tinfoil hat away, he was freely walking the streets of the UK, until he exhausted his appeals in the Swedish case. Say what you will about Assange (I've said plenty), he's not a complete moron, the fact that he waited until he ran out of appeals spokes volumes about what he's really worried (Sweden) about. If he was worried about extradition to the United States why didn't he run the embassy sooner? Ditto for concerns about being charged in the UK.
He would then rot in a cell for several years(~6) before seeing the inside of a court room.
The Sixth Amendment says otherwise. Defendants have the right to a speedy trial. This right isn't always invoked, for various reasons (often defense counsel is the one asking for adjournments, in which case the right doesn't apply because the Defendant has waived it), but it's there. In New York State the People have six months from the filing of felony charges to either move forward with said charges or dismiss them, the only exception being for Murder I cases, which I believe have a 12 month timeline. Don't know what the exact deadlines are in the Federal system, but they're there.
George Zimmerman
George Zimmerman is an asshole, but I would have acquitted him if I had been a Juror. "Beyond a reasonable doubt", and there was plenty of reasonable doubt to go around in that particular case. That's actually an example of our system getting one right, given the disparate interests that all lined up against him, and the cynical attempt by those interests to poison the jury pool.
The two major parties used to be collections of disparate interests that came together to win elections, rather than classical left/right-wingers. If you nibble around the edges you can find that this still holds true with a few issues (abortion and the 2nd Amendment are good examples), but by and large the trend has been for the elected officials in each party to pander to the left or right on all the issues, lest they alienate the primary electorate and find themselves out of a job.
Primary Elections are dominated by the true believers, while General Elections require massive amounts of cash, cash the candidates are most likely to obtain from the aforementioned true believers, so is it any surprise that they cater to them once they win office? Rinse and repeat, election after election.
Joe Q. Public, i.e., the "most" people you're referring to, doesn't religiously follow politics. He doesn't watch MSNBC or Fox, or read Daily Kos or Red State. He has a belief structure that might favor one party over the other, but he doesn't tune into the process until a few weeks before the General Election, at which point it's really a beauty contest in the vast majority of House districts. Joe Q. Public essentially picks the side that he thinks is going to do the least damage, then prays the pendulum doesn't whack him in the head as it swings from left to right and back again.
Interesting that you seem to assume I'm a member of the GOP, when I never used the word "we" to refer to them. You do get some points though, the words you choose to describe yourself are words that I might have chosen to describe my own belief structure.
In any case, apostates don't interest me that much, be they recovering Democrats, Republicans, Christians, Muslims, Atheists, etc. There's a quote that comes to mind, which seems very appropriate in this context: "No one is more righteous than the fallen man reformed."
No, I stopped reading at "cult". Your "insider" picked the wrong media to spill his guts to if he cared about winning people like me over. I'm about elevating the dialogue, which means we don't use pejorative words like "cult" to describe political parties that claim tens of millions of our fellow citizens as members. I tuned him out with the same ease that I tune out Ann Coulter and Keith Olbermann.
Slashdot Mirror
The other guy beat me to it.
The mistake was mine, I called them to ask what could be done, and they made the promise of a near total (minus my cost of return shipping) refund. I never asked for this treatment, I expected to eat the S/H charges in both directions at the very least. Hell, I hadn't even read their return policy when I made the call, it was simply a good faith attempt to resolve an honest mistake with minimal disruption to both parties. Regardless, the point of my sad sob story is they made a commitment and refused to honor it. It does not matter if the CSR "exceeded" his authority, that's an issue for their HR department to worry about, not their customers.
BTW, I'm going to nitpick you on two points:
They have every right to charge that 15% restocking fee
They might have the "right", I'm all about the free market, but it's piss poor customer service to charge a restocking fee for an unopened item, never mind the promise that their CSR made. What were their actual economic damages? Shipping and handling, which I expected to pay, and credit card interchange fees, nothing more. There's precious little opportunity cost here, it wasn't a rare item that they missed a sale on or anything of that sort. It went back into inventory, and was doubtless sold to another customer.
I'm glad my purchases aren't subsidizing your inability to make a sound decision.
Their refusal to honor the commitment they made and I never asked for cost them more than the restocking fee. I don't know the particulars of their merchant agreement, but charge-backs come with a penalty, both a one-time fee (per charge-back) and a percentage penalty towards their transaction totals that will be reflected when they renew their merchant account agreement.
Perhaps you should e-mail them and ask that they invest some monies in employee training, since my CSR clearly promised more than he has authorized to deliver. In Top Gun prose, he wrote a check that his body couldn't cash.....
I vaugely recall arguing with you in the past, but you're my new friend with this post. I wish Assange's defenders here would stop and ask themselves what their opinion of this matter would be if the accused's name was "Smith" instead of "Assange". Something tells me the rightous indigination would be replaced with a range of emotion somewhere between "Hang the rapist!" and "Let justice run its course", but of course it's Assange, and he's a hero of the internet community. He's essentially no different than the star athlete that gets a pass for the very same crime from soceity at large, because, gosh, our hero couldn't have done these horrible things....
Moot point I suppose. I've been around the block enough times to know that justice is rarely obtained once the media feeding frenzy begins, for neither the accused nor victim. :(
The only gripe I would make about Arial is that it isn't fixed space. That's not a deal-breaker for me, depending on the document in question (personal letter good, code snippet bad....), but it's worth noting that the Rules of Civil/Criminal procedure in a lot of jurisdictions mandate fixed space fonts.
Final thesis & each year's "mini-dissertation" had to be typed. Everything else just had to be legible; if your handwriting was neat enough that was acceptable.
You're either really old or live in a unique part of the United States. The middle schools around these parts won't even accept handwritten book reports, everything is expected to be typed. Personally, I think that's rather unfair for low income students that may not have a PC at home, but that's neither here nor there.....
My point is that there is no way in hell that any country other than Sweden would try to prosecute anyone for any kind of rape based on these kinds of claims.
Your original point, and the one that I replied to was (emphasis mine):
That's pretty much up in the air, and pointedly that kind sexual misconduct that is in question doesn't even exist in laws... well anywhere outside Sweden really.
I disproved that assertion. The rest of your latest post is a simple attempt at redirection. The alleged behaviors that I've discussed would be illegal in numerous jurisdictions, not just Sweden, and are actions that most every human being would consider morally reprehensible. Of course, I'm dealing with someone that uses sophisticated terms like 'feminazi' (Rush Limbaugh called, he wants his meme back), so perhaps my expectations of you were unrealistic.
It was an allegation of the fact that he did not use a condom.
My understanding is that she agreed to have sex with him, provided he use a condom, a condition he complied with, then at some later point he dove in for round two unprotected. If that is indeed what happened then it would be considered rape within the jurisdiction I call home, and I suspect many others as well.
Here's my post from the other conversation. Before you get high and mighty, stop and consider the fact that I've never said he's actually done these things, only that his alleged actions as I understand them would be considered rape in my jurisdiction. You don't get to ignore someone who tells you "only with a condom", "no anal", "no rough play", or any one of the millions of limitations normal human beings choose to apply to the sexual act. Such an action is both legally wrong and morally reprehensible.
As far as this specific case, with this specific person, I doubt we'll ever know what really happened. That's par for the course with most rape accusations, even those without media involvement and grandstanding politicians.
Amazon.com charges a restocking fee under exactly the same circumstances that Newegg does
No they don't, unopened items returned within the return window are refunded in full, minus the return shipping cost if the return was a result of an error made by the customer. You only eat a percentage of the product if it's returned outside of the usual 30 day return window, which is certainly fair.
In Newegg's case, they attempted to tried to ding me 15% of an unopened $600 video card, despite their CSRs claim that they would waive the fee. The return was completely my fault, I ordered the wrong card, and was open about that fact during my communication with them. I initially reached out to them in the hope that they would simply recall the shipment, since I hadn't received it, but they claimed this was impossible. They also told me that I could not refuse delivery (an option with Amazon, FYI), because that would be a return without an RMA, and suggested I go through the standard RMA process. I asked what would happen, they said I would get a total refund and only be on the hook for return shipping, which was more than I expected (eating the S/H charges in both directions would have been fair, since the mistake was mine), but I assumed they were being nice since I had placed an order for the correct card prior to calling on the bad one.
Imagine my surprise when I got my credit card statement and found the restocking fee. Numerous phone calls ensued, wherein every single person that I talked to refused to honor the deal. Escalated to supervisors, who also refused to honor the deal, escalated again to people that never returned phone calls. Offered to provide a recording of the original call, but was told that it would be "irrelevant", because the CSR "exceeded his authority", as if that's my problem. I ultimately had to dispute the charge with my credit card company, and the only reason I prevailed there was because of the aforementioned recording.
The best part? A few weeks later I get an e-mail telling me that I'm prohibited from doing business with them, because of the chargeback. Their prerogative I suppose, but none of it would have happened if they had simply honored their CSRs original promise.
Newegg doesn't carry much that you can't find on Amazon for the same price, and Amazon has a more consumer-oriented return policy. 15% restocking fee for an unopened product? Fuck you Newegg, and the horse you rode in on....
So, uh... WHY are there rules on fonts?
Readability. The same reason they usually mandate double spacing, the numbering of paragraphs, and so on.
You'd appreciate the same if your job primarily consisted of reading documents on paper. Didn't your professors/instructors at school have similar requirements?
To the best of my knowledge, the courts never had to deal with it. The Clerk of Court office would simply refuse them, and instruct the person filing of why they were refused. Like "Really, you can't use Comic Sans. Use Arial, Helvetica, or Times New Roman.
I guess it depends on the court, when I did the pleadings in my divorce the Prothonotary didn't even look at them. They had my address wrong, I corrected it in the first page of my answer, asked her to make sure this was reflected in their system, at which point she goes "Is that in here?" All those hours wasted reading pleadings from other cases, the PA Rules of Civil Procedure, and tweaking the formatting of my documents until they were proper..... Heck, they didn't ask me for ID, not for the filing or when I asked them to notarize something. Gotta love small town America....
Another point to consider, a lot of courts also have electronic filing nowadays, so the Clerk may not even see your pleadings at all. Unless of course they have to print them for a technically challenged Judge. :)
I hope you're right that it was something he was required to write for the proceeding, because if he's trying to wing it without a lawyer he's already screwed up. Letters from litigants carry very little weight with most courts, even those (small claims/traffic court) that primarily deal with matters that aren't usually worth hiring a lawyer for. Litigants are expected to know how to draft a pleading and obey the rules of procedure.
Thank you, I hosed that one. :(
.... most American legal jurisdictions have Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure, that specify the format legal pleadings are supposed to take. They're usually quite specific on the allowable fonts, font sizes, line spacing, the format they expect for the numbering of paragraphs, and so on. Lawyers and pro-say litigants ignore these rules at their own peril, as doing so is liable to get your case dismissed outright and at the very least will seriously annoy the Judge. Of course, most Judges don't take this annoyance, combine it with a bunch of other rants, then post it on Facebook....
It does amuse me that so-called higher educated professionals just as liable to open mouth and insert foot on Facebook as the immature uneducated brats (I was, like, at work, and like, you know that patient, like, from the other day? He's, like, a total asshole.) I have the misfortune of calling co-workers.
You need to get a better supplier, weed is supposed to make you mellow....
you do understand that what you quoted supports what I said
"TSA officers do not search for marijuana or other drugs; however, if an item is found that may violate federal law during security screening, TSA will refer the matter to law enforcement. Whether or not marijuana is considered medical marijuana federal law provides no basis to treat medical marijuana differently than non-medical marijuana."
You're rolling the dice every single time you pass through a TSA checkpoint with marijuana, unless the DEA rescheduled it while I wasn't looking, or Congress managed to do something useful, both of which I seriously doubt. :)
I don't know what your underlying aliment is, but I would highly recommend that you find an alternative to flying with marijuana on your person. Have a friend procure some at the other end of the trip, take alternate transportation, or just stay at home. That's just my two cents, perhaps you're braver than I am, personally I can think of a million things I'd rather do than risk my liberty and/or become a cause celebre. It sucks, and I'd really like to see the law changed, but until that happens it's best to keep your head down.
and pointedly that kind sexual misconduct that is in question doesn't even exist in laws... well anywhere outside Sweden really
You're wrong. His alleged actions would be Rape in the Third Degree (a Class E felony) in New York State. I cited the actual statutes the last time this conversation occurred, and can dig them up again if you doubt me.
In a nutshell, if someone gives qualified consent for sexual intercourse, you commit a crime when you engage in behaviors that you know they haven't consented to. You can't stick it up a woman's ass if she tells you "no anal", or dive in without a condom if she tells you that's the only way she'll have sex. Doing these things is not nearly as serious as forcible rape, legally speaking (morally I think it's nearly as repugnant), but it's still rape. If convicted you would earn a lifetime ban from gun ownership, a loss of your voting rights, and the requirement to register as a sex offender. You'd probably avoid jail time, assuming it was your first offense, but you'd be on probation for many years, which means no alcohol, no drugs, random tests for each, random searches of your residence, weekly meetings with your probation officer, travel restrictions, etc.
In short, it's nothing to sneeze at, nor is this alleged behavior only criminalized in Sweden.
You can **board airlines** with medicinal marijuana with your proof...the TSA doesn't bother you for small ammounts
Huh? Their own webpage suggests otherwise. It does say that they don't specifically look for it (nor should they), but will refer the matter to law enforcement. "*Screening procedures are governed by federal law and designed to detect threats to aviation security. TSA officers do not search for marijuana or other drugs; however, if an item is found that may violate federal law during security screening, TSA will refer the matter to law enforcement. Whether or not marijuana is considered medical marijuana federal law provides no basis to treat medical marijuana differently than non-medical marijuana."
Local LEOs might let you get away with it in a state with legalized and/or medical pot, but I personally wouldn't be brave enough to test that theory.
The Sixth Amendment doesn't apply to Guantanamo Bay.
Let's just ignore the inconvenient truth that nobody new has been admitted to Gitmo in years, those who are there were all captured on foreign battlefields and received the due process entitled to them under the Geneva conventions, and the titanic P/R disaster that would ensue if any American administration (never mind this administration) were to send him there.
If the United States wanted Assange badly enough to resort to extra-judicial measures we'd already have him. He's not that important. He hasn't killed any American citizens, or done anything that American journalists haven't been doing for years. If left to his own devices he would probably make a complete ass out of himself, sooner rather than later if the comments from his Wikileaks colleagues are any indication.
Not to mention that he would be held in solitary the moment he lands in Sweden
He hasn't even been charged in Sweden, they simply want to talk to him about the case in question. I don't know much about the Swedish justice system, but I find it hard to believe that a Social Democracy throws people in solitary before formal charges have been brought. The most serious reading of the allegations against him wouldn't get him remanded without bail in the United States (at least before he demonstrated himself to be a flight risk), with our supposedly draconian justice system, let alone tossed into solitary. Are you seriously claiming that the Social Nirvana that is Sweden treats defendants worse than the United States?
Lost in all of this are his alleged victims, whom are supposed to actually receive some measure of justice. Their allegations may be completely bogus, totally legitimate, or lie somewhere in between, we'll never know as long as he keeps ducking the judicial system.
Put your tinfoil hat away, he was freely walking the streets of the UK, until he exhausted his appeals in the Swedish case. Say what you will about Assange (I've said plenty), he's not a complete moron, the fact that he waited until he ran out of appeals spokes volumes about what he's really worried (Sweden) about. If he was worried about extradition to the United States why didn't he run the embassy sooner? Ditto for concerns about being charged in the UK.
He would then rot in a cell for several years(~6) before seeing the inside of a court room.
The Sixth Amendment says otherwise. Defendants have the right to a speedy trial. This right isn't always invoked, for various reasons (often defense counsel is the one asking for adjournments, in which case the right doesn't apply because the Defendant has waived it), but it's there. In New York State the People have six months from the filing of felony charges to either move forward with said charges or dismiss them, the only exception being for Murder I cases, which I believe have a 12 month timeline. Don't know what the exact deadlines are in the Federal system, but they're there.
George Zimmerman
George Zimmerman is an asshole, but I would have acquitted him if I had been a Juror. "Beyond a reasonable doubt", and there was plenty of reasonable doubt to go around in that particular case. That's actually an example of our system getting one right, given the disparate interests that all lined up against him, and the cynical attempt by those interests to poison the jury pool.
The two major parties used to be collections of disparate interests that came together to win elections, rather than classical left/right-wingers. If you nibble around the edges you can find that this still holds true with a few issues (abortion and the 2nd Amendment are good examples), but by and large the trend has been for the elected officials in each party to pander to the left or right on all the issues, lest they alienate the primary electorate and find themselves out of a job.
Primary Elections are dominated by the true believers, while General Elections require massive amounts of cash, cash the candidates are most likely to obtain from the aforementioned true believers, so is it any surprise that they cater to them once they win office? Rinse and repeat, election after election.
Joe Q. Public, i.e., the "most" people you're referring to, doesn't religiously follow politics. He doesn't watch MSNBC or Fox, or read Daily Kos or Red State. He has a belief structure that might favor one party over the other, but he doesn't tune into the process until a few weeks before the General Election, at which point it's really a beauty contest in the vast majority of House districts. Joe Q. Public essentially picks the side that he thinks is going to do the least damage, then prays the pendulum doesn't whack him in the head as it swings from left to right and back again.
Thanksgiving: It's like the /. comments, but with turkey and alcohol.
Fixed it for you.
Interesting that you seem to assume I'm a member of the GOP, when I never used the word "we" to refer to them. You do get some points though, the words you choose to describe yourself are words that I might have chosen to describe my own belief structure.
In any case, apostates don't interest me that much, be they recovering Democrats, Republicans, Christians, Muslims, Atheists, etc. There's a quote that comes to mind, which seems very appropriate in this context: "No one is more righteous than the fallen man reformed."
No, I stopped reading at "cult". Your "insider" picked the wrong media to spill his guts to if he cared about winning people like me over. I'm about elevating the dialogue, which means we don't use pejorative words like "cult" to describe political parties that claim tens of millions of our fellow citizens as members. I tuned him out with the same ease that I tune out Ann Coulter and Keith Olbermann.